Skip to main content

Carol Thompson

Texas Christian University, Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty Member

Followers

268

Following

59

Public Views

I have been a professor at TCU for 32 years. My Ph.D. is in sociology and my primary areas of research specialization have been deviance, law and social control. Two decades ago, as a result of my own lifelong relationships with animals and experiences in animal rescue, I developed a course on animal-human studies and expanded my research agenda to include field work in rescue and adoption. Most recently I have written on understanding the selfhood of non-human animals and feral cat caretakers and burnout. These days I am focusing much of my life energy and research on conflicts at human-animal borders, specifically the debate over TNR in cities. The long hard work is paying off as I see city after city adopt TNR laws (thanks to advocacy). I am deeply satisfied to see these changes and that sociology and related disciplinary areas can have such a direct impact on the well-being of other animals.

less

Queensland University of Technology

Chris Richardson

Cardiff University

Patrick Parnaby

University of Guelph

Jenny Constantine

The University Of Glasgow

Chantal Faucher

Simon Fraser University

InterestsView All (19)

Uploads

Papers by Carol Thompson

Representing Gangs in the News: Media Constructions of Criminal Gangs

Sociological Spectrum, 2000

This research, based on a content analysis of 4,445 newspaper articles, examines the images that ... more This research, based on a content analysis of 4,445 newspaper articles, examines the images that emerge from stories of criminal gangs and society's responses to them. Eight recurrent themes were identiüed. It was discovered that articles devoted to the coverage of gang crimes were outnumbered by stories dealing with various community responses. Articles reporting the results of scientiüc research on gangs constituted the smallest category. The results are discussed in light of their importance in the construction of social problems discourse and the maintenance of symbolic power and social control.

Cooling Out the Mark in Companion Animal Adoption Accepted Society & Animals

This research examines conflict resolution in the companion animal adoption process. Such adoptio... more This research examines conflict resolution in the companion animal adoption process. Such adoptions typically occur in public settings where volunteers (1) advise potential adopters about the physical, emotional and environmental needs of companion animals, (2) evaluate adopters and the environment the companion animal will inhabit, and (3) assess the quality and quantity

Contested Meaning and Place of Feral Cats in the Workplace

This research is grounded in three years of fieldwork with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) groups on uni... more This research is grounded in three years of fieldwork with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) groups on university campuses and participation in a consortium of feral cat managers located in a large metropolitan area in the United States. TNR groups provide care and humane management of feral cats with the goals of reducing the overall number of stray and unhealthy cats in the wild and allowing healthy and non-reproductive cats to resume their territorial colonization of campus spaces. The analysis communicates the experiences and perspectives of feral cat caretakers as they struggle to preserve and create space for cats on their university and college campuses. Narratives and communications from and between feral cat caretakers illuminate how they resist existing definitions and arrangements of power and endeavor individually and collectively to manage their identities and activities within the workplace. The analysis shows that by extending the locus of care of non-human animals into the workplace setting feral caretaker actions break with normal practice by bringing non-human animals into the moral landscape of the campus and treating campus workplaces as ecologically integrated urban environments where feral cats and other animals are legitimate and appropriate coresidents. Their actions are seen as transgressing the conventional uses of place and space and results in stigmatization from three sources: the perceived misuse of the physical space at work, being out of order in ideological or normative space, and guilt by association or what Goffman (1964) calls tribal stigmatization.

The Selves of Other Animals

Although questions about nonhuman animal mind and selfhood have been a long-standing interest of ... more Although questions about nonhuman animal mind and selfhood have been a long-standing interest of philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and cognitive ethologists, sociologists have been reluctant to acknowledge the importance of such questions. This is due, in part, to George Herbert Mead's denial of consciousness, especially self-consciousness, in animals. Indeed, the exclusion of nonhuman consciousness was a fundamental axiom of Mead's very conceptions of mind and self. However, recently a growing number symbolic interactionists have begun to build a body of research that demands a reconsideration of Mead's anthropocentric and phonocentric definitions of mind, self, and the nonhuman participants who cohabit the everyday world of social life AU :2 . Here we provide a brief account of their work and present evidence from evolutionary biology, cognitive 1 3 5 7 467 ethology, and neuroscience that strongly validates their contention that the processes of consciousness and self, which constitute the cornerstone of meaningful social action and interaction, can no longer be denied to several species of nonhuman animals.

