Linking Animal Cruelty and Family Violence By Lisa Anne Zilney

natural phenomena is a hang-over of theological teleology, an instance of organic ego-centrism, a type of wishful aggrandizement and self-glorification [that belongs] in the realm of valuation, not in the realm of science” (Bain 1928: 554). Bain predicted that the denial of culture of animals is “probably a phase of anthropocentrism” ³ (p. 556). Despite his suggestion, an “animal sociology” never came to fruition and was not explicitly addressed again until 1979 when Clifton Bryant argued, again unsuccessfully, for a study of zoological crime to encompass issues of violence against animals. Bryant (1979) argued: “Sociologists, among the practitioners in most of the behavioral sciences and many of the humanities, have been singularly derelict in their failure to address the zoological component in human interaction and attendant social systems. We have tended not to recognize, to overlook, to ignore, or to neglect (some critics say deservedly so) the influence of animals, or their import for, our social behavior, our relationships with other humans, and the directions which our social enterprise often takes” (p. 399). Bryant ended his article with a call to sociologists that remains unheeded: