Leslie Irvine
Biographic Data
| ID | 92839 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Leslie Irvine |
| GIVEN NAMES | Leslie |
| FAMILY NAME | Irvine |
| SIGNATURE | IRVINE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6380-5269 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 352 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Unrecognized Mass Casualty Events: Exploring How News Coverage Minimizes Nonhuman Animal Death in Urban Wildfires
The prevalence of climate-induced disasters is increasing. Among these, disasters are wildfires. While wildfires are thought to occur mostly in heavily wooded areas, heatwaves and droughts have spurred numerous catastrophic fires across the USA in recent years. Not only are humans and human structures impacted by wildfires, but nonhuman animals are as well. Following Hurricane Katrina and the establishment of the PETS Act, researchers are increas…
Individuals and Institutions: An Appreciation of Robert L. Zussman
This article honors the memory and lasting impact of Robert L. Zussman, whose research for over four decades significantly advanced medical sociology and ethics, the sociology of professions, narrative sociology, and qualitative methods. This article expresses appreciation for Zussman, who died in 2024, and his enduring contributions. The first part of this piece summarizes his key scholarly achievements. Quotations from his published research il…
Our “Zoological Connections” and Why They Matter
Traditionally overlooked or invisible in sociological analyses, animals have roles in numerous issues of sociological importance. Including them in our research offers a clearer understanding of the social world. Using examples from two topics—the self and the family—this essay shows the value of keeping our “zoological connections” in mind. Research on selfhood among animals challenges dominant views that the self is uniquely human and shaped by…
Pets (Animal–Human Relationships)
Pets are favored animals given individual names, allowed in human homes, and never eaten. Although any species can be a pet, dogs and cats are the most common. Rates of pet ownership, sometimes called guardianship, have risen in recent decades. Increasingly, pets are often considered family members. Yet, for many reasons, millions of pets end up in pounds and shelters. Although rehoming is the desired outcome, and one achieved in many cases, coun…
A Very Photogenic Cat: Personhood, Social Status, and Online Cat Photo Sharing
This study explores how domestic cats and their connections to humans are represented in a modern photo-sharing context through content analysis of Reddit, a popular social media website. By examining the photos that cat owners share online, as well as the language that accompanies the photos, we create an understanding of how images encourage the social construction of cats as beings who exhibit features of personhood. We collected photos and ac…
Leave Half the Honey: Two Books about Our Debt to Insects
And What Do You Do for a Living?' Reflections on Making a Life in the University
Animal Sheltering
American animal shelters house between six and eight million dogs and cats each year. The question of what to do with millions of healthy but unwanted animals has animated sheltering from the start. Responses reveal how the presence of animals in society shapes institutions, laws, and policies. Pounds emerged to resolve the problems posed by stray animals. Concern for animal welfare created the need and justification for shelters, as humane alter…
Teaching and learning guide for More‐than‐human families: Pets, people, and practices in multispecies households
More‐than‐human families: Pets, people, and practices in multispecies households
Although humans have coexisted with dogs and cats for thousands of years, that coexistence has taken on various meanings over time. Only recently have people openly included their pets as members of the family. Yet, because of the cultural ambivalence toward animals, what it means for a pet to “be” a family member remains unsettled. Drawing from research on family practices including kinship, household routines, childhood socialization, and domes…
Are People More Disturbed by Dog or Human Suffering
This research examines whether people are more emotionally disturbed by reports of non-human animal than human suffering or abuse. Two hundred and fifty-six undergraduates at a major northeastern university were asked to indicate their degree of empathy for a brutally beaten human adult or child versus an adult dog or puppy, as described in a fictitious news report. We hypothesized that the vulnerability of victims—determined by their age and not…
American Zoo: A Sociological Safari
Blue Juice: Euthanasia in Veterinary Medicine
Animals and Sociology
This paper outlines some of the major theoretical contributions of the specialty field known as ‘animals and society’. It examines three areas of focus within the field. One of these areas finds connections between our exploitation of animals and other forms of domination and oppression. Consequently, this body of research provides insight into how we might challenge and overcome inequality, more generally. A second area examines animal abuse and…
Animals as Lifechangers and Lifesavers: Pets in the Redemption Narratives of Homeless People
This paper examines personal narratives in which homeless and formerly homeless people construct their companion animals as having changed or saved their lives. The analysis considers selfhood a narrative accomplishment, the strategic outcome rather than the source of the stories people tell. These particular stories employ the theme of redemption, in which tellers describe overcoming adversity to face a better future, with animals playing key ro…
