The Political Economy Of Pets

7 Pages 1702 Words

Nearly every normal family has one, and why not? They’re cute and cuddly, they love you, and people love them. After all, pets are normal commodities, owned by normal people. In this paper I will be examining the political economy of pets.
First of all you may be thinking “do pets have a political economy?” Well, of course they do. The first article I stumbled across, and the article that truly inspired the theme of this paper, is “Go Go Dog!’ And German Turks’ Demand For Pet Dogs” by A. Caglar. In this article the author discusses the functions of the pets that the German Turks own. There are three categories of dogs that are owned: The fighting dog, the guard dog, and the lap dog. Each dog serves a specific purpose, and therefore has certain ideal traits with which to serve that purpose. A guard dog is protective, and frightening; a fighting dog is macho, strong, and fierce; a lap dog is affectionate and loveable. People desiring to supplement their current identities with such traits own such dogs. The dog’s qualities become a part of the person’s image, and even status. I agree with the overview that Caglar presented in this article. Pets add certain qualities to their owners by their actions, pedigrees, breeds, and behavior. In this paper I will be referring to dogs, as they are stereotypically the most common pet choice from within our culture.
In America today, there are 43,143,849 dog owners owning a total of 61,542,900 million dogs. Of those 43,143,849 dog owners, 28,539,216 purchase Christmas gifts for their dogs. By examining that fact alone it is not surprising that the pet industry is expected to rake in $30 billion by the year 2003. The enormous growth of the pet industry is due to the new trend that shows Americans are becoming more interested in owning pets and less in the dwindling rate of population growth. Entrepreneurs acting on this trend seem to have struck it rich in regards to a consumer m...