Do Animals have Selves?

Abstract

This piece is a review of the animal selfhood literature in sociology, organized into four main parts. First, I review the sociological literature of human–animal interactions, in which sociologists claim that animals possess selves. Second, I review how sociologists have referred to the self, from which I construct five criteria of selfhood, including self as attribution, self-awareness, intersubjectivity, self-concept/reflexivity, and narration. Third, I address how animals have selves using these criteria, drawing on sociological and ethological evidence. Fourth, I critique the animal interaction sociologists’ specific claims of animal selfhood, including their epistemological failure to distinguish between human accounts of animal subjectivities and animal subjectivities, and their empirical failure to show how animals act toward themselves. Ultimately, I conclude that animal selves, particularly in an elemental Meadian sense, are potentially real, but in most cases are unobservable or unverifiable phenomena.

Citation

Turner, R. (2013), "Do Animals have Selves?", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) 40th Anniversary of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 40), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 425-460. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2013)0000040021