Between Instinct and Intelligence

Harnessing Police Dog Agency in Early Twentieth-Century Paris

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2108982
AutoresChris Pearson (0000-0002-0556-1929, University of Liverpool, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen58
Número2
Páginas463-490
Fecha de publicación2016-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417516000141
OpenAlexW2321092360
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas39

This article analyzes the introduction of police dogs in early twentieth-century Paris, which formed part of the transnational extension of police powers and their specialization. Within a context of widespread fears of crime and new and contested understandings of animal psychology, police officers, journalists, and canophiles promoted the dogs as inexpensive yet effective agents who could help the police contain the threat posed by criminals. This article responds to a growing number of studies on nonhuman agency by examining how humans in a particular place and time conceptualized and harnessed animal abilities. I argue that while nonhuman agency is an illuminating and important analytical tool, there is a danger that it might become monolithic and static. With these concerns in mind, I show how examining historical actors' conceptualizations of animal abilities takes us closer to the historical stakes and complexities of mobilizing purposeful and capable animals, and provides a better understanding of the constraints within which animals act. Attitudes toward police dogs were entwined with broader discussions of human and animal intelligence. Concerns that dogs' abilities and intelligence were contingent and potentially reversible qualities resembled contemporary biomedical fears that base instincts, desires, and impulses could overwhelm human intelligence and morality, resulting in individual and collective degeneration. To many, it seemed that police dogs' intelligence had not tamed their aggressive instincts, and these worries partly explain the demise of the first wave of police dogs in Paris after World War I

Agency (philosophy) · Context (archaeology) · Criminology · Environmental ethics · Instinct · Morality · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Ecology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Psychology