Changing Meat Cultures

Industrialization has made the meat supply chain quick, global and to all intents, invisible. But, as this searching collection points out, meat is a hugely contested foodstuff – for reasons of sustainability, health, animal welfare, ethics and climate change.

This collection explains changing meat cultures through studies of both everyday food practices and the political economy of industrialized animal husbandry. We do this through case studies from 'affluent' and 'developing' countries. These contributions will shed light on global food connections and show how global, industrialized food and fodder systems have changed the way we relate to animals, their meat, and what kind of animals’ meat we eat. In the past few years, controversies around meat have arisen around industrialization and globalization of meat production, often pivoting around health, environmental problems, and animal welfare issues. Although meat increasingly figures as a problem, most consumers’ knowledge of animal husbandry and meat is more absent than ever. How is meat produced today, and where? How do we consume meat, and how have our consumption habits changed? Why have these changes occurred, and what are the social and cultural consequences of these changes? This book takes the reader on a geographic, ethnographic and historical journey to rural and urban areas and arenas across the world, and tells a series of stories of the dramatic changes in meat consumption.

Chapter 1: New Meat Engagements: Cultures, Geographies, Economies

Arve Hansen and Karen Lykke Syse

Chapter 2: Ritual Loss Of Life And Loss Of Living Rituals: On Judicialization Of Slaughter And Denial Of Animal Death

Karen Lykke Syse and Kristian Bjørkdahl

Chapter 3: New Geographies Of Global Meatification: The BRICS In The Industrial Meat Complex

Arve Hansen, Jostein Jakobsen and Ulrikke Wethal

Chapter 4: From Pastures To Feedlots, From Beef To Soybeans: Changing Meat Cultures In Argentina

Kristi Anne Stølen

Chapter 5: Meating Demand in China: Changes in Chinese Meat Cultures Through Time

Marius Korsnes and Chen Liu

Chapter 6: ­­Eating A Capitalist Transformation: Economic Development, Culinary Hybridisation And Changing Meat Cultures In Vietnam

Arve Hansen

Chapter 7: Bovine Contradictions: The Politics Of (De)Meatification And Hindutva Hegemony In Neoliberal India

Jostein Jakobsen and Kenneth Bo Nielsen

Chapter 8: Reconnecting life and death in the British alternative halal meat movement

Hibba Mazhary

Chapter 9: Meat We Don’t Greet: How ‘Sausages’ Can Free Pigs Or How Effacing Livestock Makes Room For Emancipation

Sophia Efstathiou

Chapter 10: What Happens When Cultured Meat Meets Meat Culture? (Un)Naturalness And (Un)Familiarity In The Meat Of Today And Tomorrow

Johannes Volden and Ulrikke Wethal

About the Authors

Index