IF LIONS COULD SPEAK:. Investigating the Animal-Human Relationship and the Perspectives of Nonhuman Others

If Lions Could Speak: Investigating the Animal-Human Relationship and the Perspectives ofNonhuman OthersAuthor(s): Clinton R. Sanders and Arnold ArlukeReviewed work(s):Source: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Aug., 1993), pp. 377-390Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Midwest Sociological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121103 .Accessed: 11/11/2011 11:40

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IF LIONS COULD SPEAK: Investigating the Animal-Human Relationship

and the Perspectives of Nonhuman Others

Clinton R. Sanders University of Connecticut

Arnold Arluke Northeastern University

Though they have not tended to be the focus of sociological attention in the past, interactions between humans and nonhuman animals are central to contemporary social life. This discussion presents the problems inherent in and the unique rewards offered by investigations of animal-human relationships. Of particular importance are the issues of whether one can and how one goes about assuming the perspective of alingual and/or nonhuman others. We also examine the inclination to intervene which arises when researchers gain intimate familiarity with animal perspectives in the typ- ically unequal contexts in which they interact with humans. General issues of central sociological and social significance upon which the study of animal-human relation- ships can potentially shed light are identified.

In his 1979 presidential address to the Southern Sociological Society, Clifton Bryant criticized sociologists for not attending to the relationships between animals and humans. He noted that:

[s]ociologists . . . have often been myopic in their observations of human behavior, cultural patterns, and social relationships, and unfortunately have not taken into ac- count the permeating social influence of animals in our larger cultural fabric, and our more idiosyncratic individual modes of interaction and relationships, in their analyses of social life. With very few exceptions, the sociological literature is silent on this topic (Bryant 1979, p. 400).

Since Bryant's advocacy of a "zoological focus," however, few have heeded his call.

Sociologists, generally, have displayed a remarkable reluctance to examine the wider realm of human relationships which lies beyond the conventional boundaries of human-to- human exchanges (for exceptions see, Cohen 1989; Johnson 1988; Turkle 1984). To a considerable degree, this reluctance appears to be due to sociology's phonocentric empha-

*Direct all correspondence to: Clinton R. Sanders, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut, Greater Hartford

Campus, 85 Lawler Road, West Hartford, CT 06117

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 3, pages 377-390. Copyright ? 1993 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0038-0253.

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sis upon verbal facility and language utilization as key factors determining the ability to engage in both intra- and intersubjective social activities. To a lesser degree, this reticence may result from the false belief that in advanced industrial societies, animals occupy a far less important place than they do in preindustrial worlds.

When sociologists in recent years have studied animals, they have, for the most part, chosen to study either the social significance of pets or the nature of work involving animals. In the former case, for example, there are studies of pets in the family (Hickrod and Schmitt 1982), pets and intimacy (Bulcroft, Helling, and Albert 1986), Bulldog owners (Nash 1989), and public interactions of dog owners (Robbins, Sanders, and Cahill 1991; Sanders 1990). In the latter instance, there have been studies of work in slaughter- houses (Bryant and Perkins 1982; Thompson 1983), animal shelters (Arluke 1991a), race tracks (Case 1988; Helmer 1991), and biomedical laboratories (Arluke 1991b; Lynch 1988; Wieder 1980). There have also been isolated studies of the animal rights movement (Jasper and Nelkin 1992), anthropomophism and animalization (Brabant and Mooney 1989; Hickey, Thompson, and Foster 1988), recreational use of animals (Bryant 1991), and the treatment of animals in Nazi Germany (Arluke and Sax 1992).

In almost all of these cases, sociologists have sought to capture the perspectives of humans who interact with or think about animals. For those who embark on this course, the research challenge is conventional-to build an understanding of the human actor's orientation toward the animal-as-other. What is strikingly absent in these studies, how- ever, is any attempt to capture the perspectives of animals themselves. For those who embark on this course, the research challenge is unorthodox.

