Neoliberal Pet Culture

"My baby's in the car," my fellow house-tourer said, pointing down from the house's balcony to an SUV in the driveway.

I blinked. I tried to do that thing people do of hiding a deep and sudden shock by swallowing big and looking in another direction. Of course I knew conceptually that people my age, in their early twenties, have children. I just so rarely come across them in my narrow social worlds of college-educated, left-leaning youths.

My future roommates and I were house hunting. We were at a little house with an incredibly nice, well-lit upstairs, but a dank, dark, and musty basement. The basement was a clear deal breaker, because two of the four bedrooms were down there, meaning half of us would have to sleep in that damp, pungent air and have the rarest of contact with sunlight. It was really a shame, given how lovely the top half of the place was, and all our hearts sunk a bit. 

By chance, another cohort of young people was touring this house at the very same time. Our two groups were, for some reason, kinetically drawn together. "You are beautiful," was the first thing one of their group said to one of mine, as we bumped into each other in the kitchen. Now, we were all gathered on the porch, exchanging notes and expressing our collective disappointment in the basement. And, now, I was trying to reconcile the fact that the same person who had called my roommate beautiful was, apparently, a mother.

I strained my neck over the balcony to get a glimpse of her child in the car, but the windows were too tinted to see in. "That's wonderful," I muttered, still attempting to cover my shock, "Really amazing." 

But as I slowly accepted the fact of her youthful parentage, I started to become somewhat disturbed that she had left her baby in the car while touring the house.   

She sensed the concern on my face, and quickly assured me not to worry. "The air conditioning is on," she said.

Then, all at once, it hit me. The whole thing made sense, and I felt dumb. 

"You don't mean a human baby, do you?" I asked.

"No!" she shrieked, laughing. "My dog!" And then, without missing a beat: "Do you want to meet him?"

The above anecdote says a lot about the relationship between humans and pets in the 21st century United States (and perhaps other wealthy strongholds of late stage capitalism). In the year 2020, a young person referred to her canine with such adoring and humanizing language that I genuinely believed she was referring to a human child. And this treatment of her dog did not turn the heads of my roommates; it was not read as an inappropriate treatment of non-human life, or even a slight oddity. It was laughed off as a funny, but totally reasonable, misunderstanding. Indeed, I'd argue that the treatment of pet animals with adoration traditionally reserved for the closest of human relationships is very much within the norms of our culture today. While this is abundantly visible in the the more frivolous and extravagant spaces of American culture (such as celebrities and other wealthy people who treat there pets lavishly), what is perhaps more surprising is how a norm of "pets-as-humans" has sublimated, seemingly without challenge, throughout social strata. Even on the political left, where pointed critiques of almost all cultural trends abound, treating pets in this way seems to have received widespread acceptance. 

Several years ago, as I headed off for college, my parents and brother joked about replacing me with a dog. This became less of a joke when, the summer before my third year, they built a fence around our backyard to keep a hypothetical future canine as prisoner. Eventually, my brother and mother began seriously researching hypoallergenic dogs and touring shelters to meet some actual pooches. They even adopted a dog for 24 hours, only to return it when it stayed up all night, barking.

By this point, I was once again living at home, and began waging an all out anti-dog war. Deep in my soul of souls, I felt very strongly opposed to project Dog Acquisition, although, admittedly, I didn't quite fully understand why. Part of it, I knew, was bitter and petty resentment, for as I kid I had spent a considerable amount of time begging for a dog to no avail. "We're gone too much in the summer," was my parents' excuse, "a dog would be lonely without us." Part of it too, I knew, was a personal laziness; being back at home, I did not want any pet care responsibility to fall on me. I felt I was barely able to keep up with my double life as a college student and an Atlanta busy-body. But a larger—definitely the largest—reason for my dissent felt only vaguely articulatable, or even accessible to my own conscious mind. 

