Sociology, Sociality and Animals : Beyond the social/natural divide

This thesis constitutes an attempt to make the case for “animalising” sociology, and to tackle ensuing theoretical and methodological challenges. It is suggested that impoverished understandings of the social – as divorced from the natural – are at the heart of various shortcomings in the discipline. Focussing on sociality, the aim is to develop a conceptualisation that does not reproduce “the bifurcation of nature”. While incorporating autoethnographic methods and drawing on my own experience with my adopted canine companion, Harald, this thesis is nonetheless to be seen as a theoretical piece of work. The thesis argues for an enlarged version of sociality that transgresses species-bound factors, is not dependent on consciousness, and instead centres notions of experience and feeling. Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, this thesis proposes an approach to sociality understood as “feeling-for”, to avoid privileging limited modes of human experience, and to build a more inclusive sociological vocabulary. The framework developed suggests the following elements of sociality: mutual possibilities, togetherness and betweenness, attentive resonance, affinity, enjoyment, and mutual recognition.