Sociology and Anthrozoology: Symbolic Interactionist Contributions
This essay examines the sociological contributions to anthrozoology, focusing on research from the United States that employs a symbolic interactionist perspective. In particular, the work of Arluke and Sanders highlights the importance of understanding the meanings that animals hold for people. Using a selective review of their research, this essay outlines how a focus on understanding meaning can inform anthrozoological research. Arluke's resea…
Confrontations and Donations: Encounters between Homeless Pet Owners and the Public
This study examines the interactions between homeless pet owners and the domiciled public with a focus on how the activities of pet ownership help construct positive personal identities. Homeless people are often criticized for having pets. They counter these attacks using open and contained responses to stigmatization. More often, they redefine pet ownership to incorporate how they provide for their animals, challenging definitions that require …
Reproducing Dominion: Emotional Apprenticeship in the 4-H Youth Livestock Program
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Reproducing Dominion: Emotional Apprenticeship in the 4-H Youth Livestock Program
This paper examines young people’s socialization into the doctrine known as “dominionism,” which justifies the use of animals in the service of human beings. Using qualitative research, it focuses on the 4-H youth livestock program, in which boys and girls raise cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep for slaughter. The analysis portrays 4-H as an apprenticeship in which children learn to do cognitive emotion work, use distancing mechanisms, and create a …
Gender Work in a Feminized Profession: The Case of Veterinary Medicine
Veterinary medicine has undergone dramatic, rapid feminization while in many ways remaining gendered masculine. With women constituting approximately half of its practitioners and nearly 80 percent of students, veterinary medicine is the most feminized of the comparable health professions. Nevertheless, the culture of veterinary medicine glorifies stereotypically masculine actions and attitudes. This article examines how women veterinarians under…
Teaching and Learning Guide for: Animals and Sociology
Author's introduction Non‐human animals constitute an integral part of human society. They figure heavily in our language, food, clothing, family structure, economy, education, entertainment, science, and recreation. The many ways we use animals produce ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward them. We treat some species of animals as friends and family members (e.g., dogs and cats), while we treat others as commodities (e.g., cows, pigs, an…
Dog: Pure Awareness
If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection with Animals
Animals and Sociology
This paper outlines some of the major theoretical contributions of the specialty field known as ‘animals and society’. It examines three areas of focus within the field. One of these areas finds connections between our exploitation of animals and other forms of domination and oppression. Consequently, this body of research provides insight into how we might challenge and overcome inequality, more generally. A second area examines animal abuse and…
Delinquency and Animal Cruelty: Myths and Realities about Social Pathology
If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection with Animals
Animals as Lifechangers and Lifesavers: Pets in the Redemption Narratives of Homeless People
This paper examines personal narratives in which homeless and formerly homeless people construct their companion animals as having changed or saved their lives. The analysis considers selfhood a narrative accomplishment, the strategic outcome rather than the source of the stories people tell. These particular stories employ the theme of redemption, in which tellers describe overcoming adversity to face a better future, with animals playing key ro…
More‐than‐human families: Pets, people, and practices in multispecies households
Although humans have coexisted with dogs and cats for thousands of years, that coexistence has taken on various meanings over time. Only recently have people openly included their pets as members of the family. Yet, because of the cultural ambivalence toward animals, what it means for a pet to “be” a family member remains unsettled. Drawing from research on family practices including kinship, household routines, childhood socialization, and domes…
Even Better Than the Real Thing: Narratives of the Self in Codependency
Gender Work in a Feminized Profession: The Case of Veterinary Medicine
Veterinary medicine has undergone dramatic, rapid feminization while in many ways remaining gendered masculine. With women constituting approximately half of its practitioners and nearly 80 percent of students, veterinary medicine is the most feminized of the comparable health professions. Nevertheless, the culture of veterinary medicine glorifies stereotypically masculine actions and attitudes. This article examines how women veterinarians under…
A Model of Animal Selfhood: Expanding Interactionist Possibilities
Interaction between people and companion animals provides the basis for a model of the self that does not depend on spoken language. Drawing on ethnographic research in an animal shelter as well as interviews and auto-ethnography, this article argues that interaction between people and animals contributes to human selfhood. In order for animals to contribute to selfhood in the ways that they do, they must be subjective others and not just the obj…
