The global pigeon: A comparative ethnography of human -animal relations in urban communities
Item
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Title
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The global pigeon: A comparative ethnography of human -animal relations in urban communities
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:3302622c1a68:10318
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identifier
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10253
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Creator
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Jerolmack, Colin,
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Contributor
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Mitchell Duneier
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Date
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2009
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology | Cultural anthropology | Animal | City | Community | Environment | Ethnography | Pigeon
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Abstract
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Despite the ubiquitous and socially patterned ways that humans interact with animals, sociologists know remarkably little about how relations with animals shape everyday life. Drawing on interactionist studies of animals, urban communities, and the environment, I follow the pigeon from the sidewalks to the rooftops of New York and beyond to answer two broad questions: (1) how do relationships with animals organize humans' self-conceptions and their social worlds; and (2) what does the place that people make or deny animals in their built environments reveal about how they experience and imagine these spaces? Through a series of qualitative case studies, this multi-sited project explains how pigeons are simultaneously: a medium for inter-ethnic sociability and intra-ethnic solidarity among groups of urban males who breed and fly them in New York and Berlin, respectively; a celebrated cultural attraction in Venice's Piazza San Marco; and an object of scorn and a target of institutional control in London, New York, and other locales. Studying how the pigeon "works" in these diverse ways leads us away from "natural" explanations and toward the sets of social relations and social conditions within which such human-animal relations are embedded. Thus, each case highlights how the ways that people manage relations with animals are structured by context..
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
