Dog as a Quasi-Consumer

This article explores the position of nonhuman animals, such as companion dogs, in moments of contemporary arts consumption. Companion dogs are a part of the everyday lives of millions of consumers and accompany urban experiences in consumption spaces. Despite numerous calls for understanding the realities of the co-existence of multiple species, there is insufficient discussion of these lived moments in marketing literature. By bridging consumer research and organisational studies in an interdisciplinarily manner and utilising autoethnographic and autonethnographic methods, I challenge this silence by illuminating consumers’ everyday lives as they are lived with other species, and trace the contours of formation of subjectivities precipitated in these moments of being-together. To go beyond the contested object/subject dichotomy, I draw on Michel Serres, arguing that canines are quasi-consumers – neither reduced to objects nor given the full agency of subjects – but acting as participants in the consumption processes that bring about a dynamic (re)configuration of the relationships between the actors, materials, spaces, technologies. I contribute to research by introducing new conceptual vocabulary and considering how new concepts help reveal abstracted commercial, economic, and artistic relations.