CMM in Animal Care Systems: Exploring Meaning-Making and Tensions in Narratives of Care

• In Event: Animals from a Sociological Perspective Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 1: Interspecies Communities

Abstract

This study examines how animal care and control institutions manage and communicate their tensions are minimised or rendered invincible while interacting with the public, those under the sector, and the animals in their care by drawing on Coordinated Management of Meaning Theory (CMM). By analysing how narratives of care are sustained when everyday practices reveal structural inconsistencies between accountability, liability, and animal welfare. Through CMM we can uncover these tensions between coherence (narratives) and coordination (practices).This research examines how the historical evolution of animal care and control institutions came about, what their original purposes were, and how those purposes have evolved as tensions between lived stories divide the stories told. This research applies an interdisciplinary framework based on the theory of CMM to examine how meaning moves within and beyond the institutional environment. Through content analysis, the research follows how shelters construct coherence in their narratives of care. Qualitative interviewing of institutional agents and community members revealed how coordination is achieved in practical life whereas quantitative measures such as adoption rates and resource allocations give us a structural account of systemic tendencies. Together, the methods provide a layered analytic design integrating narrative analysis with institutional data that can trace where coherence and coordination meet or dissolve, giving a more nuanced insight into how institutional narrative frames; and are framed by the communities which they assist in creating. This work will enhance communication in the institutional and community channels, deepening our understanding of shelter control and care. By applying CMM theory to animal welfare, the study contributes to sociological understandings on how institutions produce meaning and manage public accountability.

Author

• Emily A Munoz