We argue here that capturing the subjective experience of the animal calls for the reexamination of certain assumptions underlying conventional fieldwork with human subjects. First, we draw upon existing studies and the current work of the first author to contend that this unique endeavor requires that the investigator be intimately involved with the animal-other and that the researcher's disciplined attention to his or her emotional experience can serve as an invaluable source of understanding. In the closing section, we suggest that this area of research promises to expand sociological understanding of such key issues as how "mind" is constituted as the outcome of social interaction, the social procedure of assigning identities to others and the definitional context in which this takes place, and the process by which taking the role of the other proceeds-especially in the face of one actor's ostensible inability to employ conventional symbols. We also contend that coming to see the world through the eyes of the animal naturally leads to situations in which the objective, nonjudgmental stance of the conventional ethnographer is inap- propriate. Disciplined knowledge of the animal's situation in those settings in which human-animal relationships typically exist, may prompt direct-and, we maintain, appropriate-intervention.

CAPTURING THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE NONVERBAL OTHER

A necessary condition for success . .. is a continuous sympathetic observation of an animal under as natural conditions as possible. To some degree, one must transfer

oneself into the animal's situation and inwardly partake in its behavior -ethologist Margaret Nice

(quoted in Lawrence 1989, p. 118)

If Lions Could Speak 379

Sociologists traditionally have seen mind and the social self as dependent upon the special human ability to assume the viewpoint of those with whom one interacts. From a conven- tional sociological standpoint, the nonhuman animal's presumed inability to symbolize means that he or she is lacking in all the supposedly unique human attributes premised on linguistic facility. From this anthropocentric perspective, the animal can not think in other than the most rudimentary ways, does not possess a self concept, has no sense of time or space, is unable to plan future actions apart from the boundaries imposed by the immedi- ate situation, can not differentiate between ends and means, and has no "emotions" in the sense that he or she can not indicate these feelings to the self or to others. Trapped in the here and now, the nonhuman animal habitually or instinctively responds to stimuli pre- sented in the immediate situation (see Becker 1981, p. 94; Mead 1964, Pp. 154-169; cf. Terrace 1987).

This alleged "understanding" of the "life-world" of nonhuman animals is, we would submit, derived more from anthropocentric ideology than from systematically derived data or the thoughtful examination of analysts' personal experiences (if such exist) with nonhuman animals. The effect of such anthropocentric ideology is just as distorting as androcentric ideology has been to gaining an understanding of women and their experi- ence. Feminist critics of anthropology maintain that ethnographers have ignored women or have perceived them as silent and passive because of androcentrism. As Gal (1991, p. 189) notes, "Being unable to express their structurally generated views in the dominant and masculine discourse, women were neither understood or heeded, and became inar- ticulate, 'muted' or even silent." Only recently have researchers sought to understand the meaning of this silence and to study "women's voice" (e.g., di Leonardo 1991).

Once one acquires sympathetic understanding of those who are studied through the process of interacting directly with them, the "alien" behavior comes to be seen as commonplace and eminently reasonable. Some investigators of the animal-human rela- tionship have advocated the use of interpretive, phenomenologically sensitive, qualitative approaches to acquire such an understanding of animals. For example, Herzog and Burg- hardt (1988, Pp. 91-92) observe:

[T]he concept of consciousness as a topic of scientific scrutiny, even in animals, is making a comeback .... [T]here are some important questions that can only be investigated by studying subjective reports of conscious experience. . . . We concur and suggest that methods that phenomenologists use to investigate "being in the world" might be fruitfully applied to the study of human-animal relationships.

Trainers, many ethologists, and others who interact consistently and intimately with animals outside the artificial situations of conventional scientific inquiry typically see their nonhuman cointeractants as self aware, planning, empathetic, emotional, complexly communicative, and creative (e.g., George 1985; Goodall 1986; Hearne 1987; Shapiro 1990a; Strum 1987). True familiarity with the complexities of animal behavior prompts them to discount perspectives that rely on instinctual or rigidly behavioristic explanations. As Midgley (1988, p. 39) observes in her discussion of cognitive ethologist Donald Griffin's work:

IT]he attempt to make pre-programming account for everything has only been made to look plausible by constant misdescription-by abstract, highly simplified accounts of

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what creatures do, which are repeatedly shown up as inadequate when anybody takes the trouble to observe them longer and more carefully.

