The Petriarchal Turn: Reassembling Domestic Life and Multispecies Families through Petriarchy on AI-Driven Platforms

Abstract

This conceptual article theorises the petriarchal turn: the increasing role of companion animals as nonhuman actors who reshape power, care, and capital in platform-mediated domestic life. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory (Latour, Callon and Law), Bourdieu’s theory of capitals, and Haraway’s companionship, the article introduces petriarchy as a conceptual research tool for analysing how pets organise household routines while generating, accumulating, and converting economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital through social media platforms. Methodologically, it advances a theoretical framework, illustrated through vignettes from digital pet cultures such as petfluencers, which highlight how leads, feeds, algorithms, and veterinary protocols, to name but a few, enrol humans and animals alike into value-producing actor networks. Pets are described as obligatory passage points within domestic assemblages, reconfiguring schedules, spatial arrangements, and affective labour, while social media platforms translate their cuteness and care into visibility and revenue. These processes redistribute authority and resources within families, intersecting with class and gender, as access to breeds, training, time, and platform literacy determines who can capitalise on nonhuman charisma, a traditionally human attribute. The article argues that the contemporary family should be reframed as a multispecies, digitally AI-mediated, capital converting assemblage. It then proposes testable propositions for empirical research on platform pet economies and calls for a critical agenda that recognises both the agency and vulnerability of animals mediated online.