1. O Projeto CLAN
Abstract
How do children and pets build daily relationships that contribute to either challenging or reproducing dominant classificatory categories and established boundaries between human and non-human worlds?
This project aims at exploring this question, drawing on some facts that have stimulated scientific curiosity around the topic: the contrast between normative changes related to animal rights/protection and the massive numbers of errant and institutionalized dogs and cats, due to different forms of abuse and neglect; the dramatic drop of fertility rates, with children becoming rarer in number, along with their growing centrality in the family and parental investment in their education; homes that become 'technological playgrounds' where children learn and play, and a pet becomes an option for partisans of an 'experiential pedagogy', perceived as a way to retrieve a relationship with nature and the 'world we have lost'. Furthermore, since modernity, children and animals share time-lagged but similar processes of recognition as subjects of fundamental rights.
Informed by a 'theory of practice' framework, and drawing on interdisciplinary literature (on childhood, friendship, affect, and human-animal studies), the project aims at studying the relationships between children and pets. It pays special attention to their affective practices, defined as forms of embodied meaning-making. It is suggested that children and pets co-produce the hybrid worlds they are embedded in, through practices that may either reproduce, or confront, the species barrier. It is hypothesized that, when these relationships are built in the way either of kinship, or of friendship, that barrier is challenged.
More specific questions are: what are the dimensions (educational, instrumental, ludic) involved in practices between children and pets? How do these practices impact both on the child and the pet, namely to the development of mutual empathy? How do they contribute to drawing the boundaries of what is an 'animal', a 'pet', a 'child', or a 'friend'? How do they intertwine with parental education and caring practices, towards both the child and the pet, as well as the overall material arrangements of the household?
Methodologically, the project follows a qualitative design. The unit of analysis is the relationship between the child and (the) pet(s) (cats/dogs); children will be given a voice (and heard) and their relationship with pets observed in domestic context. The multi-method approach will comprise both visual and verbal data, collected via ethnography and direct observation, visual and participatory methods, and photo-eliciting interviews.
The project develops a sociological perspective that has remained underexplored: the relevance of the child-pet relationship for both sides; and how it is built through affective practices. It is groundbreaking in Portuguese social sciences, and it contributes with an original context specific case study to the international literature.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The project situates itself at the crossroads between Childhood Studies, Family Studies and Human-Animal Studies. Starting from a critical point of view of developmental perspectives on the relationships between children and animals (Lewinson, 1969; Melson, 2001; Fine 2010), the project focuses on three main axes:
- 1. Foucauldian-inspired genealogical perspectives:focus on power (or lack thereof) as relational, arising from multiple and intersectional discursive apparatuses; co-construction of the categories of child/animal, childhood/pethood, over time (Feuerstein et al., 2017; Flegel, 2017)
- 2. Critical studies on children-animal relations: violence and dominance; anthropopartial socialization, subjectification/objectification (Stewart and Cole 2014; 2009)
- perspetiva sociológica e construtivista: relações e dinâmicas familiares, sendo as relações entre crianças e animais compreendidas no contexto social e relacional da vida das famílias (Charles e Davies, 2008; Muldoon et al., 2014; Tipper, 2011a; Charles, 2016; Fox, 2006; Irvine e Cilia, 2017; Power, 2008; Shir-Vertesh, 2008).
Based on the observation of child-animal practices, and children's photographic records of these interactions and their affective applications, the project also dialogued with post-humanist perspectives on childhood and child-animal relationships, paying attention to the multisensory dimensions of multispecies relationships. (Young and Rautio, 2018; Latimer and Miele, 2013; Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles et al., 2020; Malone, 2015; Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2018; Hohti and Tammi, 2019).
METHODOLOGY
Direct observation, in-depth interviews in the home, photo-eliciting interviews; visual methods (through photography).
PHASE 1 – Direct observation, in-depth interviews in the home of the 24 selected families.
24 families; 2 interviews (child+mother/father); first observation of the animal and the home; first contact with the animals and their routines.
PHASE 2 – Interviews with photo-elicitation to 12 of the 24 initial families.
- First visit to the 12 families (chosen amongst the initial 24): distribution of digital cameras and applied the photovoice technique in order to gather photos about what are the children’s perspectives about the lives of their companion animals;
- Second visit to the 12 families: Interviews with photo-elicitation based in the photographic portfolio built by the children; direct observation of the animals.
PHASE 3 – Workshops with families and stakeholders
This activity had two main goals:
- Give back to the families (children and parents) some of the results found by the CLAN research team through the data gathered during fieldwork and during the project;
- Gather relevant actors and professionals (veterinarians, psychologists, lawyers, social workers and politicians), with the aim of discussing some of the relevant axes found through the project results.
SAMPLE SELECTION
24 families of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area
With 1 or more companion animals (being at least one of them a dog or a cat), for at least 6 months
With 1 or more children, aged between 8 and 14 years old (gender balanced)
Different family morphologies (couple with children, single parent families)
Different social contexts
3 different types of housing:
Urban apartment; city house, with backyard or garden; small farm.
Animais do projeto CLAN