Doctoral Dissertation Research: Veterinary Medicine in Anthropological Perspective: Ethnoveterinary Care and Human - Animal Relationships

Humans and animals have long, evolutionarily relevant, histories of sustained interactions. Indeed, millennia-long demonstrated co-evolution of humans and their pets opens fascinating questions involving the costs and benefits that humans and animals provide to or exact from each other. This doctoral dissertation research project investigates factors associated with owners’ decisions to provide costly veterinary care to their animals to understand how concepts of animals impact veterinary care. In addition to training a doctoral student in anthropological research, this project’s findings can inform and facilitate veterinarians’ effective interception in disease spread, by better understanding and anticipating how their human clients perceive and interact with their sick animals. The project disseminates its findings broadly to academic, lay, and animal physician audiences. This project offers novel anthropological research examining the culture of animal care, i.e., ethnoveterinary medicine. The research tests anthropological theories and concepts regarding medicine (medical anthropology) and human-animal interaction (ethnozoology or anthrozoology), and uses cognitive anthropology to identify salient cultural models (frameworks for thinking) about animal disease and wellness. It uses ethnographic observational and interview methods, including surveying, free-listing, semi-structured interviews, body mapping with animal silhouettes, and self-administered video journaling. The data reveal how differing human-animal activities connect with different cultural models, or conceptual tendencies, about animal sickness, including how people conceive of disease causes, physiology and symptoms, and the appropriate treatment responses. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.