The dog owners studied by Sanders (forthcoming) regularly described interactions with their dogs which clearly and reasonably demonstrated to them the ability of animals to be minded, insightful, and empathetic. Their dogs typically were characterized as creatively employing learned gestural signs in symbolic ways; they organized their behavior so as to communicate new ideas in novel situations. For example, one informant encountered in a veterinary clinic spoke of her dog's ability to "talk":

He talks to me all the time. He has different barks for different things-to tell me things. When someone is at the door he has this deep, big dog bark. . . . When he is frightened he has this real high bark. Yes, he can talk. When he really- wants something he turns circles. You ask him if he wants to go for a ride in the car he will turn circles and run to the garage door. If you ask him a question and his answer is "yes" he will turn circles. If his answer is "no" he just sits there and looks at you and you have to keep asking questions until you hit on it.

In a similar vein, animal trainer Vicki Hearne (1987, Pp. 55-56) describes an incident in which her dog Salty creatively directs the conversation of gestures so as to establish a new definition of intention:

At this point in Salty's training it is not clear whether the utterance "Salty, Sit!" is language, even though there is plainly a looped thought involved: Salty, that is, is sitting in response to her recognition of my intention that she do so . . . . We have a looped thought, but the flow of intention is, as it were, one way. In my account the dog doesn't initiate anything yet. She obeys me, but I don't obey her. One day, though, and quite soon, I am wandering around the house and Salty gets my attention by sitting spontaneously in just the unmistakably symmetrical, clean-edged way of formal work. If I'm on the ball, if I respect her personhood at this point, I'll respond. Her sitting may have a number of meanings. "Please stop daydreaming and feed me!" (Perhaps she sits next to the Eukanuba or her food dish.) Or it may mean, "Look, I can explain about the garbage can, it isn't the way it looks." In any case, if I respond, the flow of intention is now two-way, and the meaning of "Sit" has changed yet again. This time it is Salty who has enlarged the context .... Salty and I are, for the moment at least, obedient to each other and to language.

In contrast to conventional positivistic assumptions about the interactional capabilities and emotional experience of nonhuman animals (see Hebb 1946), there is considerable evidence that dogs and other animals with whom humans routinely interact do possess at least a rudimentary ability to "take the role of the other" and behave in ways which are purposefully intended to shape interactions so as to accomplish their defined goals or communicate an understanding of their cointeractants' subjective experience. Sanders' informants, for example, commonly described their dogs as being aware of and respon- sive to their moods. Typical accounts detailed incidents in which the caretaker was sad or depressed and the dog, recognizing his or her emotional state, behaved in ways intended as consolation or display of concern. At heart, the social exchange between the person and the companion animal was defined as an "emotive discourse" (Gubrium 1986). Two of

If Lions Could Speak 381

Sanders' interviewees, a man and his teenage daughter, spoke of their dog's empathetic abilities.

Daughter: He's just fun. He keeps us lighthearted. And he certainly senses our moods. If you're sad and crying he will come snuggle next to you. Father: He just seems to sense it somehow. You can be in a different room and be down. Recently when Mary was in her room he just seemed to know where to go ... he sensed that somewhere in this house-his doghouse-there was something that was not quite right. He sought Mary out and was just there. One day I was sitting on the front porch kind of blue about some things and he just snuggled in there-totally noninvasive. Just "If you want to pet me, pet me. I'm here if you need me."

Additional support for the social abilities of dogs and other animal companions comes from their commonly taking objects from their immediate environment, purposefully redefining the material item in a new way, and acting toward the object in light of this redefinition. For example, in the autoethnographic' notes recorded following a walk in the woods with his own dogs, Sanders described the animals at play and the implications of what he had observed.

