Working Like a Dog: Canine Labour, Technological Unemployment, and Extinction in Industrialising England (2024)
The turnspit dog, an extinct breed, powered English roasting spits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries by rotating an apparatus comparable to a hamster wheel. It was not merely a working breed, however. It was an animal labourer. Breeders bred it solely for work. Contemporaries conceived of it as an industrious worker intrinsic to food production. Despite its importance, owners treated it contemptuously due to its utilitarian nature. Cooks replaced the dog with a machine, the smoke-jack, once the latter proved reliable. Rather than repackage it as a companion, the English ceased breeding it due to its inextricable connection with a disparaged trade. Industrialisation’s upheaval triggered the turnspit’s extinction by 1850. Examining its decline explicates how technological unemployment wrought catastrophic change on nonhumans. Elucidating comparable disturbances within cottage industry labour for canines and English workers provides scholars with a more-than-human understanding of industrialisation’s ramifications. Furthermore, uniting animal and labour history reconceives current theorisations of historical animals, affirms working animals’ past contributions and highlights their importance as labourers.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Michael Worboys;
(2023)
Doggy people: The Victorians who made the modern dog
(/isis/citation/CBB958196913/)
Book
Kathryn Hughes;
(2024)
Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania
(/isis/citation/CBB636235121/)
Article
Brad Bolman;
(2022)
Dogs for Life: Beagles, Drugs, and Capital in the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB399574473/)
Book
Edmund Russell;
(2018)
Greyhound Nation: A Coevolutionary History of England, 1200-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB501862278/)
Chapter
SUZUKI Jun;
Nicholas Pertwee;
(2020)
Boiler Manufacture in Late-nineteenth Century Japan: From First Beginnings to Nationwide Expansion
(/isis/citation/CBB586056676/)
Book
Zoltán Boldizsár Simon;
(2020)
The Epochal Event: Transformations in the Entangled Human, Technological, and Natural Worlds
(/isis/citation/CBB962581030/)
Book
Ron Broglio;
(2017)
Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life in British Romanticism
(/isis/citation/CBB999620896/)
Book
Edwards, Peter;
(2007)
Horse and Man in Early Modern England
(/isis/citation/CBB001201097/)
Article
Cheang, Sarah;
(2006)
Women, Pets, and Imperialism: The British Pekingese Dog and Nostalgia for Old China
(/isis/citation/CBB000660019/)
Book
Michael Worboys;
Julie-Marie Strange;
Neil Pemberton;
(2018)
The Invention of the Modern Dog: Breed and Blood in Victorian Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB396199300/)
Thesis
Feller, D A;
(cited 2011)
The Hunter's Gaze: Charles Darwin and the Role of Dogs and Sport in Nineteenth Century Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001567341/)
Book
Ann-Janine Morey;
(2014)
Picturing Dogs, Seeing Ourselves: Vintage American Photographs
(/isis/citation/CBB818895674/)
Book
Mikhail, Alan;
(2014)
The Animal in Ottoman Egypt
(/isis/citation/CBB001422352/)
Book
Chris Pearson;
(2021)
Dogopolis: How Dogs and Humans Made Modern New York, London, and Paris
(/isis/citation/CBB526868753/)
Book
Jessica Wang;
(2019)
Mad Dogs and Other New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in an American Metropolis, 1840–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB967635848/)
Thesis
Brad Bolman;
(2021)
The Voyage of the Scientific Beagle: Dogs in the Physical and Biomedical Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB535964941/)
Book
Pat Shipman;
(2017)
The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction
(/isis/citation/CBB109388792/)
Article
Tom Quick;
(2020-03-18)
The Making of a New Race in the Early Twentieth Century Imperial Imaginary
(/isis/citation/CBB351278938/)
Article
Emily Stark;
Stephen Hoover;
Alexandra DeCesare;
Elan Barenholtz;
(December 2018)
Medicine Has Gone to the Dogs: Deep Learning and Robotic Olfaction to Mimic Working Dogs
(/isis/citation/CBB218791424/)
Article
David Arnold;
(October 2023)
The Camera and the Cattle: Bovine Photography and Technologies of "Improvement" in Colonial South India
(/isis/citation/CBB008908465/)
Be the first to comment!