You are walking with your dog when suddenly, his necklace breaks. Panic, you wonder how you will be able to come back. Read Collaredfrom the British researcher Chris Pearson, will not solve your problem, but you will at least know how the necklace and the leash have become the natural appendage of our relationship to our doggies.
After “dogopolis”
Professor of environmental history at the University of Liverpool, Chris Pearson had already attacked the question in a previous work, entitled Dogopolis – How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris (Chicago University Press, 2021). This first work, whose content is abundantly included in the second, places the emergence of the modern dog in the broader context of the development of the three metropolises of the industrial age. There “Dogopolis” is thus the product of a transformation of the relationship to space. It emerges within an industrial society and an in full swing class, in the era of modern globalization, science and hygiene.
These developments are also accompanied by the eviction of the animal of urban space. Their corollary has a complete renewal of the multimiller’s relationship between the human being and the dog, according to the normalization of urban space and its occupants, whatever their species.
Collared (London, Profile Books, 2024) continues this study by expanding it to the world space, to give its depth to the analysis, sketched in Dogopolisof a human-dog relationship itself built in the intersectionality of sex, race and class relationships.
From the first page, the intention is posed: the author will not use neutral, but personal pronouns Hey Or sheybecause the dog is here subject – and not object – of a story that opens with a photo of Cassie, his Bedlington Terrier, installed in his favorite place: the sofa.
And this story does not start at the time of domestication. She starts in the 19th centurye century, with the birth of the modern Western dog, emblematic animal of anthropocene. The hygienization of cities and the haunt of rabies and canine wandering then impose the collar, the leash, the identification medal and the muzzle – animals as well as their masters.
Domesticate, discipline
The first chapter (“Uncollared”) summarizes in a few pages the long history of the time when the dog was not yet declined by these accessories of modern domination. An age when the company dog, despite his image as a loyal companion, remained an exception and a Caprice Décrié, before flowing, in the 18th centurye century, a worried existence in the midst of silk cushions. Because the dog is initially a worker, who hunts, who draws (sleds or cars) and who keeps (property and humans). And if the 18the Century sees a beginning of standardization emerge, it is first functional and not yet fundamentally linked to appearance.
In the second half of the 19th century, the control of white social elites was exercised in the double -edged animal protection company and elimination of canine wandering.
Then comes the time of what could almost be called a second domestication, which is part of a broader evolution towards a growing control of the populations and a new concern to abuse space. The control of canine populations first involves that of their reproduction, their physical characteristics and their origins. We are now focusing on physical appearance, as evidenced by at the end of the XIXe century, the boom in canine exhibitions and books from the origins.
Aristochians
In a context of the development of nationalist ideologies, we are also witnessing appellation quarrels (between the proponents of the Alsatian shepherd and those of the German Shepherd) and appropriations, which involve highlighting national races such as Finnish Spitz, Canaan dog or Japanese Akita. At the same time, the assertion of white civilizational (then racial) superiority leads to the rejection of local dogs of colonized spaces, treaties – proper sense of the term – like parias1 (With the exception of a few, such as Basenji or Beijing).
And when it is European, it is in the urban proletariat and the unhealthiness of its customs that is identified by the wandering dog, the object of an increasing disgust that crystallizes the haunt of wilderness and civilizational decline. It is to dissuade the poor from having dogs that look like them and weigh on their budgets that canine taxes are established. And when these prove to be ineffective, the furry and dog collectors multiply.
In the second half of the 19th centurye A century, it was this control of white social elites that is exercised in the double -edged animal protection company and elimination of canine wandering. If the shelters are intended to put an end to animal misery by proposing to adoption the individuals deemed the most apt, it is also in these spaces that the eradication of European street dogs is gradually taking place by massive euthanasia in killing chambers whose operating mode developed in London from the 1870s. We must wait for the American humanitarian movemente century to see a new generation of animal protection emerge. This is more based on Christian awareness of animal suffering and the duty of compassion, especially with children.
The canine market
Fear of rage declined with the invention of the vaccine in 1885, then with the development of Pasteur Institutes. But that does not end the eradication of stray dogs, which continued until the 1970s. However, another evolution, apparently contradictory with the first, sees the dog settled in a growing manner in homes. The texts multiply, at the age of literacy, the press and the mass printing, to describe its needs and disseminate good care and education practices.
The first industrial foods for dogs appeared in the 1870s. They were soon followed by hygiene and pharmacy products at the same time as veterinary care specialized in domestic animals. At the beginning of the XXe century, the first clinics equipped with the most modern techniques were born. In addition, in the last decades of the XIXe A century, the dog is gradually imposed in the urban police units and then in the armies, despite the controversies which oppose the proponents of intelligence and instinct.
The construction of the modern dog continues, after the Second World War, by the generalization of sterilization, now considered as the most effective means of fighting dog overcrowding, and by the fight against excrement. Formerly picked up for the tanning of leathers, these droppings become the target of the public authorities from the 1970s. They are then fought not only for reasons of comfort and aesthetics, but especially for the verses and the dangerous diseases that they can transmit to humans. If this struggle mainly involves deterrent measures, it is also based on a new definition of canine education, which integrates a responsibility of masters with regard to public space and which raises the dog to the rank of citizenship.
At the crossroads of domination reports
The story of Chris Pearson, enamelled with anecdotes taken from the press and various literary sources, gives pride of place to the history of mentalities. It intimately connects the factory of what one might call “canine modernity” to other forms of symbolic domination. Because the story of the wandering dog also contributes to the construction of a white Western identity from a claim for cultural superiority and a dissemination of European standards towards the rest of the world.
It is also a story of contempt for class and sex and race. This is evidenced by the attitude of the elites with regard to the dogs of the poor and that of men with regard to the female practices of canine care and education. The rejection of the non -Western conceptions of the place of the animal is also marked by the exclusion of the modes of relation to the animal life of the colonized populations, deemed lower from a civilizational and racial point of view.
We will also remember from Collared The theoretical and methodological concern for continuity between the history of the human being and that of the animal, which is also found in France in the works of the historian Éric Baratay. This theoretical and methodological choice allows the author to study the modern dog both as a human production, both material and symbolic, and as a powerful agent of transformation of human societies. In this, it comes to give substance to the increasingly pressing pleadings in favor of a decompartmentalization of the so -called human and nature sciences.