So one long summer weekend, when the rest of my family was out of town, leaving me in the long and cool shotgun house alone, I decided to look through the social science literature on pets to see if I could find anything that resonated. College, and specifically my sociology classes, had turned me into a (by many accounts, annoyingly cynical) amateur critical theorist. At this point of my life, I was convinced that with a little elbow grease, any widely accepted social phenomenon could be broken down into its constituent parts and revealed to be absolutely nonsensical and, more often than not, functioning to maintain some unjust hierarchy of the status quo. In my first two years of college I wrote research papers on how the rhetoric of non-violent activism works to protect state violence, how male circumcision changes the sexuality of male bodied people under the guise of a necessary health intervention, and how toilet paper is not only significantly less hygienic than water-based butt-cleaning methods, but absolutely devastating to the environment. My mantra might as well have been: "if things look and feel normal, you've probably been duped. Secretly, all is terrible." 

I have recanted on this love of critique somewhat over the last few years. I now think the kind of always-on, sharp and pointy critical analysis I was into has limited practical utility. It tends to lead practitioners (as it did me) to put on patronizing airs and avoid the nuance of real life. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't provide much inspiration or fodder for change and constructive activity. It leaves all involved feeling overwhelmed at the insidious functions of the world around us, drained and still (although occasionally this is the point; see what I wrote about afropessimism).

All that said, I still occasionally get a powerful glee from peeling back the normalness of our norms and really seeing what's fucked up about them. I experienced such glee when, that long summer weekend, I came across the writings of Hiedi Nast. In a couple of articles on "critical pet studies," Nast lays out a damning norm-revealing critique of contemporary pet culture that spoke directly to the abstract discomfort I felt with my family wanting to get a dog. She outlines the major transition in the treatment and role of pets in "post-industrial contexts" over the last thirty years that have followed and responded to other material cultural shifts (what might be crudely summarized as "the rise of neoliberalism").

Her starting place is to observe the dramatic increases in pet-related consumption (at the time of her writing in 2009, the pet industry had reached an annual worth of $45.5 billion). She notes the creation of truly spectacular new pet-related services, such as yoga and partner dancing with dogs, and the cloning of pets to bring them back from the dead. And these services merely indicate a much deeper iceberg of an economy that includes more accessible and widely consumed goods and services such as fancy pet food products, private dog parks, cat cafes, pet clothing lines, a highly equipped pet healthcare industry, pet boarding houses, pet training schools, apps to find dog walkers and pet sitters, and on and on. In short, treating pets well with our dollars has become increasingly popular and normalized. And its only one small step to realize the explosion of these new pet markets is a reflection of changes to our pet culture, our relationship to and understanding of our domesticated house-mates. 

Indeed, deep and sincere emotional attachments to pets have become increasingly common. People do things like run Instagrams for their dogs, or spend thousands of dollars on high quality pet foods, or take their pets with them on their elaborate vacations, because they regard their animals very highly. Arguably, in many cases, owners see themselves as having a proto-human relationship with their pets, one that, like a relationship with another person, can develop over time and, ultimately, provides them with a great deal of meaning and purpose-making. Of course people have long felt fondly for their domesticated animals, but the degree of care and affection and the widespreadness of pet ownership (62% of households in US) are new.

Nast posits that these shifts to treat pets (and especially dogs) with increased care of our hearts and dollars is a direct response to the unprecedented alienations of our age. Neoliberalism (maybe I'll write about that floppy word some other time) has seen the development of a globally interconnected economy that doesn't give a damn about place. The young professional of the late 20th and early 21st century must be untethered and footloose, ready to move to new law firms, business offices, tech companies at the drop of a hat— across the country, or across the world. While this phenomenon plays out most obviously among the more elite strata of society, it is true for the less well off too. To go to college for social mobility, one has to be willing to uproot and re-root. The "gig economy," constituted by millions working transportation apps like Uber and food delivery apps like Door Dash, is precarious and requires constant flexibility. The result of these processes is, to put it simply, weakened community life. People are less embedded in neighborhoods, local institutions, and even their own families than they were even a generation ago. While they may have thousands of connections through the internet, deep, reliable, and in-person connection has diminished.

Pets, Nast argues, have become the perfect tool to fill the social-emotional void left by the loss of deep and rich human-to-human social networks. Why? Well, to begin with, pets generally offer their owners unconditional affection and loyalty. Developing an intimate "relationship" with a pet that feels both affirming and reliable is quite literally easier to do than with other humans. If we feel socially alienated, that our human ties are spread out and weak, pets can provide a quick and easy substitute.

