Social interactions between men and dogs. A praxeological approach to interspecies relationships

Ce travail de thèse se présente comme une enquête sur les modalités de l’agir-ensemble interspécifique. L’idée qui a présidé à sa mise en œuvre repose sur la volonté d’élargir les questionnements classiques en sociologie de l’action (comment décrire le vivre-ensemble, quelle forme prend l’ordre social) et en linguistique (comment communique-t-on intelligiblement) à un objet sortant de leurs préoccupations traditionnelles : les interactions sociales entre hommes et chiens. Pour cela, nous analysons des données recueillies lors d’interactions ordinaires et quotidiennes entre chiots en éducation et éducateurs canins, ou entre chiens-guides d’aveugles et personnes non-voyantes.Il s’agit d’un travail empirique de recherche sur les ressources utilisées par hommes et chiens pour agir ensemble et communiquer. Pour cela, nous montrons que les actions communes dans lesquelles ils s’engagent sont réalisées de manière ordonnée, et sont séquentiellement organisées – de sorte qu’elles sont descriptibles avec une certaine systématicité. Cette systématicité, qui exhibe le caractère ordonné des interactions, est traitée comme l’indice d’une forme de socialité qui s’incarne dans l’ajustement mutuel. De ce point de vue, cette thèse se présente également comme un travail théorique sur les formes de la socialité interspécifique. De manière incidente, elle se veut en outre le lieu d’une réflexion épistémologique sur la prise en charge par les sciences humaines et la linguistique d’un objet par tradition réservé aux sciences dites naturelles.« Non human » is an analytical category that has now entered the realm of sociology. The fact that domestic animals might be agents, and relevant interactants has been evoked and investigated in the most recent literature. The originality of our study does not lie in these arguments. It takes them for granted, and analyzes with systematicity some of the resources used by dogs and their human co-interactants (be they educators or visually impaired persons) to communicate with intelligibility, and make each other’s actions mutually accountable. The study is structured by a leading question: what kind of sociality is at stake between dogs and humans ?The dissertation is divided into two introductory theoretical chapters, and three analytical parts. The first chapter establishes the state of the art, as far as human/animal interaction is concerned. After briefly commenting on the Animal Studies and its opposition to the so-called cartesian position, it ends by introducing the ethnomethodological program as a relevant approach to shed a new light on my object. The second chapter offers an epistemological reflection on the analytical ‘naturalist’ framework worth adopting in order to investigate dog-human sociality. It gives an occasion to discuss the transcription format usually used in CA as an adequate frame to shed light on the sequentiality of actions, as well as on conditional relevance. The three next chapters are grounded on these reflections and are more strictly empirical and analytical. Chapter 3 describes the resources used by dogs and humans to interact with intelligibility and to share perceptive knowledge. It analyzes procedures of shared attention, and mutual orientation (for instance, by mutually orienting toward a relevant object for the ongoing action). Chapter 4 goes further into the analysis of participants’ procedural competencies, and observes the systematicity of sequential formats. Chapter 5 is grounded on these analyses and addresses a “topos” as far as human-animal interaction is concerned: issues of cognition. Drawing on the EM program, it proposes a praxeological approach to cognition that does not focus on dog’s capacities or skills but on the way ordinary practices of practical reasoning are accomplished.The PhD dissertation offers an empirical work on human-animal modalities of living and acting together. It aims at showing that mutual actions participants engage in are orderly accomplished and sequentially organized – and therefore descriptible with systematicity.This systematicity, by exhibiting the orderly character of interactions, is treated as a cue of a form of sociality, embodied in mutual adjustment. In this regard, this thesis offers also some theoretical thoughts on forms of interspecific sociality.At the same time, and more incidentally, it develops epistemological considerations about the reflexive relationships between social sciences, linguistics, and natural sciences in the treatment of this “hybrid” objet