Dogs and practices of community and neighboring

Dogs are important facilitators of social interaction. However, little attention has been given to the specific mechanisms through which these relations proceed, or to the ways that dogs help to broker, maintain, and even disrupt social relations. This paper addresses this absence through an indepth qualitative analysis of the everyday experiences of 24 dog owning households who live in apartments in Sydney, Australia. It shows that dogs encourage people to spend more time outside, make people recognizable within their neighborhood, provide a topic of conversation, and actively solicit the attention of strangers. Dogs help make people recognizable and identifiable to others, while also creating social distance. The paper connects to broader literature on neighboring and community practice to show that community relations shaped by dogs involve practices of inclusion as well as exclusion. Exclusion provides an important motivation for new community formation.