American Zoo

 
American Zoo

A Sociological Safari

by David Grazian

Princeton University Press

2015

 

 

Among sociologists, I think David Grazian is best known for his ethnographies of urban night life. American Zoo is sort of a departure, insofar as zoos are mostly visited by families with children, but metropolitan zoos are a form of leisure, and Grazian approached the ethnographic data collection with his usual zeal, volunteering at two zoos for several years, and visiting another 25 or so.

 
Grazian says that his main theme is the ways that zoos construct an image of nature and draw a boundaries between the idea of nature and idea of culture, although I would say it's actually more about how zoos negotiate competing demands from different constituencies. He also frames a lot of his discussion around the urgency of the current environmental situation.

 
Grazian looks at how zoos design exhibition spaces to both provide animals with enough and the right kind of room and also to look appealing to audiences (and to conceal things like animal sex and carnivore diets.) He discusses the professional identities of the animal keepers and the audience educators. (Both are contrasted with the managers and the guest services staff.) Current zoo employees tend to be educated young women who accept very low wages because of their desire to take care of animals. They are part of a major generational shift away from the working class men who used to do those jobs.

 
Grazian shows how zoos balance a desire to educate the public against a need to entertain them and pressure to avoid sensitive topics like evolution, climate change, and the actions of various corporate sponsors. Apparently a lot of zoos are funded by oil companies.

 
Too much entertainment also threatens zoos' legitimacy as well as their professional identity because of what Grazian calls 'the captivity question' - that is, the question of what gives zoos a right to keep and display their animals. Grazian finds that zoos currently legitimize themselves (both to themselves and outsiders) in terms of both practicing conservation and promoting it among their audiences. Grazian also notes the irony that the captivity of zoo animals is far more controversial than either America's mass imprisonment of humans, or the captivity and slaughter of food animals.