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Paper short abstract

Taking dogs seriously as eaters, this paper reflects on visual methods used to study human-dog feeding relations. It explores methodological and ethical tensions in visibilising non-human experiences and contributes to STS debates on the limits of multispecies research.

Paper long abstract

In many approaches to studying food and consumption, eating is implicitly framed as a human activity, while non-human animals appear primarily as the ‘eaten’. Yet around one billion companion animals worldwide, along with numerous other domesticated species, also eat. Viewing dogs as eaters raises broader questions for science and technology studies (STS) about how non-human actors can be meaningfully included in social research.

Drawing on research exploring human-dog feeding relations through visual food diaries and qualitative interviews, this paper reflects on methodological attempts to visibilise dogs within the research process. Visual methods, in particular, were used to decentre the human and create analytical space for canine experiences of eating. Yet these efforts exposed persistent tensions in the practice of more-than-human research, given that dogs’ experiences remained mediated through human participants and interpretation. First, a methodological tension emerged between increasing canine visibility and achieving meaningful inclusion. Second, an ethical tension arose between involving dogs in research and the risk that such inclusion may reproduce human-animal power relations through practices of observation, representation, or inconvenience.

Rather than resolving these tensions, the paper treats them as generative sites for reflecting on the limits and possibilities of including non-human animals in social inquiry. By critically examining the attempt to centre dogs as eaters, the paper contributes to STS debates about the methodological and ethical challenges of multispecies research, particularly around how, and whether, non-human experiences can be understood within human-led research practices.

Keywords: dogs, more-than-human, visual methods, food, inclusion