In addition to "chase" and "wrestle" (in which they assume and reverse roles-chaser and chasee, aggressor and victim-according to a mutual understanding which I haven't as yet figured out) the dogs have established a game I have started to call "stick." One of them-usually Emma-chooses a stick which has no obvious intrinsic value relative to all the others in the woods other than it is the "right" size-usually about a foot long and easily held in the mouth. This stick becomes the major game piece. The chooser displays the stick with great gestural show of its importance-head up, tail high, body tensed, gaze directed at the other "player." In turn, the other, usually after some display of mock indifference, chases after the "holder" and attempts to take it away. When successful, the roles are reversed and the new holder attempts to keep the stick from the new chaser. They have even established a conventional stick holding style which both use and which has an obvious utility given the rudimentary rules of the game. The stick is usually held length- wise so that most of it extends out of one side of the holder's mouth. By turning her head or body the holder can stay in close contact with the other player but can position the graspable part of the stick away from the enthusiastic chaser. This would seem to be an interesting example of the symbolic redefinition of a natural object, mutual definition of the situation, ability to take the role of the other, and the sharing of an activity charac- terized by mutually agreed upon rudimentary rules.2

Recent field studies by primatologists support the reasonableness of seeing nonhuman animals as having minds, behaving intentionally, and being attuned to their own emotional experience and that of their fellows. Cheney and Seyfarth (1990), for instance, maintain that much can be learned about what it is like to be a vervet monkey. Vervet calls, they argue, are far more than mere involuntary expressions of emotion; instead, they are only given when there is an appropriate audience to hear them (i.e., fellow vervets). Vervets also deal with relations such as transitivity and generalize kin relations such that females, when played a juvenile's distress call, will look at the mother of that juvenile. Cheney and Seyfarth also contend that monkey deception of other monkeys probably means that monkeys can conceive others' differing viewpoints. Nevertheless, the authors warn that monkeys probably do not attribute mental states to other monkeys. Studies of chim-

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panzees, in contrast, seem to suggest more of a true "theory of mind" on the part of these primates (Menzel and Halperin 1975; Premack and Woodruff 1978) who aid, share, inform, and deliberately misinform. Further, Gallup's (1982) experimental research per- suasively indicates that the chimpanzee possesses a rudimentary self-concept.

Studies of apes who have learned American Sign Language may provide further support for this argument, although there is no consensus in the scientific community as to what these language capabilities mean. Those who champion ape language abilities maintain that these animals can construct a world with words, retrieve and communicate past experiences, and even discuss the nature of life (Laidler 1980; Meddin 1979; Patterson and Linden 1981). Critics of ape language research (e.g., Chomsky 1980; Sebeok 1981), desiring to retain one ability which differentiates humans from nonhuman animals, dis- agree with the implications of these studies.

While the view of nonhuman animals as minded interactants is a matter of some controversy in the animal behavior literature (see Clark 1984; Griffin 1984; Ristau 1991), the analysis briefly outlined here borders on the heretical from the standpoint of sociologi- cal determinism and traditional symbolic interactionism (see Cohen 1989; Lindesmith, Denzin, and Strauss 1977, Pp. 63-80, 115-126). In his critical discussion of the current state of sociological social psychology, Dowd (1991, p. 201) touches upon the conven- tional rejection of the possibility that nonhuman animals can engage in symbolically mediated minded behavior when he observes that this perspective is as threatening to the underpinnings of traditional symbolic interactionism as is the questioning of the autono- mous human self offered by contemporary postmodern analysts.

Skeptics may well see the view that a person's animal companion is engaged in minded, self-presenting, and intersubjective social interaction-that he or she is a partner in the routine, mutual performances which make up social relationships-as based solely on presumption or projection. This may, of course, be the case. But the evidence employed by those involved in routine interactions with nonhuman animals in everyday situations to define the intentions of the animal-other and make judgements about his or her internal state is certainly as persuasive as that employed to establish the intersubjective groundings of human-to-human interaction in everyday situations (Schutz 1970, Pp. 163-217; cf. Bogdan and Taylor 1989; Gubrium 1986). It would seem that a reasoned analysis of animal-human social exchanges would acknowledge that mutuality based on the animal's self awareness and ability to, at least at some rudimentary level, empathically experience the perspective of coactors is worth considering. The explanatory value of these factors is at least as powerful as causal accounts solely premised on behaviorist or instinctivist presumptions. Wieder (1980, p. 95), for example, describes this mutual orientation at the heart of routine animal-human interaction in his discussion of the relationship between researchers who work directly with chimpanzees ("chimpers") and their primate colleagues:

[T]he chimpanzee's body in a spatially surrounding world is experienced as intersubjective-as there for both chimp and chimper. ... [W]ithin this common intersubjective Nature, the chimper's body obtains its sense as a body "over there"' for the chimp. He or she perceives that body and, through it, perceives the chimper. Implicit here is a mutual "being for one another." The chimper experiences himself or herself as experienced. Fixed through mutual gazes and such behaviors as hiding one's face and turning away, the chimpanzee is experienced as actively witnessing the chimper and his or her comportment-Ilndeed, this underlies much chimping strategy.

