Becoming Familiar with the Nonhuman Organizational Stranger

This chapter reviews a selection of research with relevance to social aspects of working with animals. Citing classic and cutting-edge research encapsulated by the field of Human-Animal Work (HAW) or Animal Organization Studies (AOS), it charts the development and current status of empirical research and theorization on the nature of human-animal relations and interactions in commercial/ work settings. The review is structured by category to navigate a variety of occupational and theoretical enquiries. Threading the narrative of familiarity and strangeness through the chapter, connections are drawn between empirically and theoretically disparate pieces of research. The aim is to make the ‘strange’ (in this case, the non-traditional focus on nonhuman animals) more ‘familiar’ to mainstream scholarship on business, work and organizing. The chapter concludes by speculating on important and timely areas for new research and teaching in this field.