Universität Wien

240058 SE VM4 / VM3 - The Intersectional Politics of Meat (2021W)

7.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 24 - Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Continuous assessment of course work
REMOTE ISK
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Monday 11.10. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
  • Monday 25.10. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
  • Monday 15.11. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
  • Monday 29.11. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
  • Monday 13.12. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
  • Monday 17.01. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital
  • Monday 31.01. 11:30 - 14:45 Digital

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Animal flesh – if understood as food– is arguably the most ambivalent food of all, charged with symbolism, taboos, controversial systems of oppression and strongly held beliefs and boundaries on societal as well as personal levels (Adams 1990; Beardsworth 1997; Evans, Miele 2012; Simoons 1994; Wrenn 2017).
The topicality of eating animals itself is not new but rather inherently ambiguous (Staples, Klein 2017). Yet the eating of animals (and by extension animal products) is gaining increasing attention due to growing consumption of animal products on a global scale (Popkin 2006; Vranken et al. 2014) and the high carbon footprint of food production in the face of climate change (Carlsson-Kanyama, González 2009) and future food security. Moreover, ambivalence around meat consumption intensifies with growing insights into the sentience of non-human animals, while factory farming and regular meat consumption prevail (Evans, Miele 2012). Not least because of COVID-19 and other epidemiological threats in a globalised (food) system, the relationship and vicinity between humans and animals-as-food are increasingly being questioned.

Through an intersectional approach with attention to power imbalances, the seminar will ask:
Which processes of ‘othering’ are inherent in thinking and turning living animals into dead edible matter, from flesh to food?
Which roles do the physical distanciation between food production and consumption and the advancing invisibilization of farmed animals in foodscapes (Deckha 2018) play?
What could be gained from critically questioning the conceptualisations of animal ‘others’ for animal suffering and more sustainable food systems?
What can we learn about underlying power interests in governing animal ‘others’?
Where might be parallels to other systems of oppression and subordination that are based on processes of ‘othering’ (Ahuja 2014; Kemmerer 2011)?

The seminar aims to bring together Human-Animal-Studies with Food Studies in pursuing the socio-culturally and historically varied question how certain non-human sentient beings are conceptualised as ‘animals-as-food’ (Staples, Klein 2017, 193) whereas others are not. Drawing on posthumanist and postcolonial scholarship, the seminar will examine the processes of ‘othering’ underlying humans’ understandings of non-human animals (Ahuja 2014; Armstrong 2002; Kemmerer 2011). It will also look at the (neo)colonial continuities that at times instrumentalise(d) different eating practices of animals in the construction of ‘uncivilised’ Others. Moreover, the seminar will analyse how racialised, gendered, and class-based inequalities intersect, e.g. in the abattoirs of the animal-industrial complex (Pachirat 2013).

The seminar will be highly participatory, including discussions and group presentations. At the end of the seminar, students will be familiar with various (inter)disciplinary perspectives on human-animal relations in regard to meat and the intersectional politics involved in the material and discursive production of meat.

Assessment and permitted materials

For a successful completion of the seminar the following accomplishments have to be achieved:
· Regular participation in class and active involvement in discussion
· Writing of reading responses based on key literature
· Literature search and review
· Presentation in class
· Seminar paper

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

• Active participation = 10 %
(discussion of literature, participation during sessions)
• Reading responses = 25 %
• Concept note & Group presentation = 25%
Final Paper = 40 %

Examination topics

Reading list

Adams, C., 1990. The sexual politics of meat: a feminist-vegetarian critical theory. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Adams, C.J., 2006. An Animal Manifesto Gender, Identity, and Vegan-Feminism in the Twenty-First Century. Parallax 12, 120–128.

Ahuja N., 2014. Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World. In: Dubino J., Rashidian Z., Smyth A. (Eds.). Representing the Modern Animal in Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Armstrong, P., 2002. The postcolonial animal. Society and Animals 10, 413–420.

Beardsworth, K., 1997. The Mysterious Meanings of Meat. In: Beardsworth, A., Keil, T. (Eds.). Sociology on the Menu: An Invitation to the Study of Food and Society. Routledge, London; New York.

Blanchette, A., 2020. Porkopolis: American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm. Duke University Press, Durham.

Buller, H., Roe, E., 2018. Food and animal welfare. Bloomsbury Academic, London ; New York.

Carlsson-Kanyama, A., González, A. D., 2009. Potential contributions of food consumption patterns to climate change, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 89, Issue 5, 1704S–1709S.

Chimaira - Arbeitskreis für Human Animal Studies, 2013. Tiere Bilder Ökonomien: Aktuelle Forschungsfragen der Human-Animal Studies. transcript, Bielefeld.

Deckha, M., 2018. The 'Pig Trial' Decision: The Save Movement, Legal Mischief, and the Legal Invisibilization of Farmed Animal Suffering. Ottawa Law Review, Vol. 50, No. 1, 2018.

Evans, A.B., Miele, M., 2012. Between Food and Flesh: How Animals are Made to Matter (and Not Matter) within Food Consumption Practices. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30, 298–314.

Harper, A.B. (Ed.), 2010. Sistah vegan: black female vegans speak on food, identity, health, and society. Lantern Books, New York.

Kalof, L., Montgomery, G.M. (Eds.), 2011. Making animal meaning, The animal turn. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing.

Kemmerer, L., 2011. Theorizing ‘Others,’ in: Taylor, N., Signal, T. (Eds.), Theorizing Animals. Re-Thinking Humananimal Relations, Human-Animal Studies. Brill, Leiden ; Boston, pp. 59–84.

Morris, C., Kaljonen, M., Aavik, K., Balázs, B., Cole, M., Coles, B., Efstathiu, S., Fallon, T., Foden, M., Giraud, E.H., Goodman, M., Kershaw, E.H., Helliwell, R., Hobson-West, P., Häyry, M., Jallinoja, P., Jones, M., Kaarlenkaski, T., Laihonen, M., Lähteenmäki-Uutela, A., Kupsala, S., Lonkila, A., Martens, L., McGlacken, R., Mylan, J., Niva, M., Roe, E., Twine, R., Vinnari, M., White, R., 2021. Priorities for social science and humanities research on the challenges of moving beyond animal-based food systems. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, 38.

Pachirat, T., 2013. Every twelve seconds: industrialized slaughter and the politics of sight, Yale agrarian studies series. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, Conn.

Popkin, B.M., 2006. Global nutrition dynamics: the world is shifting rapidly toward a diet linked with noncommunicable diseases–. The American journal of clinical nutrition 84, 289–298.

Sexton, A.E., 2018. Eating for the post-Anthropocene: Alternative proteins and the biopolitics of edibility. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 43, 586–600.

Simoons, F.J., 1994. Eat Not this Flesh: Food Avoidances from Prehistory to the Present. University of Wisconsin Press.

Staples, J., Klein, J.A., 2017. Consumer and Consumed. Ethnos 82, 193 212.

Swanson, H.A., Lien, M.E., Ween, G. (Eds.), 2018. Domestication gone wild: politics and practices of multispecies relations. Duke University Press, Durham.

Vranken, L., Avermaete, T., Petalios, D., Mathijs, E., 2014. Curbing global meat consumption: Emerging evidence of a second nutrition transition, Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 39, 95-106.

Wrenn, C., 2017. Toward a Vegan Feminist Theory of the State, in: Nibert, D. (Ed.), Animal Oppression and Capitalism. Praeger Press, Santa Barbara, CA, 201–230.

Association in the course directory

VM4 / VM3;

Last modified: Fr 12.05.2023 00:20