1. Growing Up as Animal Harming
Animal Lovers: Sociology and Animal
Use.
A Presentation for NUIM Maynooth Veggie
Society.
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December 2013
Dr. Roger Yates

2. Draw a “farmyard scene.”
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3. Draw a “farmyard scene.”
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4. Draw a “farmyard scene.”
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5. Draw a “farmyard scene.”
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6. sociology
…the study of human society, the study of
human behaviour
how human beings learn to be “social actors”
how human beings learn social rules, norms,
values and their “culture”
[cultural speciesism]
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7. social animals
Bauman…
o Human beings “live in the company of
other people,” in groups in which we
interactively understand that we are
greatly dependent on each other
(1990: 9)
o To say that to live is to live with others
“is obvious to the point of banality”
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8. Zygmunt Bauman
Bauman says (1990: 7) that sociology
is about investigating how humans
are “locked together” in society
Locked in “a web of mutual
dependency”
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9.  “manifold webs of human
interdependency”
 common sense (common sense
knowledge)
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10. CSK
 common sense knowledge: powerful social
mechanisms which can fundamentally
shape our attitudes about the world in
which we live
 common sense understandings are
maintained through repetition of the
“routine,” and the enactment of the
“monotonous nature of everyday life”
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11. Bauman (1990: 15)
 As long as we go through the routine and
habitualised motions which fill most of our
daily business, we do not need much selfscrutiny and self-analysis
 When repeated often enough, things tend
to become familiar, and familiar things are
self-explanatory; they present no
problems and arouse no curiosity. In a
way, they remain invisible
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12. the power of social groups
 groups can exert an immense “hold” on the individual
 Abiding by - rather than challenging - the norms and values of your group is
much the easiest thing to do
 “Change would require much more effort, selfsacrifice, determination and endurance than are
normally needed for living placidly and obediently
in conformity with the upbringing offered by the
group into which one was born”
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13.  The contrast between the ease of
swimming with the stream and the
difficulty of changing sides is the secret
of that hold which my natural group
has over me; it is the secret of my
dependence on my group. If I look
closely and try to write down an
inventory of all those things I owe to
the group to which I - for better or
worse - belong, I’ll end up with quite a
long list
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14.  Bauman suggests that later
socialisation can be regarded as “the
dialectics of freedom and dependence”
which starts at birth and ends at death
 In early socialisation, a child appears
to have little opportunity to challenge
the content of the social lessons she
receives
 However, the older one gets, the wider
one’s choices may become
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15. never entirely liberated
from our past
 free and unfree at the same time
 with respect of those cases in which
change is actually possible, “the costs
of change are exorbitant and offputting”
 too much to “de-learn”
 “making a break” becomes more and
more impossible, unlikely and
unattractive
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16. Bauman…
The central question of sociology, one could say, is:
in what sense does it matter that in whatever they
do or may do people are dependent on other
people; in what sense does it matter that they
always (and cannot but) live in the company of, in
communication with, in an exchange with, in
competition with, in cooperation with other
humans beings?
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17. Social thought – sociology – can offer a different way of thinking
about society
e.g. it can….
 Identify the social in the individual
 Identify the general in the particular
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18. Living amongst others…
living amongst others is to live
in what Bauman calls ‘manifold
webs of human interdependency’, which have
important effects on our
motivations and our social
behaviour (1990: 14).
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19.  Common sense understandings are
maintained through repetition of the
‘routine’, and the enactment of the
‘monotonous nature of everyday
life’.
 familiar things are self-explanatory; they
present no problems and arouse no
curiosity. In a way, they remain invisible
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20.  the group ‘makes people’
 changing the individual which the
group has created requires the
‘utmost exertion’
 ‘Change would require much more effort, self-sacrifice,
determination and endurance than are normally needed
for living placidly and obediently in conformity with the
upbringing offered by the group into which one was born’
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21. The contrast between the ease of swimming
with the stream and the difficulty of
changing sides is the secret of that hold
which my natural group has over me; it is
the secret of my dependence on my group
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‘the
costs of change are exorbitant and
off-putting ’

22. othe older one gets, the
wider one’s choices may
become
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