Pigeons and Pitbulls: Ego-Protective Management Strategies of the Non-Human Other

• In Event: Animals from a Sociological Perspective Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 2: Violence, Exclusion, and Inclusion

Abstract

In this article I use the rock pigeon and the pit bull terrier as case studies to theorize three primary ways that non-human animals are stigmatized: a keeping down strategy that protects the ego through in-group/out-group distinctions, a keeping away strategy that protects the ego through manufactured crises that justify maltreatment, and a bringing in strategy that protects the ego through control and upward assimilation. I begin by briefly outlining the history of the pigeon and the pit bull as two longitudinal cases of the “keeping down” strategy, which is generalizable to non-human animals writ large. I then outline the literatures that I engage with to think through and theorize these relationships, namely the social psychological theory of “stigma power” (Link & Phelan 2014), the concept of dehumanization (Wells-Barnett 1892; Wells-Barnett 1894; Haslam 2006, 2013, 2016; Recker 2025), in-group/out-group differentiation through social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner 1979) as it could apply to “problem” vs. “companion” animals (Iliopoulou, Carleton, & Reese 2019), and ending with an overview of “interspecies intersectionality” (Weaver 2021). I then argue that the pigeon and pit bull, two socially marked groups within their respective species, represent a transition from the default “keeping down” strategy to the “keeping away” strategy through the pigeon’s explicit displacement and mistreatment, and the “bringing in” strategy through the pit bull’s assimilation into middle-class, White culture.

Author

• Armani Beck, Dartmouth College