In 2018, Justyna Wlodarczyk published Genealogy of Obedience: Reading North American Dog Training Literature, 1850s-2000s in the ASI-managed Brill Human-Animal Studies Book Series. This volume provides a long overdue look at the history of companion dog training methods in North America since the mid-nineteenth century, when the market of popular training handbooks emerged.

As part of our Interview with the Author series, we sat down with Justyna to learn more about this earlier and important work.

ASI: Why is Genealogy of Obedience important?

JW: Genealogy of Obedience is the first book to seriously explore the history of dog training methods as a research subject. While contemporary academia is increasingly interested in canine cognition and human-canine relations, this interest had not extended to a serious examination of the history of dog training until the publication of this book. Dog training practices are influenced not just by their effectiveness—especially given that dogs are highly adaptable and easy to train—but also by social and cultural factors. Previous research sought to identify some of these factors in the present day. For example, studies have noted that individuals with authoritarian personalities are more likely to use force-based methods (Pręgowski 2014) or that women are more likely than men to engage in certain training activities, like agility (Gillespie et al 2010, Hultsman 2011). However, this earlier research tended to view training methods of the past through a simplistic then/now dichotomy, associating older methods with force and dominance (and – interestingly – masculinity), while framing modern approaches as progressive and scientific. I hypothesized that analyzing these socio-cultural factors over a longer historical period could challenge this dichotomy, and my analysis confirms this. For instance, the book traces how the conflict between progress and backwardness—a generational struggle—unfolded in the nineteenth century, when trainers criticized the brutality of their eighteenth-century predecessors.

It’s important to note that research on the history of animal training existed before this book. I was particularly influenced by Susan Nance’s Entertaining Elephants (2013) and Peta Tait’s Fighting Nature (2013), which focus on species other than dogs.

Genealogy of Obedience is also the first book to examine dog training through the lens of Foucauldian notions of biopower. I aimed to question the dominant narrative that contemporary positive training methods offer dogs freedom of choice. To do so, I drew on Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power, biopolitics, and care of the self, as well as their interpretations by Nikolas Rose and Jeffrey Nealon. This framework was invaluable in conceptualizing how mainstream positive methods, while appearing force-free, actually maintain significant control over a dog’s behavior, offering choices that merely create an illusion of freedom and that work by shaping the dog’s desires. Although this is not the first book to apply Foucault’s work to animal lives—the volume Foucault and Animals, edited by Matthew Chrulew and Dinesh Wadiwel, precedes Genealogy of Obedience in the Brill Human-Animal Studies series—the focus on factory farming has often overshadowed the relevance of Foucault’s ideas to animal training. I hope Genealogy of Obedience helps to address this imbalance.

ASI: How does the book relate to your background and general areas of interest?

JW: My field is American studies, which methodologically combines cultural studies and literary studies. However, I have always been a dog enthusiast and trainer, with particular interest in the ethics of dog training. Despite being academically trained in the humanities, I enjoy reading the latest research on canine cognition, behavior, and genetics. In the early 2010s, inspired by key figures in the animal turn, I began exploring ways to integrate these two aspects of my life, leveraging my unique—albeit not entirely uncommon—skillset into a research perspective. This led me to undertake a cultural-historical analysis of an activity I have personally engaged in.

I now primarily consider myself a dog writer. While this may not be a conventional identity within academia, my focus is thematic: I am deeply interested in dogs and human-canine relationships. I am willing to adopt whichever methodologies prove most effective for advancing our understanding of canines and am highly open to interdisciplinary collaboration. At this point my main interest is a bit broader than it was when I wrote Genealogy of Obedience; I am particularly interested in how cultural and literary representations of dogs shape humans’ expectations of life with canines.

ASI: How is the work situated and how does it advance debates within the field of Human-Animal Studies?

