What makes human-animal relations “organizational”? The De-Scription of anthrozootechnical agencements
Résumé
Questions concerning animals’ role in society have received little attention from Organization
Studies. This article develops and tests some theoretical and methodological propositions aimed
at contributing to the elaboration of an analytical framework for interpreting our organized
relations with animals and furthering our understanding of what makes human–animal relations
‘organizational’. First, examining the role of animals in the ‘non-human turn’ that has been emerging,
especially with the Actor–Network Theory and the Symmetrical Anthropology project, it adresses
the limits of the ‘non-human’ category to analyze situations of coordination of collective action
involving animals. It then develops the concept of anthrozootechnical agencement to envisage the
role of animals in the course of action through the lens of their relational properties and applies
the notion of script to propose an operational formulation of the specifically organizational trials
to which these particular agencements are subjected. Based on three case studies (the role of the
leash in the organization of human–dog relations, the management of wolves’ return to France, and
the production of milk on a dairy farm), this article shows that two main types of operation make
human–animal relations ‘organizational’: first, the organization of anthrozootechnical relations is
constituted by and constitutive of the combination of three types of specifically organizational
test to which these particular agencements are subjected (the performance test, the coherence
test, and the dimensioning test); second, the work of organizing anthrozootechnical relations then
consists in elaborating, executing, and transforming heterogeneous scripts that are never strictly
indexed on the nature (human, animal, technique) of the entities they concern.