At a yet darker note, not only are pets loyal, but we rule over them with complete dominion. We are in control of their every waking moment: when they eat, what they eat, when they go out, if they get healthcare, if they meet others of their species. We are in total control of both their lives and the nature of our "relationship" with them in a way that would never be acceptable with another human (it would in fact be slavery). The closest intra-human relationship to that of the pet and owner, is that of the parent and child. Parents, it is widely accepted, have broad powers over their children, ostensibly to keep them safe and socialize them into independent adults. But unlike the human child, the pet does not "grow-up." It does not develop its own autonomy, the ability to dissent from its owner or move out. The unequal relationship is cemented permanently. And again, in an era of languishing human connection, where what closeness does exist may feel precarious and desperate, the ability to tight-fistedly control a relationship to an intimate—even if it is a pet—is appealing.

And the control of our pets runs deep. Yes, we have power over their material lives in nearly every aspect, but we also narrativize their lives. We say, "My pet is happy, sad, grumpy, or tired." We say, "My pet 'wants,' 'thinks,' or 'knows' x, y, or z." Though we have no real way to know our pets' experiences, we, as Nast argues, anthropomorphize our pets in ways that are agreeable to us, make us feel good, mesh with our needs and desires. Of course, we can interpret the behavior of humans with similar bias, but the person always has the ability to dissent, to challenge, to correct. Pets have no such avenue, and thus we can create for them largely fictitious personalities.  As Nast puts it, we "have made pets into screens onto which all sorts of human needs, desires, and investments can be and are being projected (Loving. . . whatever, 304).

The third—and, I promise,  darkest— reason pets make sense as a substitute for human connection in this neoliberal world is, simply, that they are easily disposed of. We take our lunches in Styrofoam to-go containers because we must rush from meeting to meeting; our lifestyles demand it. Our lifestyle also demands the disposability of relationships. We must be able to change jobs, to pick up and move, to start over time and time again in different places with different people. But the disposal and loss of human relationships is messy, and often unbearably painful. Though pets can provide a great deal of meaning and connection for the reasons listed above, ultimately they are much easier, and far more socially acceptable, to let go of. If one must move, or if one simply becomes annoyed or bored by their animal, there is little trouble in adopting it out, getting it to a shelter, or, in some instances, having it euthanized. There may be a period of emotional difficulty associated with the loss of a pet relationship, but like the Styrofoam, it is easily replaced. Just saunter on down to the local pound, and you'll find yourself a hundred loyal companions laying in wait, eager to fill the emptiness in your heart.

To summarize the points: pets are generally loyal; through domestication we can more or less control the material parts of their lives; through our imagination and interpretations, we can develop a "relationship" with them in ways that suit our fancy; and at the end of the day, we can always get rid of them. These things make pets into what Nast calls the "ideal love-object" of our alienated age. Perhaps pets have always been able to play such roles for humans, but the need to fufill these roles in human life has increased exponentially as of late, with the result of proto-human treatments of pets becoming normalized. This normalization has developed so powerful that, as Nast observes, "those with no affinity for pets or those who are afraid of them are today deemed social or psychological misfits and cranks, while those who love them are situated as morally or even spiritually superior (Critical Pet Studies?, 896)." In short, it is more taboo today to dislike dogs and cats outright than it is to run an Instagram page for one, or to hang out at a cat cafe, or talk about your pet’s personal life to other people at length. 

All this is perhaps a bit sad (humans so disconnected from each other that they are turning to other, more malleable species; and for the part of pets, being turned into these freaks of domestication), but is it bad? Nast argues yes. Pet culture, she says, allows for both a massive distraction from human-centered issues the world over, and a corresponding  mis-allocation of resources. Indeed, increased public and private spending on pets, especially in the form of the neuter and spay movement, has corresponded directly to cuts in welfare programs. She points to neighborhoods in the US in which significant investments have been made to control and provide healthcare for the pet population, while humans residents lack basic resources.

In reading this section, I realized I'd actually encountered an infant version of this critique while living in an Atlanta Catholic Worker House in 2015. One of the house's founders would go on regular diatribes against pet owners. In his mind it was downright unconscionable that people would spend thousands of dollars on non-human animals, while houseless people slept on the street in front of their door. While I was no fan of the patronizing manner of these rants, I heard what he was saying, and he likely planted the seeds of thinking critically about pets that would push towards the surface when my family began pursuing a dog. 

