Koiran virka

Susi kaupunkien kaduilla vai ystävä erämaassa?

Abstract

The dog as a housemate and leisure companion to humans has found a place in the network of questions
in which the distinctions and boundaries between humanity and animality are defined. These definitions
place the dog in the twilight zone between nature and society – as a pet, it is not part of nature, but as an
animal, it is not seen to be part of society. This article examines the meanings bestowed on the dog in the
educational context. The question asked is this: on what terms and in what capacity is the dog assigned
a place as part of society or outside society? The purpose is to open up the demarcation between “the
natural and the social” by examining the bestowals of meaning attached to the dog and to dog activities. The
data consist of thematic essays by 85 active dog enthusiasts, collected in the latter part of the year 2010.
The starting point of the article is notions about the changing relationship of the dog to the community
and about the relatedness of these changes to wider societal processes: urbanisation, individualisation of
culture, changes in the relationship of humans to nature, and the diversification of the bases of knowledge
and of the action based on them. These processes have changed, and are changing, the position and treatment
of the dog. In the pedagogical starting points concerning the learning capacity and the training of dogs,
there have been changes in which the dog is defined as a moral, human, objectified, and naturalised being.