Pets and people: information experience of multispecies families
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2021-0052 |
| Published date | 14 December 2021 |
| Date | 14 December 2021 |
| Pages | 1092-1108 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Niloofar Solhjoo,Maja Krtalić,Anne Goulding |
Pets and people:
information experience of
multispecies families
Niloofar Solhjoo, Maja Krtali
c and Anne Goulding
School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington,
Wellington, New Zealand
Abstract
Purpose –This paper introduces more-than-human perspective in information behaviour and information
experience studies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understandingsof the concept of multispecies
families by exploring their significant dimensions related to information phenomena involving multiple
contexts, situations, spaces, actors, species, and activities.
Design/methodology/approach–Based on previous research in human information behaviour and human-
animal studies, our ideas around information experience of multispecies families are developed conceptually.
The paper builds both on previous empirical findings about human information behaviour and the new domain
of information experience.
Findings –The paper proposes a holistic approach both to information phenomena in everyday living with
companion animals including embodied, affective, cognitive, social, digital, and objectual information that
shapes pet care and management practices, and to the context of study, including work, domestic, and leisure
aspects of multispecies family.
Originality/value –This study broadens our understanding of information phenomena in multispecies
families, and so contributes to the field of information experience. It also provides insights for animal welfare
scientists to help them understand the information behaviour of humans who are responsible forkeeping and
caring for animals.
Keywords Information experience, Information behaviour, Multispecies family, More-than-human, Everyday
life, Companion animals
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
In information research we are mainly concerned with the human world and the exploration
of the information experiences, behaviours, and skills of people, and their dependants (e.g.
children, clients, patients, staff, and students). Humans share their everyday lives not only
with other humans, though, but also with companion animals (pets). Any species can be a pet,
as the term is applied based on human perception of the role and value of the animal
concerned, and not on an intrinsic quality of the animal per se (Farnworth, 2018). Pets are
considered to play a primarily emotional and social role within the family or community and
are therefore distinct from other domestic animals such as working or production animals.
From an animal welfare point of view, people should keep species that they can provide with
“a good life”(New Zealand Companion Animal Conference, 2021), such as traditional
companion animals (e.g. cats, dogs).
The population of pets has increased dramatically worldwide (AVMA, 2018;Gates et al.,
2019;PDSA, 2020) and although some view pets as objects, things that provide a useful
service (e.g. a person’s property or hobby), increasingly pet guardians (carers) view them as
JD
78,5
1092
This paper is part of a PhD research project on information experience of everyday pet care and
management at the School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New
Zealand. The authors wish to thank the anonymous referees for their constructive comments and
suggestions.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 9 March 2021
Revised 19 November 2021
Accepted 25 November 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 5, 2022
pp. 1092-1108
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-03-2021-0052
similar to people (subjects), with whom they have valuable and rewarding relationships (e.g.
best friends, children, or family members) (PR Newswire, 2015;Bures, 2021). Human-animal
relationships have evolved considerably over the centuries (Fox and Gee, 2019). People share
beds with their pets and are comfortable with their pets’presence during very personal and
private times. They throw birthday parties for pets and often welcome their participation in
family celebrations (Shannon-Missal, 2015;Irvine and Cilia, 2017). In recent years, carers have
applied a multitude of ways to provide for some, or all, of the pets’needs and look after them
on a day-to-day basis (e.g. interactive pet cameras to communicate and play with pets when
they are alone at home). This co-habitation has not only affected housing choice and design
but also has changed the city itself (Chen et al., 2020;Yin et al., 2020). Pets are allowed into and
are entertained in social spaces such as in parks, cafes, tours, and hotels, serviced by pet
equipment such as waste cans, water supplies, kennels and pet parkers. All around the world,
organisations are representing and legislating a diverse range of animal welfare perspectives.
Companion Animals New Zealand Conference 2021 “Towards A Good Life”, recognised pets
as sentient beings and focused on exploring their positive, pleasurable and negative feelings.
In other words, many people are experiencing becoming and maintaining family with
animals. A multispecies family, variously termed as more-than-human family (Irvine and
Cilia, 2017), and post-human family (Charles, 2016), is a family where pets (an active non-
human agency) are incorporated into the family within a caring, parental relationship or as
pack members (Power, 2008). The pet actively shapes the ways that family and home are lived
in the everyday and participates in family activities, places, and mutual experiences (Fox,
2006;Power, 2012). Here, the terms “multispecies”,“more-than-human”and “posthuman”, are
used consciously and interchangeably to acknowledge the interconnectedness of humans
and other forms of life and the involvement of animals in human everyday life (Wolf, 2010;
Locke, 2018). In recent years, such ideas have gained immense popularity in the humanities
termed an “animal turn”, a shift from anthropocentrism (the assumption of human
ascendancy) to zoocentrism (the recognition of animals as full or partial subjects) (Fox, 2006;
Irvine and Cilia, 2017). This approach blurs the boundaries between nature and society,
humans and animals and opens new perspectives with which to explore modes of being and
becoming in the contemporary world (Danby et al., 2019).
Various aspects of multispecies family have been studied across a range of disciplines
(social sciences, religion, politics) and recently in many new contexts including leisure (Danby
et al., 2019;Nottle and Young, 2019), event experiences (Dashper and Buchmann, 2019),
memories in everyday life (Lewis and Berntsen, 2020), social work (Laing, 2020), and domestic
violence (Swemmer, 2019). This has redefined notions about meaning, power, agency,
othering, and knowledge-production. Scholars in information science try to understand the
human world through a focus on people’s access to and engagement with information in all its
manifestations (Cibangu, 2015). There are many information objects and activities within
human shared lives with pets (e.g. memories and previous experiences of pet keeping,
materials and physical objects related to a pet, pet health records and personal notes, the pet’s
online profile and pictures, or people and individuals who know and interact with the pet).
This kind of everyday information engagement by carers will form their experiences,
knowledge and skills, perceptions of and attitudes toward their pets, but to date, information
engagement in the everyday life of multispecies families has not received adequate
consideration in information science.
In this paper, we argue that to understand fully human information behaviour, we need to
recognise the more-than-human claim that humans and animals inhabit the same spaces with
overlapping agencies and experiences (Hamilton and Taylor, 2017). This paper attempts to
present an introduction to some key ideas in this research area, including: How can we
understand and represent the information experienced in multispecies families? What does it
mean to bring the routines of everyday life with pets into the information behaviour research?
Pets and people
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