The trouble with dogs: ‘animaling’ public space in the Australian city

Abstract

This paper grapples with contestations about the place of dogs in Australian urban public space. On the one hand, urban Australia is characterized by high levels of dog ownership and intense family-style human–dog relations, yet, on the other, in public space dogs and their humans are subject to strict regulation and a regime of spatial segregation. Increased urban surveillance, privatization and control, coupled with regulation based on the figure of the dog-as-problem, have intensified disputation over the place of dogs in the city. Birke, Bryld, and Lykke (2004) suggest the notion of ‘animaling’ as a tactic for shifting perspective from animal essences – dangerous dogs and dog breeds, for example – towards a study of the material-semiotic performativity of human/animal relationships. This paper takes up this notion to explore the multiple ways in which dogs, humans and various human–dog conjunctions and relations ‘animal’ the city and shape public space. As a transgressive queer(y)ing of the border work that constitutes the human/animal dualism, ‘animaling’ is also useful for thinking about the affinities, partial connections and agencies that co-constitute human–dog relations and urban spatialities.

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