If Lions Could Speak 383

The chimper also experiences fellow chimpers and other chimpanzees as Others for the chimp in question and notes that this chimp is an Other for them as well.

Those readers skeptical of a perspective premised on an assumption that nonhuman animals have the ability to engage in minded behavior may, nonetheless, also find the study of human social exchanges with animals to be of considerable interest. An alterna- tive approach could focus on building an ethnomethodological account of the methods employed by pet owners to construct a grounded and seemingly orderly pattern of interac- tion with their animal companions. Pollner and McDonald-Wikler's (1985) observations of the techniques employed by a family to attribute normality to a severely retarded child offer one example of this particular approach (cf. Goode 1992).

An understanding of nonhuman animals as minded social actors has clear implications for research in the situations in which animals and humans interact. In certain circum- stances, it is essential for the investigator to learn how to take the role of the animal-other and communicate effectively in the appropriate idiom. As Sanders' research into the animal-human relationship proceeded, for example, he learned to move, verbalize, and respond in ways which were appropriately communicative and understandable to the canine actors in the research settings. Elements of this understanding derived from reading ethological accounts (e.g., Brandenburg 1988; Lorenz 1988) and the practical literature directed at dog owners interested in communicating effectively with their animals (e.g., Baer 1989; George 1985; Ross and McKinney 1992). However, the most useful source of information Sanders employed in "learning to talk" derived from his direct observations of the dogs as they interacted. He routinely engaged in what Mandell (1988) refers to as "action reproduction" as the grounding of communication and became adept at elemental canine communicative activities. Disclosure of his own desires, perspectives, and plans of action came to entail the use of whines, growls, nuzzling, ear-sniffing, body posture, nipping, facial expression, and the other communicative moves which he saw the dogs employ frequently and effectively with each other. Sanders commonly assumed what might, after Mandell's (1988) discussion of her nursery-school research, be referred to as the "least-human role." He attempted to minimize species differences and assume the perspective of the animals with whom he interacted.

Learning to speak in the animal idiom is frequently advocated by animal trainers and is a common practice for ethologists. For example, in his study of feral cats, Roger Tabor (1983) credits his acceptance as a "participant observer" to his ability to speak what he refers to as "pidgin-cat." He learned to use the gestures and make the sounds he saw were significant to the members of the animal community in which he was interested. Similarly, Blake (1975) and Hearne (1987) in their training work with horses and dogs and Fossey (1983), Goodall (1986), and Strum (1987) in their ethological studies of free-ranging primates, stress the central methodological and practical importance of learning to speak and behave appropriately given the values and expectations of the animals with whom one is interacting.

A few researchers outside of sociology have tried to specify the process by which human beings can understand the animal's perspective. Shapiro (1990a) calls his approach "kinesthetic empathy." He elaborates three steps in his model of understanding the ani- mal's perspective. He suggests a "mixed" methodology, using knowledge about the indi- vidual animal's history and the animal's social construction of particular social types to "critically temper and inform" empathetic understanding of the animal's postures, move-

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ments, and use of space. He maintains (1990b, p. 32) that such empathy "is not limited to an access to affective life, nor to some perceptible surface of the other being beneath which lurks an inner life only suggested." Nor is such empathy merely anthropomorphiz- ing or projecting, he contends, since humans share with animals an awareness and intelligence based on respective bodily movement, giving humans and nonhuman animals an "embodied consciousness" regarding our shared ways of knowing the world through movement.

