Between Human and Animal. Construction of Dog's Subjectivity

The bachelor thesis "Between human and animal: Construction of dog's subjectivity"deals with the problem of position of pets, dogs particularly, to the categorisation of human and animal. Its aim is to describe what the manners of stating the dog's subjectivity are, by studying the keeper's behaviour toward their dogs, and to prove that the dogs are beside of the notion of the strict division of culture and society on one side and nature on the other. Theoretically the author relies on the thoughts of researchers, who deal with societies where people don't divide culture and nature and non-humans are endowed with subjectivity, methodologically the thesis is anchored in ethnographic approach. As for the research, the author conducted six interviews with dog -keepers, which were complemented by observation of people and their dogs while dog-walking. The empirical part is focused on the data analysis and the author describes the dog-keepers' behaviour and looking for such behaviour through which people establish dogs' subjectivity. The thesis shows, that people think of their dogs as family members, who are often treated as children and impute them with human personality and abilities. However, people realise, that their pet dog is still the beast. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org