JW: Genealogy of Obedience brings together three strands of research within Human-Animal Studies: the first one is research into the socio-cultural aspects of human-canine relationships. My greatest influence here was, of course, Donna Haraway’s Companion Species Manifesto and When Species Meet. The second thread is animal history. Here, my influences included the work of Erica Fudge, Harriet Ritvo, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, and Susan Nance. Canine historians like Katherine Grier, Margaret Derry, Michael Worboys, Chris Pearson, Neil Pemberton, Phillip Howell were also key influences for me. However, Genealogy of Obedience is not truly a work of animal history – not only because I am not a historian but a cultural studies scholar. More importantly, it is not dogs who are the subject of analysis but human-canine relations and humans’ ideas about what dogs are and how we should relate to them. The third strand is the work at the intersections of animal studies and concepts of biopolitics/biopower. Here, I cannot underestimate the value of the work by Nicole Shukin, Dinesh Wadiwel, Matthew Chrulew, though some of the researchers mentioned earlier have also framed their ideas with reference to concepts of biopower. I hoped that by bringing these three strands together, Genealogy of Obedience would further both our understandings of dog-human relations and open up new sites for applying Foucauldian concepts of power.

I like how the book has already been useful in developing better understanding of the worlds of dog training. Nickie Charles, Mara Miele and their research team have come up with a term that is related to my analysis from Genealogy of Obedience – “training cultures.” It’s such an apt term that wonderfully captures the gist of what I wanted to say about the different canine-related activities people engage it (and yet, I did not come up with it – it’s their term). These communities are cultures: one enters them (for example, by signing up for a sheep herding class) and internalizes the discourse and set of practices that shapes that culture (good dogs love work; dogs need tough love and should not be spoiled; treats are for wimps). I highly recommend the work that resulted from their project Shaping Interspecies Connectedness.

ASI: What are some of the major messages in Genealogy of Obedience?

JW: I think the main message is to unsettle the binary oppositions that govern our thinking as it relates to dogs and humans. The main juxtaposition that the books takes apart is the then/now dichotomy as it relates to dog training, in which “then” is associated with physical brutality and crudeness. Another – fittingly for an animal studies project inspired by Haraway’s work – is the nature/culture dichotomy as it relates to dog training. Training is usually seen as the culture to a dog’s nature; the addition of a layer of “civilizing” to the dog’s behavior. Yet, a deep dive into the worlds of dog training reveals that “trainability,” a concept I explore in great detail, is often perceived as something that is heritable.

The book also challenges the socialization/training distinction. Advocates of this separation argue that socialization is ethically acceptable because it enables dogs to coexist with humans, while training is seen as exploitative. I aim to demonstrate how tenuous this distinction is and how difficult it is to clearly separate socialization from training. Finally, the book addresses the coercive/positive training dichotomy. I hope to show that the definitions of these training methods are fluid and shaped by broader cultural contexts. This is not to suggest that I endorse force-based methods—I do not use them with my dogs. Rather, I want to encourage readers to critically examine their own definitions of coercion.

ASI: Who is your intended audience? (Has your intended audience changed at all since publication?)

JW: I wrote this book with a mixed audience in mind: I was addressing primarily a humanities-based animal studies readership (cultural studies, philosophy, literary studies), but I was hoping that scholars from the social sciences would be interested as well, which I think has happened, at least to a certain extent. I secretly hoped that practicing dog trainers and behaviorists would pick the book up too. The problem with these ambitious goals is that each intended group of readers is used to a different theoretical apparatus, requires a different style, and a different vocabulary. I tried to take the middle road and write in a style that would appeal to both an academic and a more popular audience, but now I think that perhaps this book really should have been two books: an academic one and a popular one. I’ve seen Amazon reviews where readers who appear to be practicing dog trainers complain that “the Foucauldian philosophy stuff is a bit over my head.” While I feel that a version of the story without the theoretical framework would not be complete, I do feel a deep need to engage with the community of practicing trainers, and I have tried to do this by presenting non-theoretical bits and pieces of the narrative at various events for canine professionals.

ASI: What were/are your goals of your research in terms of welfare and positive policy change?

JW: This is not a book that is intended to argue in favor of a particular policy change, even though I make my position rather explicit already in the introduction: I am open about having trained dogs, and I admit my affiliation with the positive training community. However, I make no claims as to the legal regulation of specific training aids (e.g. banning e-collars or crates). I hope the book encourages the kind of critical thinking that is necessary for improving the lives of dogs. For example, I hope that it makes people think about canine welfare in ways that go beyond conceptualizing welfare as liver treats and sleeping on the couch.

ASI: Genealogy of Obedience was published in 2018, what changes have you seen in the field and in the world in the past 6 years related to your research?

JW: Researchers have made significant strides in understanding dog-human relationships, especially in their interplay with human identity categories. The complex entanglement of species, race, class, and gender is gaining serious attention in academia, and this research is indeed vital. Two of my recent favorite books that explore the intersections of race, gender, and dogs are Bénédicte Boisseron’s Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (2018) and Harlan Weaver’s Bad Dog: Pitbull Politics and Multispecies Justice (2021).