DISCUSSION: THE PROMISE OF ANIMAL-HUMAN RESEARCH

Sociologists studying animal-human interaction face both unique challenges and the promise of singular rewards. Perhaps at its most limited, this general area of research will shed light on the central role animals occupy in human culture. A far more ambitious research goal is to expand the sociological view to include a focus on interactions with nonhuman-though minded-social beings. A central proposition here is that the differ- ence between the abilities of people and nonhuman animals-a perceived difference which has thus far excluded animals from serious sociological attention-is a matter of degree rather than kind. It is only through acknowledging that our animal companions are eminently conscious partners in social interaction that we will come to examine and understand their perspectives and behaviors. This understanding can be achieved only if we make the same assumption that qualitative researchers make when they investigate other alien-though knowable-minds and worlds. Intimate interaction and empathetic partaking of the perspective of the other are the major sources of this knowledge.

The project advocated here can, we believe, significantly expand our understanding of how mind is constituted. Empathetic, disciplined investigation of the routine social ex- changes between people and their nonhuman companions necessarily focuses on how human actors construct (or avoid constructing) an understanding of the animal-other's subjective experience. As such, the concept of mind is moved beyond the conventional Meadian orientation in which mind is an "object" constituted in the internal conversation of the individual actor. In contrast, examination of animal-human interactions leads to a far more social perspective on mind; it is reconceived as the product of interaction in which intimates are actively involved in contextualizing, identifying, understanding, and responding to the defined subjective experience of the nonverbal other. Animal-human research can, therefore, build upon and expand the somewhat more conventional investi- gations of interactions with other nonverbal human actors such as infants (eg., Brazelton 1984), Alzheimer's patients (e.g., Gubrium 1986), and those with severe physical and mental disabilities (e.g., Bogdan and Taylor 1989; Goode 1992).

This refocused attention to mindedness as a feature of sociogenic identity opens the door to an expanded understanding of a variety of other key symbolic interactionist concepts and concerns. For example, how does the central activity of "taking the role of the other" proceed apart from conventional linguistic exchanges? What methods do actors use to define situations so as to contextualize interactions and thereby imbue them with meaning and order? What is the role of emotional experience in the structuring of inter- subjective encounters?

The repertoire of methodological approaches available to sociologists can also be expanded and refined through attending to human definitions of and interactions with nonhuman animals. The study of animal-human interaction offers a substantive area in which emotionally focused, self-attentive, postpositivist techniques are especially rele-

If Lions Could Speak 385

vant. In turn, this attention to ethnographic work as a subject-to-subject endeavor will lead to further insight into the possibilities of emancipatory interventions in a variety of social situations.

Intimate familiarity with the perspectives and experiences of nonhuman animals de- rived from direct research involvement in those settings in which animals and humans interact may present the investigator with intensely emotional and ethically challenging decisions. As more knowledge is gained about the orientations, behavioral patterns, feelings, and requirements of animals and the goals and perspectives of those humans who live and work with them, researchers are likely to feel strongly inclined to intervene. In most field studies, researchers shy away from making any such intervention for fear that it might jeopardize their access or change the scene in an "unnatural" way. However, most of these conventional studies rarely focus on those who have literally no access to power or ability to express concerns, as is the case with animals. The sensitive ethnographer investigating human-animal relationships may well conclude that it is appropriate to exercise "conscious partiality" (Mies 1983) instead of maintaining a neutral stance.

Much of the impetus for intervention in the power relationships integral to the field situations in which ethnographers work comes from feminist critiques of conventional science and the objectivist methodological stance central to scientific dogma. Feminist scholars emphasize how gender has shaped what is "known" about the social world and increasingly have come to advocate a new way of seeing that is grounded in naturalistic methods and rejects the masculinist preconceptions which structure traditional theories of social life (see Cook and Fonow 1986; Gorelick 1991; Haraway 1989; Keller 1985; Tanner 1981; Zihlman 1978). Feminist writers also have refocused perspectives on both the means and ends of the research endeavor. Naturalistic, participatory, emotionally focused, self-attentive approaches lead necessarily to the collection of information that is emanci- patory and reconstructs perspectives on the place of humans in nature. Intervention in destructive patterns of domination-domination of the natural environment (Diamond and Orenstein 1990; Plant 1989) and domination on the basis of racial, ethnic, economic, gender, and species categories-is an ethical mandate integral to the research process. In this light, emancipatory involvement directed at easing the lot of animals in the myriad settings in which they interact with, and are dominated by, humans is an essential- though practically problematic--goal (see Adams 1990; Donovan 1990).3

