Labors of love: Work, labor, and care in dog–human relations

Erika Cudworth

Gender, Work and Organization, 2022, vol. 29, issue 3, 830-844

Abstract: This paper suggests that the role of “pet” might be understood as a form of labor, and a condition shaped by human work. Drawing on an empirical study of everyday lives with companion dogs it considers how the work of humans outside the home impacts the lives of people and dogs; and the kinds of carework undertaken by both people and dogs in multispecies homes. The concept of paid work has been foundational in sociology while understanding work as unpaid, privatized and invisible reproductive labor has been secured through feminist interventions. Work, has been assumed to be human exclusive, but this has been recently challenged by research on animal work. This paper deploys (eco)feminist care theory to consider how far work, labor and care might be productive categories in understanding a hitherto neglected area ‐ relationships with companion dogs.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12814

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:gender:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:830-844

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0968-6673

Access Statistics for this article

Gender, Work and Organization is currently edited by David Knights, Deborah Kerfoot and Ida Sabelis

More articles in Gender, Work and Organization from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().