Another emerging trend, evident among both dog owners and researchers, is an interest in understanding dogs as dogs, not merely as participants in human-canine relationships. Both canine science and the humanities have focused on what makes dogs unique by emphasizing their sensitivity to human presence, their innate desire to please, and their responsiveness to human gestures and voice. Donna Haraway’s thesis, after all, posited that we are companion species who have shaped each other over time. However, research on free-ranging dogs has shown that dogs are quite capable of living independently of humans, or with minimal human contact. This growing interest in dogs’ separateness is influencing current thinking about dogs. You can see this in Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff’s A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World Without Humans (2021), an intriguing piece of post-apocalyptic non-fiction, and in Mariam Motamedi Fraser’s Dog Politics: Species Stories and the Animal Sciences (2024). Fraser’s book is also particularly forceful in addressing an issue that I unfortunately overlooked in my book: the issue of canine individuality. The obsession with thinking about dogs as a species has the unfortunate consequence of erasing the differences between individual dogs. And, after all, what counts as welfare for one dog, may be cruel punishment for another.

There have also been some subtle shifts in the popularity of training methods, and these are related to bigger trends in conceptualizing ethical relations between dogs and humans. In the final chapters of Genealogy of Obedience, I suggested that many trainers were becoming disillusioned with the promises of behaviorism, specifically with so-called purely positive training methods based on Skinner’s behaviorism. Trainers began to realize that the methods promoted by reward-based trainers were “purely positive” only in a very narrow sense. Technically, one could label themselves a positive trainer while still disregarding dogs’ species-specific needs, as long as they refrained from using aversives.

The growing interest among pet owners in activities related to canine olfaction, such as nosework and scent detection, seems to reflect a broader recognition and respect for dogs’ unique ways of perceiving the world. The desire to honor canine uniqueness and needs has become a guiding principle for many dog professionals. Increasingly, more of them are also moving away from using the word “training” due to its associations with cruelty and excessive human control over canine behavior. Personally, I would encourage dog guardians to embrace the word “training,” despite its complicated legacy.

ASI: What are you currently working on?

JW: A lot! Probably too much. I am currently involved in a larger team project titled “Figurations of Interspecies Harmony.” Our goal is to analyze popular representations of harmonious or desirable interspecies relationships and to critically examine how the concept of harmony is portrayed in these visuals. For example, we’ve explored the theme of cuteness, particularly in videos where predators and prey appear to be friends. We’ve argued that such videos often oversimplify the stories of individual animals and overlook the trauma that likely preceded and influenced their creation.

Currently, we’re working on an article that examines the “talking dogs” trend, where online videos depict dogs conversing with humans using speech buttons. While we fully acknowledge the intelligence of dogs, we aim to highlight the internal paradox of this trend. On one hand, the goal is to allow dogs to express themselves, aligning with significant shifts in the dog-human relationship. However, this expression can only occur within a highly anthropocentric framework, as dogs are required to “speak” using human language and buttons provided by their guardians. We also highlight the long legacy of anthropomorphized canines serving as cheap entertainment for humans and argue that this history cannot be separated from the current trend.

In line with my previous research on activities that I have been personally engaged in, I’m also developing an article on truffle hunting. About two years ago, when my dog Mia was diagnosed with hip dysplasia, I decided to give up agility training to avoid worsening her condition. By chance, I watched the documentary The Truffle Hunters at an indie film festival and then turned to Google Scholar, where I discovered that some species of truffles had recently been found in my home country. This discovery led me to a scientist at the Forest Research Institute, who agreed to mentor Mia and me in the art of truffle hunting. Since then, I’ve become utterly captivated by truffles, almost consumed by this new passion. Although I initially turned to truffles because of my dog, my fascination has expanded to include mushrooms and their ecosystems, making me an eager student of soil, vegetation, and insects. In this context, dogs have served as a gateway to understanding a complex multispecies ecosystem. I hope to reflect academically on this activity, but I’ve found it challenging because I believe it’s crucial to find the right approach. I think I need to rely on autoethnography, a method I haven’t used before. Ultimately, I hope that this exploration will yield something truly meaningful—along with some delicious truffles.

Learn more and purchase Genealogy of Obedience here.