Confrontations and Donations: Encounters between Homeless Pet Owners and the Public
This study examines the interactions between homeless pet owners and the domiciled public with a focus on how the activities of pet ownership help construct positive personal identities. Homeless people are often criticized for having pets. They counter these attacks using open and contained responses to stigmatization. More often, they redefine pet ownership to incorporate how they provide for their animals, challenging definitions that require …
Sociology and Anthrozoology: Symbolic Interactionist Contributions
This essay examines the sociological contributions to anthrozoology, focusing on research from the United States that employs a symbolic interactionist perspective. In particular, the work of Arluke and Sanders highlights the importance of understanding the meanings that animals hold for people. Using a selective review of their research, this essay outlines how a focus on understanding meaning can inform anthrozoological research. Arluke's resea…
The Problem of Unwanted Pets: A Case Study in How Institutions 'Think' about Clients' Needs
The research on organizational framing and the metaphor of institutional "thinking" highlight the ways that social problems organizations shape the ameliorative services they deliver. Social problems work then perpetuates representations of problems that may not match the conditions clients face. This study extends social problems literature to argue that organizations sometimes "think" differently about the problems they intend to solve than do …
Are People More Disturbed by Dog or Human Suffering
This research examines whether people are more emotionally disturbed by reports of non-human animal than human suffering or abuse. Two hundred and fifty-six undergraduates at a major northeastern university were asked to indicate their degree of empathy for a brutally beaten human adult or child versus an adult dog or puppy, as described in a fictitious news report. We hypothesized that the vulnerability of victims—determined by their age and not…
The Power of Play
This paper explores how peoples' play with companion dogs and cats can challenge the human–animal divide. Data from observation and interviews demonstrate how play honors animals' subjectivity and communication skills, making this everyday activity an act of individualized resistance to human disregard for non-human life. While the notion of human supremacy prevails, this paper examines how interconnection with animals becomes possible – and poli…
Reproducing Dominion: Emotional Apprenticeship in the 4-H Youth Livestock Program
This paper examines young people’s socialization into the doctrine known as “dominionism,” which justifies the use of animals in the service of human beings. Using qualitative research, it focuses on the 4-H youth livestock program, in which boys and girls raise cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep for slaughter. The analysis portrays 4-H as an apprenticeship in which children learn to do cognitive emotion work, use distancing mechanisms, and create a …
The question of animal selves: Implications for sociological knowledge and practice
The question of whether sociologists should investigate the subjective experience of non-human others arises regularly in discussions of research on animals. Recent criticism of this research agenda as speculative and therefore unproductive is examined and found wanting. Ample evidence indicates that animals have the capacity to see themselves as objects, which meets sociological criteria for selfhood. Resistance to this possibility highlights th…
Pampered or enslaved? the moral dilemmas of pets
This essay discusses whether the practice of keeping pets, defined as a class of animals existing for human purposes, is morally acceptable. Clouding the issue is the claim that humans have always had pets. Selected historical examples show that this is not the case. Instead, the doctrine of human supremacy has meant that close relationships with animals have often been ideologically impossible. Today, however, increasing knowledge about animals’…
Ready or Not: Evacuating an Animal Shelter During a Mock Emergency
The signing of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Act into law will require states to include companion and service animals in their disaster response plans. Consequently, animal stakeholders across the United States are or will be involved in assessing their response capabilities as a part of developing or improving plans to evacuate and house animals. This paper reports on a mock disaster response exercise involving the evacuation of an urb…
Redefining Men: Alternative Masculinities in a Twelve-Step Program
This article argues that Codependents Anonymous-a group often criticized for overlooking gender politics-can encourage an awareness of hegemonic masculinity among men. The psychospiritual codependency discourse requires that people examine their lives for sources of dysfunction and make changes where possible. Drawing on data from ethnographic research and interviews, this article reveals that men can come to attribute dysfunction to stereotypica…
Reproducing Dominion: Emotional Apprenticeship in the 4-H Youth Livestock Program
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Animal Problems/People Skills: Emotional and Interactional Strategies in Humane Education
