Women and the World of Dog Rescue: A Case Study of the State of Michigan

Abstract

AbstractIn the wake of the considerable cultural changes and societal shifts that the United States and all advanced industrial democracies have experienced since the late 1960s and early 1970s, one can also observe a dramatic change in how humans in these societies have come to relate to nonhuman animals, dogs in particular. One of the new institutions created by this change in attitude and behavior toward dogs is the canine rescue organization, examples of which have arisen all over the United States beginning in the 1980s. While the growing scholarship on the changed dimension of the human-animal relationship attests to its social, political, and intellectual salience to our contemporary world, the work presented here constitutes the first academic research on the particularly important institution of dog rescue. This paper presents some key findings from a survey of canine rescue workers in the state of Michigan, with a concentration on the dynamics of gender within canine rescue work.