Indignantly-toned arguments about the mis-allocation of resources are plentiful. How could Atlanta spend $30 million on a ugly pedestrian bridge when x, y, and z problem run rampant?! How could  you spend your paycheck at the liquor store while your brother is broke?! Why did you buy a new car when your old one was perfectly fine? You could have donated that money to charity! While the points raised by such arguments are invariably valid, they are rarely productive. Money ever moves towards frivolity and pleasure while suffering abounds. If people weren't spending their money on pets, would they be using it to mend the world? Likely not. Likely, they'd find something else to spend money on, something that claimed to fill the hole capitalism has left in their hearts.

Anyway, after reading the Nast pieces that long weekend, I sent my parents and my brother a strongly worded email explaining why getting a dog contributed to an anti-human connection tendency across society and was, furthermore, a plainly unethical use of resources. They received it with bemused indifference, and continued to look for a pooch. The search lasted a year further, increasing in intensity and desperation until, in one of my greatest acts of hypocrisy to date, I brought it to an end. I was up at some communally held land in the Tennessee mountains. A few weeks before I arrived, a black, long-haired dog had emerged from the woods and started hanging around the camp. The residents loved him,  but they had a no-pet policy and were hoping to find him a new home.

It was a wise dog, I could tell (I'm sorry Nast, wherever you are. Here I am, my "post-industrial isolations and narcissisms" leading me to treat pets as "screens" onto which I can just project my "human needs, desires, and investments"). It was the kind of dog who gave off airs of calmness and maturity. At this point, I had resigned myself to the inevitable success of project Dog Acquisition, and my chief objective was to influence my family's selection in the direction of a dog with good behavior. I knew I would not be able to stand an aggressive dog (like our neighbor's, which had taken a chunk out of my hip with its sharp incisors), or a loud dog (like our other neighbor's, which would yip endlessly at the slightest movement), or a highly energetic dog (like our other other neighbor's, which would run around their house knocking things over and drag its owners down the street when they took walks). This dog seemed, despite being quite literally wild, about as well behaved as a dog can come. 

The following weekend my brother and I drove back up to Tennessee to pick him up. That was a year ago now, and Zeke has been, by all accounts, a good boy. Oddly, he's actually become more poorly behaved over time, but on the whole I have few complaints. My parents have spent thousands of dollars, I am sure, on his healthcare and food and toys. And he is, there's no hiding it, constantly discussed in anthropomorphizing ways. My parents treat him as a proto-child, and if my brother didn't spend every waking hour watching YouTube videos alone in his room, I'd imagine he'd treat Zeke similarly. I have no doubt that the dog helps my family deal with whatever alienations they suffer. He is an "ideal love object," and they do love him. 

There is no part of me that doubts that the emotional-social hole/need that pets fill is very real. I spent my undergrad studying capitalism, in both its material and psychological dimensions, and I see clearly how pets do a good job (at least in the short term) of helping people feel better. But it is hard for me to not see, like Nast, that pets are, at best, a band-aid to this problem, and at worst, a pacifier. 

Human relationships are not only providers of meaning; they're sources of power. Structural change has its root in people knowing each other, trusting each other, and acting collectively. We are in a time when relationships are high in quantity but low in quality, and we are the weaker for it. We cannot build a house of straw; of loose silly string connecting us willy-nilly. I have seen organizing groups come together quickly to make demands, to do an action, and then quickly fall apart. (Groups with strong connections have fights and fall apart too, of course, but typically in more meaningful ways, ways that do not stop revolutionary activity). We need to meaningfully reject the untethered neoliberal way of life. We need to set roots and get to know the fuck out of people. One thousand Facebook friends will not help us much when shit goes down, and neither will our pets.

References

Becky Tipper, "Pets and personal life" in Sociology of Personal Life, edited by Vanessa May (2011).

Heidi J. Nast, "Critical pet studies?" in Antipode 38.5 (2006).

Heidi J. Nast, "Loving…. whatever: Alienation, neoliberalism and pet-love in the twenty-first century" in ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 5.2 (2006)