The Changing Valuation of Dogs

In recent decades, the United States has witnessed profound changes in the sociocultural valuation of dogs, variously described as humanization, sentimentalization, or sacralization. A broad look at this “sacralization” of dogs in the United States reveals that this changing valuation has altered dogs’ place within economic processes. In particular, these changes parallel Viviana Zelizer’s work on the changing valuation of children a century ago. In this article, we further specify Zelizer’s insights by arguing that these accompanying economic transformations are best understood as shifting of a dogs’ place within budgetary units: from objects for human consumption to fellow actors humans consume with and around.