Recent changes in the organizational culture of nonhuman animal sheltering, coupled with attitudes that are more progressive toward companion animals, have made shelters into resources rather than last resorts. Consequently, shelter workers need the "people skills" to communicate to a public that urgently needs accurate information about animal behavior and training. This poses a difficulty for workers drawn to working with animals but who find t…
Codependency and Recovery: Gender, Self, and Emotions in Popular Self‐Help
Popular contemporary rhetoric of the self advocates knowing the needs of the self and reaching a balance between self and other. As a consequence of economic dependence on men, women have emotional obligations that make meeting these goals unlikely. The recently identified condition called codependency addresses the tensions underlying this situation. Recovering from codependency serves as an aligning action that accounts for past behavior using …
Symbolic Interactionism as Affect Control
A Very Photogenic Cat: Personhood, Social Status, and Online Cat Photo Sharing
This study explores how domestic cats and their connections to humans are represented in a modern photo-sharing context through content analysis of Reddit, a popular social media website. By examining the photos that cat owners share online, as well as the language that accompanies the photos, we create an understanding of how images encourage the social construction of cats as beings who exhibit features of personhood. We collected photos and ac…
American Zoo: A Sociological Safari
Delinquency and Animal Cruelty: Myths and Realities about Social Pathology
Teaching and Learning Guide for: Animals and Sociology
Author's introduction Non‐human animals constitute an integral part of human society. They figure heavily in our language, food, clothing, family structure, economy, education, entertainment, science, and recreation. The many ways we use animals produce ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward them. We treat some species of animals as friends and family members (e.g., dogs and cats), while we treat others as commodities (e.g., cows, pigs, an…
Reconsidering the American emotional culture: Co‐dependency and emotion management
Popular images of Americans often portray them as placing considerable value on feelings. Scholarly work reveals a more nuanced picture, in which a rhetoric of emotional intensity and authenticity conceals a moderate ‘emotional culture’. This paper examines the dissemination of that culture through a popular self help group called Codependents Anonymous (CoDA). The psychospiritual discourse of co‐dependency maintains that emotions offer insight i…
Codependency and Recovery: Gender, Self, and Emotions in Popular Self‐Help
Popular contemporary rhetoric of the self advocates knowing the needs of the self and reaching a balance between self and other. As a consequence of economic dependence on men, women have emotional obligations that make meeting these goals unlikely. The recently identified condition called codependency addresses the tensions underlying this situation. Recovering from codependency serves as an aligning action that accounts for past behavior using …
Symbolic Interactionism as Affect Control
Globalization and Its Discontents
Reconsidering the American emotional culture: Co‐dependency and emotion management
Popular images of Americans often portray them as placing considerable value on feelings. Scholarly work reveals a more nuanced picture, in which a rhetoric of emotional intensity and authenticity conceals a moderate ‘emotional culture’. This paper examines the dissemination of that culture through a popular self help group called Codependents Anonymous (CoDA). The psychospiritual discourse of co‐dependency maintains that emotions offer insight i…
The Emotional Self: A Sociocultural Exploration
Even Better Than the Real Thing: Narratives of the Self in Codependency
Coming Clean: Overcoming Addiction without Treatment
Despite the widely accepted view that formal treatment and twelve-step groups are essential for overcoming dependencies on alcohol and drugs, each year large numbers of former addicts quietly recover on their own, without any formal treatment or participation in self-help groups at all. Coming Clean explores the untold stories of untreated addicts who have recovered from a lifestyle of excessive and compulsive substance use without professional a…
Codependent Forevermore: The Invention of Self in a Twelve Step Group
The Power of Play
This paper explores how peoples' play with companion dogs and cats can challenge the human–animal divide. Data from observation and interviews demonstrate how play honors animals' subjectivity and communication skills, making this everyday activity an act of individualized resistance to human disregard for non-human life. While the notion of human supremacy prevails, this paper examines how interconnection with animals becomes possible – and poli…
Redefining Men: Alternative Masculinities in a Twelve-Step Program
This article argues that Codependents Anonymous-a group often criticized for overlooking gender politics-can encourage an awareness of hegemonic masculinity among men. The psychospiritual codependency discourse requires that people examine their lives for sources of dysfunction and make changes where possible. Drawing on data from ethnographic research and interviews, this article reveals that men can come to attribute dysfunction to stereotypica…
Animal Problems/People Skills: Emotional and Interactional Strategies in Humane Education
