The connections between nonhuman animals and human societies have become an increasingly prominent topic of sociological research over the past decade. A focus on animals in sociological research raises a variety of conceptual and epistemological challenges, since sociological methods and theories were developed to analyze humans. We outline these challenges and elaborate a realist approach to animal studies, which focuses on the materiality of the animals in the world and does not confuse them with social constructions of animals. We examine the potential to combine methods focused on understanding human meaning, such as ethnography, with methods aimed at scientifically studying animal behavior from ethology, or a political ethology approach. We also assess how the materiality of animals can be incorporated into quantitative macro-comparative analyses as well as historical studies. We argue that increasingly incorporating animal studies into the domain of sociology can expand our understanding of the world and generate new questions for sociologists.
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