To examine the relationship of animals and social problems, it would help to clarify what I mean by social problems. To do this, I'm going to use some examples that have nothing to do with animals. You might think the meaning of social problems as obvious. Social problems are conditions that are inherently harmful, bad, or wrong. They undermine people's well-being. Initially, this makes sense. After all, aren't social problems bad? Notions like bad and harm imply that we know badness and harm when we see it. For instance, the assertion that poverty is a social problem assumes that we know poverty when we see it and we know what it is about poverty that makes it bad or harmful. This is what's known as the objective approach. It's considered objective because it assumes that social conditions have standard indicators through which their harmfulness can be recognized. But what objectively constitutes the social problem known as poverty? Is it the state of having no money at all? If you search online, you can easily find examples of people who've lived without money for years and you'll find no evidence of harm. They all talk enthusiastically about the freedom and friendships that came through trading and sharing. Grant it, the money less life isn't for everyone. Is poverty the state of having enough money then? In this case, what is enough? Consider one person's $20,000 annual household income and and others $100,000 income. Does that mean that the person who makes 20,000 doesn't make enough? Well, it all depends. To a homeless person struggling to scrape together a few dollars to buy a meal, the question might seem absurd. When you have nothing at all, a debate over tens of thousands of dollars makes little sense. Both individuals may seem rich. You might respond that we know what poverty is because we have an official poverty level. In the United States, the Census Bureau sets the poverty level and anyone whose income falls below that level is considered poor. This sounds like an objective standard. However, consider that the poverty level used today was developed in 1961 using data on the cost of food in 1955. Back then, a loaf of bread cost 18 cents and you could buy a dozen oranges for 53 cents. Even when using so-called objective measures such as the poverty level, the meaning of poverty just depends. What about saying that a social problem undermines people's well-being? Well, who gets to decide whether a condition is harmful and what kind of harm might be involved? For instance, although some people think that legalizing marijuana will undermine society, others support legalization. In addition, people have different ideas about the meaning of harm. If you ask people who oppose the legalization of marijuana why they see it as a problem, some might mention concern for its potential effects on health. Some worry about what it does to young people. Others believe marijuana is addictive and some might believe it's just morally wrong to get high. Maybe conditions can be considered objectively harmful if enough people see them as such. There would then be consensus about the existence of real or potential harm. This raises the question of what enough means. If 10 people found a condition harmful, would that be enough to make it so? Would it take 100, a million? Even using words such as considerable, substantial or just large numbers wouldn't solve the problem of how many people it would take. What if only a few people stand to experience harm? Does a social problem exist? Or what if no one notices the harm? The objective approach to social problems assumes that social conditions have standard characteristics or indicators through which we can recognize their harmfulness. We've just seen the pitfalls with that approach. Another approach, and the one I'll use here is the social constructionist approach. To call something a social construction is not to say that it doesn't physically exist. Rather, it is to say that people produce, maintain, and change the meanings of things, including objects, events, relationships, and even other people through interaction and interpretation. Referring to a social problem as a social construction doesn't mean it's imaginary. It means that ambiguous situations can be seen in different ways by different people and defined as troubling by some people. When those people engage in efforts to have that condition recognized as a target of concern that require some solution, a social problem is constructed. Let's see how this works with animals. Consider the ordinary and ubiquitous urban pigeon, same family as the dove, and everyone likes doves, but many people consider pigeons rats with wings. In some cities, feeding pigeons is a crime. Cities have done everything to eliminate pigeons, including electrocuting, poisoning, and trapping them, feeding them contraceptives, and trying to repel them by placing spikes on ledges and other surfaces where they roost. No other bird has been the target of such measures. So what's going on with pigeons? The sociologist [inaudible] studied New York Times articles that mention the pigeon, between 1851 and 2006. He found that until the 1930s, articles about pigeons took a morally neutral tone. They occasionally post minor nuisances. After the 1930s, the livestock that had long been kept in the city had been moved to the outskirts and vehicles had replaced horses. Pigeons stood out as representatives of the animal kingdom that had supposedly been pushed out of the city. Their presence polluted areas that were designated solely for human activity. While people didn't object to pigeons in parks, the pigeons didn't know they were supposed to stay there. They intruded into human spaces. Pigeons were considered filthy carriers of disease, although this was found to be no greater than the threat posed by other animals. Pigeons earned the label rats with wings, piggybacking on the stereotype of another species considered a problem. The point is that urban pigeons aren't objectively bad or harmful. Many places such as St. Mark's Square in Venice wouldn't be the same without pigeons. But in 20th century New York, people regarded them as a threat to order in an increasingly disordered environment. As efforts to eliminate pigeons gained traction, they were constructed as a social problem. Lots of other animals have been constructed as social problems. Consider the Pitbull. Although dogs in general are categorized as good animals, Pitbulls have been portrayed in the media as double dogs, killers, and terrorists on four legs. Some cities have made it illegal to have them as pets. The breed of dog constructed as the baddest at any particular time has changed. Bloodhounds, Mastiffs, German Shepherds, Doberman Pinschers, and Rottweilers have all been branded with that label. The takeaway here is that we use animals metaphorically in the construction of social problems. We link them to conditions we see as troubling, dangerous, immoral, or dirty.