Gender, Attributions of Responsibility and Negotiation of Deviance in Small Groups

Transiting Social Worlds: Accounts of Formerly Married Lesbians

Helpmates of the Rodeo: Fans, Wives and Groupies

Women Fans of the Rodeo

Representing Gangs in the News: Media Constructions of Criminal Gangs

Sociological Spectrum, 2000

This research, based on a content analysis of 4,445 newspaper articles, examines the images that ... more This research, based on a content analysis of 4,445 newspaper articles, examines the images that emerge from stories of criminal gangs and society's responses to them. Eight recurrent themes were identiüed. It was discovered that articles devoted to the coverage of gang crimes were outnumbered by stories dealing with various community responses. Articles reporting the results of scientiüc research on gangs constituted the smallest category. The results are discussed in light of their importance in the construction of social problems discourse and the maintenance of symbolic power and social control.

Cooling Out the Mark in Companion Animal Adoption Accepted Society & Animals

This research examines conflict resolution in the companion animal adoption process. Such adoptio... more This research examines conflict resolution in the companion animal adoption process. Such adoptions typically occur in public settings where volunteers (1) advise potential adopters about the physical, emotional and environmental needs of companion animals, (2) evaluate adopters and the environment the companion animal will inhabit, and (3) assess the quality and quantity

Contested Meaning and Place of Feral Cats in the Workplace

This research is grounded in three years of fieldwork with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) groups on uni... more This research is grounded in three years of fieldwork with Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) groups on university campuses and participation in a consortium of feral cat managers located in a large metropolitan area in the United States. TNR groups provide care and humane management of feral cats with the goals of reducing the overall number of stray and unhealthy cats in the wild and allowing healthy and non-reproductive cats to resume their territorial colonization of campus spaces. The analysis communicates the experiences and perspectives of feral cat caretakers as they struggle to preserve and create space for cats on their university and college campuses. Narratives and communications from and between feral cat caretakers illuminate how they resist existing definitions and arrangements of power and endeavor individually and collectively to manage their identities and activities within the workplace. The analysis shows that by extending the locus of care of non-human animals into the workplace setting feral caretaker actions break with normal practice by bringing non-human animals into the moral landscape of the campus and treating campus workplaces as ecologically integrated urban environments where feral cats and other animals are legitimate and appropriate coresidents. Their actions are seen as transgressing the conventional uses of place and space and results in stigmatization from three sources: the perceived misuse of the physical space at work, being out of order in ideological or normative space, and guilt by association or what Goffman (1964) calls tribal stigmatization.

The Selves of Other Animals

Although questions about nonhuman animal mind and selfhood have been a long-standing interest of ... more Although questions about nonhuman animal mind and selfhood have been a long-standing interest of philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and cognitive ethologists, sociologists have been reluctant to acknowledge the importance of such questions. This is due, in part, to George Herbert Mead's denial of consciousness, especially self-consciousness, in animals. Indeed, the exclusion of nonhuman consciousness was a fundamental axiom of Mead's very conceptions of mind and self. However, recently a growing number symbolic interactionists have begun to build a body of research that demands a reconsideration of Mead's anthropocentric and phonocentric definitions of mind, self, and the nonhuman participants who cohabit the everyday world of social life AU :2 . Here we provide a brief account of their work and present evidence from evolutionary biology, cognitive 1 3 5 7 467 ethology, and neuroscience that strongly validates their contention that the processes of consciousness and self, which constitute the cornerstone of meaningful social action and interaction, can no longer be denied to several species of nonhuman animals.

Gender, Attributions of Responsibility and Negotiation of Deviance in Small Groups

Transiting Social Worlds: Accounts of Formerly Married Lesbians

Helpmates of the Rodeo: Fans, Wives and Groupies

Women Fans of the Rodeo