|
|
|
| ||||
Pets in America
The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each quarterly issue will feature one or more brief site reviews. The library itself will be an ongoing enterprise with regular new additions and amendments. So we encourage you to check it frequently. At the moment, the library is small, but with your help we expect it to grow rapidly. If you have suggestions for the Web Library, or for site reviews, please forward them to the Administrative Editor.
In 2005 Americans spent an estimated $35.9 billion on pets and pet-related goods and services. Over 60 percent of American households own at least one pet, with an increasing number of Americans viewing their relationships with these animals as one of companionship and kinship rather than mere ownership. But how did we become such a pet-obsessed nation? What might our deep immersion with companion animals tell us about larger developments in American history and culture?
The answers to these questions (and more) can be found through the "Pets in America" Website, which accompanies a museum exhibit at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina. The exhibition and Website are based upon the research of Dr. Katherine C. Grier, author of the book Pets in America: A History (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), one of many recent scholarly studies to take seriously the relationships between human and nonhuman animals in history.
The "Pets in America" Website allows readers to travel through the museum exhibition, which traces the complicated ways Americans have lived with animals at home from the seventeenth century to the present. The virtual exhibit is organized into nine sections that begin by asking "What is a Pet?" and conclude by urging readers to ponder the future of the pet in our high-tech consumer culture. While "Pets in America" covers contemporary life, there is much here for those interested in American history before 1900. For example, one section explores the history of dogs in America, noting the difference between Indians' and colonists' uses of and ideas about dogs before leading the viewer to a special section on the rise of the purebred dog—a "canine status symbol"—in the nineteenth century. The exhibition highlights the ways in which animals could be kept in the home for both their usefulness (as when cats were used to control rodents or when dogs were used to power treadmills) and for physical and emotional companionship. The wide range of Americans' experiences with animals—experiences structured by race, gender, and class—is charted through material artifacts as well as drawings and photographs of pets.
As Grier and her collaborators note, the way Americans have lived with and understood nonhuman animals has always been tied to commerce and trade. Accordingly, pet-keeping in America was inextricable from the global trade networks to which America was linked. These networks enabled the development of an exotic bird fancy in postrevolutionary America and a taste for goldfish from China in the later nineteenth century. The many artifacts depicted on the site testify to the commodification of pet-keeping, as entrepreneurs and merchants sold an increasing array of products that promised to improve the lives and comfort of both pets and their owners.
Of special significance is the way the site illustrates a growing interest in the humane treatment of animals. Much of the concern about the proper treatment of animals that developed around 1800 focused upon children, as parents and educators increasingly believed in a relationship between children's cruelty to animals and adults' actions toward other humans. While "Pets in America" does not explicitly tie this ethic of kindness to the process of middle-class self-definition, several of the examples of this effort to promote benevolence, including toy books, lithographs, and cartes-de-visite, can be seen in this light. In other words, while some of the analytic material from Grier's Pets in America: A History is not included in the Website, the discerning viewer will certainly be able to connect the history of pet-keeping to larger social and cultural developments.
The site contains a wealth of additional materials, including photos, video clips, and audio files (yes, the recordings of parakeet- and canary-training materials date from the era of vinyl albums, but they are still strangely compelling). "Special-sections" contain even more information, such as the history of the well-known nursery rhyme "Mary Had A Little Lamb," which was written by Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale in 1830. There are activities for young people on the site, as well as links to books, educational resources, and organizations that address pet-related issues.
"Pets in America" provides an excellent overview of the history and significance of pet-keeping that will interest browsers of all ages and backgrounds. Although emphasizing breadth over depth, this virtual exhibition will, one hopes, prompt readers to explore further the significance of nonhuman animals in history, perhaps starting with Grier's excellent monograph or At Home with Animals: People and Pets in America, the exhibition catalogue. Certainly this animal-centered approach to the American past has great potential to reach a wide audience, as it provides a compelling new way to approach American history and culture.
Brett Mizelle is associate professor of history and director of the American studies program at California State University, Long Beach, and the author of several articles about human-animal relationships in postrevolutionary America. His book Pig will appear in Reaktion Books’ Animal series in 2007.