CONCLUSION

Anthropological and sociological ethnographic work increasingly is moving beyond the study and representation of the traditional, clearly defined "Other" and is being deployed in far more diverse and novel circumstances. According to Marcus (1986, p. 168), this new direction is necessary in order to study the "strongest form of difference . . . within our own cultural realm." Animal-human interaction is, we submit, an enormously produc- tive and fertile field for further sociological exploration of these differences. To do this, however, animals, as part of "nature," must be refigured. As Haraway (1992, p. 297) writes:

The actors are not all 'us.' If the world exists for us as 'nature,' this designates a kind of relationship, an achievement among many actors, not all of them human . .. nature is made, but not entirely by humans; it is a co- construction among humans and non- humans.

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The examination of human relationships with animals holds the potential for moving toward the achievement of a far broader and ultimately more important goal than simply enlarging the corpus of sociological theory and method. The ultimate utility of the inti- mate, emotionally aware, introspective, intervention-directed, appreciative study of ani- mals and their relationships with humans is the promise this endeavor offers of countering the masculinist, positivist, structuralist, reductionist view of the natural world and the

place of "man" within that world. Interpretive/experiential involvement with the patterned exchanges between people and animals offers an opportunity to reconstruct the world of nature. Rather than a world separated into subjects (scientists, men, the powerful) and

objects (women, animals, "savages"), the image of the world ultimately offered is one

composed of subjects-in-interaction, human and nonhuman actors cooperating and strug- gling with the historical, political, cultural forces in which their activities are embedded.4 This recasting of the natural world can, we maintain, only proceed within an ethical context which is, as Donovan (1990, p. 375) describes it, "grounded in an emotional and

spiritual conversation with nonhuman life forms."

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this discussion was presented at the Qualitative Analysis Confer- ence, Toronto, May 1990. The authors appreciate the comments provided by Norman Denzin and anonymous reviewers for this journal. The title is taken from Wittgenstein (1958, p. 223) who observed that, "if lions could speak, we could not understand them."

NOTES

1. Though commonly employed by social analysts for some time (e.g., Cooley 1964[1902], Pp. 6-7), this orientation to doing ethnographic work has only fairly recently become the focus of significant methodological discussion. The experience of animal-human interaction can, we believe, be richly revealed as researchers interacting with pets in both private and public settings systemat- ically begin to construct "autoethnographies," descriptive and intensely introspective accounts detailing their intellectual and emotional experiences during the course of encountering and living with animals in a variety of social settings (see Denzin 1989; Ellis 1991; Hayano 1979). We see the autoethnographic approach as holding special promise for enlarging an emotionally focused, thickly described, and disciplined account of human interactions with animals, one that reestablishes an emphasis upon ethnographic work as leading to an artistically constructed account of personal experience in the field. Autoethnographic work with animals in those situations where the researcher is naturally and fully involved offers the optimal source of data relevant to building a complete and emotionally informed account of the animal-other's perspective.

2. In this light, see the discussions of play exchanges between dogs and people (e.g., Mechling 1989; Mitchell and Thompson 1990) and ethological descriptions of the common practice of "predator distraction" or other forms of purposive animal deception (e.g., Cheney and Seyfarth 1991; Griffin 1984, Pp. 90-94; Ristau 1991, Pp. 91-126).

3. This focus on the importance of ethical intervention in the lot of animals is amply illustrated by an exchange between noted chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall and a conventionally minded questioner during a lecture. When Goodall described attempts to treat disease among the chim- panzees she was studying, a member of the audience was incredulous. "Surely, Dr. Goodall, you don't interfere with the population you are studying?" "No," Goodall retorted, "we help" (Rollin 1990, p. 271).

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4. In her recent assessment of the potentials of a postmodern social science, Rosenau (1992, p. 172) celebrates a research endeavor focused

on the margins, the excluded, those who have no control over their lives .... [The] goal is to speak for those who have never been the subject (active, human), but who are rather so often assumed to be objects (observed, studied). [This] would include new voices and new forms of local narrative but not in an attempt to impose discipline or responsibility.

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