Yi-Fu Tuan’s Dominance and Affection: Placing Pets, Power, and Posthumanism in Animal Geographies

Yi-Fu Tuan’s Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (Citation1984) laid the groundwork for the animal turn and more-than-human perspectives within geography, yet his contributions have been largely overlooked. This paper situates Dominance and Affection within the broader development of animal geographies, illustrating its connection to third- and fourth-wave scholarship and asserting Tuan’s rightful place in contributing to the discipline’s engagement with more-than-human worlds. This paper examines Tuan’s work as a point of departure for contemporary animal geographies. It argues that his centring of companion animals and articulation of species relations of power through processes of petmaking and petkeeping offer valuable insights on the lives of animals. As well, his ethical questioning of the dominance-affection paradox prefigures debates on the moral responsibilities humans hold toward animal companions. Tuan’s work remains a fundamental contribution to the subdiscipline of animal geographies.