Recent changes in the organizational culture of nonhuman animal sheltering, coupled with attitudes that are more progressive toward companion animals, have made shelters into resources rather than last resorts. Consequently, shelter workers need the "people skills" to communicate to a public that urgently needs accurate information about animal behavior and training. This poses a difficulty for workers drawn to working with animals but who find t…
The Problem of Unwanted Pets: A Case Study in How Institutions 'Think' about Clients' Needs
The research on organizational framing and the metaphor of institutional "thinking" highlight the ways that social problems organizations shape the ameliorative services they deliver. Social problems work then perpetuates representations of problems that may not match the conditions clients face. This study extends social problems literature to argue that organizations sometimes "think" differently about the problems they intend to solve than do …
Pampered or enslaved? the moral dilemmas of pets
This essay discusses whether the practice of keeping pets, defined as a class of animals existing for human purposes, is morally acceptable. Clouding the issue is the claim that humans have always had pets. Selected historical examples show that this is not the case. Instead, the doctrine of human supremacy has meant that close relationships with animals have often been ideologically impossible. Today, however, increasing knowledge about animals’…
A Model of Animal Selfhood: Expanding Interactionist Possibilities
Interaction between people and companion animals provides the basis for a model of the self that does not depend on spoken language. Drawing on ethnographic research in an animal shelter as well as interviews and auto-ethnography, this article argues that interaction between people and animals contributes to human selfhood. In order for animals to contribute to selfhood in the ways that they do, they must be subjective others and not just the obj…
The question of animal selves: Implications for sociological knowledge and practice
The question of whether sociologists should investigate the subjective experience of non-human others arises regularly in discussions of research on animals. Recent criticism of this research agenda as speculative and therefore unproductive is examined and found wanting. Ample evidence indicates that animals have the capacity to see themselves as objects, which meets sociological criteria for selfhood. Resistance to this possibility highlights th…
Social Justice and the Animal Question
This special issue on "Social Justice and the Animal Question" explores the connections between the oppression of animals and broader issues of social injustice. Over the past two decades, sociologists have begun to examine the roles that animals play in various social contexts (e.g., Alger and Alger 2003; Arluke 2006; Arluke and Sanders 1996; Brandt 2004; Fitzgerald 2005; Flynn 2000a, b; Irvine 2004; Kalof, Fitzgerald, and Baralt 2004; Sanders 1…
Just a Dog: Understanding Animal Cruelty and Ourselves
Ready or Not: Evacuating an Animal Shelter During a Mock Emergency
The signing of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Act into law will require states to include companion and service animals in their disaster response plans. Consequently, animal stakeholders across the United States are or will be involved in assessing their response capabilities as a part of developing or improving plans to evacuate and house animals. This paper reports on a mock disaster response exercise involving the evacuation of an urb…
If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection with Animals
Animals and Sociology
This paper outlines some of the major theoretical contributions of the specialty field known as ‘animals and society’. It examines three areas of focus within the field. One of these areas finds connections between our exploitation of animals and other forms of domination and oppression. Consequently, this body of research provides insight into how we might challenge and overcome inequality, more generally. A second area examines animal abuse and…
Delinquency and Animal Cruelty: Myths and Realities about Social Pathology
Teaching and Learning Guide for: Animals and Sociology
Author's introduction Non‐human animals constitute an integral part of human society. They figure heavily in our language, food, clothing, family structure, economy, education, entertainment, science, and recreation. The many ways we use animals produce ambivalent and contradictory attitudes toward them. We treat some species of animals as friends and family members (e.g., dogs and cats), while we treat others as commodities (e.g., cows, pigs, an…
Dog: Pure Awareness
Reproducing Dominion: Emotional Apprenticeship in the 4-H Youth Livestock Program
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Reproducing Dominion: Emotional Apprenticeship in the 4-H Youth Livestock Program
This paper examines young people’s socialization into the doctrine known as “dominionism,” which justifies the use of animals in the service of human beings. Using qualitative research, it focuses on the 4-H youth livestock program, in which boys and girls raise cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep for slaughter. The analysis portrays 4-H as an apprenticeship in which children learn to do cognitive emotion work, use distancing mechanisms, and create a …
Sociology (28 works) · Psychology (27 works) · Human-Animal Interaction Studies (22 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (19 works) · Political science (16 works) · Social Psychology (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Social science (11 works) · Biology (10 works)