If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection With Animals

by Irvine, Leslie

• ISBN13: 9781592132409
• ISBN10: 1592132405
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-03-01
• Publisher: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Summary

Nearly everyone who cares about them believes that dogs and cats have a sense of self that renders them unique. Traditional science and philosophy declare such notions about our pets to be irrational and anthropomorphic. Animals, they say, have only the crudest form of thought and no sense of self at all. Leslie Irvine's If You Tame Me challenges these entrenched views by demonstrating that our experience of animals and their behavior tells a different story.Dogs and cats have been significant elements in human history and valued members of our households for centuries. Why do we regard these companions as having distinct personalities and as being irreplaceable? Leslie Irvine looks closely at how people form "connections" with dogs and cats available in adoption shelters and reflects on her own relationships with animals. If You Tame Me makes a persuasive case for the existence of a sense of self in companion animals and calls upon us to reconsider our rights and obligations regarding the non-human creatures in our lives. Author note: Leslie Irvine is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of Codependent Forevermore: The Invention of Self in a Twelve Step Group. Marc Bekoff is Professor of Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder; his most recent books are: Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart and (co-authored with Jane Goodall) The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love.

Author Biography

Leslie Irvine is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Table of Contents

Foreword: To Know Them Is to Be Them	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: The Fox's Wisdom	p. 1
How and Why	p. 12
Them and Us	p. 33
From Pets to Companion Animals	p. 57
Looking at Animals/Glimpses of Selves	p. 78
The Adopters: Making a Match	p. 89
Rethinking the Self: Mead's Myopia	p. 116
Self versus Other: The Core Self	p. 126
Self with Other: Intersubjectivity	p. 147
Conclusion: Putting Theory into Practice	p. 172
Methods	p. 185
Notes	p. 191
References	p. 203
Index	p. 219
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