Introduction: Consumer and Consumed

Ethnos, 2016

The papers that make up this collection were already long in development when the European 'horsemeat scandal' in early 2013 threatened to derail still further what fragile trust there remained in food producers and retailers. 1 This scandal entailed the discovery that horsemeat was being passed off in branded ready-made meals and processed foods as other types of more culturally acceptable meat, beef in particular (Lawrence 2013). But earlier animal foodrelated crisesfrom the discovery of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle in the 1980s, to the widespread contamination of powdered milk with melamine in China that came to light in 2008had already made it abundantly plain that, in the context of industrialising and globalising food supply systems, the animals we eat do not simply sustain our bodies or satisfy our culinary tastes but, in doing so, come profoundly to reshape social, economic and ecological relations and cultural understandings of edibility, taste and health. Connections between humans and animals-as-food are not simply one-way relationships between consumer and consumed, but involve a more complex set of relations concerned, among other things, with ecological change, world markets and local economic conditions, health and food safety, labour relations, and changing cultural values. For example, growing meat consumption has been described as part of a wider, increasingly globalised 'nutrition transition' away from diets rich in fibres and complex carbohydrates, a transition associated with emergent health concerns including rises in obesity, type II diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular illnesses and certain cancers (Popkin

International planning studies, 1999

This paper describes the emergence of a post-modern circuit of food and addresses the rise of a new culture of consumption. The assessment of the diffusion of organic products in terms of the emergence of a new culture of food consumption springs from two principle considerations. The first is the much-discussed question of the globalization of the agri-food system that has been a focus of attention in the debate in sociology of agriculture and in agricultural economics. The second is the new relevance that the study of culture and consumption has assumed in analyses of social relations and cultural forms. Combining insights from these two bodies of work, the paper illustrates how strategies of food selling/shopping for lifestyle reasons coalesce with particular forms of production. The main theme of the paper is therefore that the cultural change around food consumption has been a vital factor in the constitution of the networks of products, producers, distributors, public authorities, and consumers which constitute post-modern circuits of food.

Österreichischen Zeitschrift für Soziologie , 2021

Meat is a crucial object of sociological research. The consumption of meat plays a significant role in the food supply of modern societies. The importance of meat is not, however, limited to its nutritional value. Rather, the preparation and consumption of meat dishes is linked to cultural traditions and norms, collective and individual identities, as well as to gender relations and conceptions of health, purity, or naturalness. The production of meat is connected to numerous ecological problems, the breeding and killing of billions of animals, precarious working conditions and issues of public health (as, for example, the current pandemic demonstrates). Moreover, both the consumption and production of meat are linked to various dynamics of transformation and conflict: Technical and scientific innovations as well as political and economic decisions transform agriculture and meat production, leading to an unparalleled productivity but also to unprecedented environmental consequences. While the "normality" of meat consumption spreads further around the globe and is no longer exclusive to the Global North, in Western societies problems related to meat increasingly become the subject of public debates and social struggles. Despite the diverse and far-reaching implications and consequences of meat production and consumption, the sociological debate on meat is rather new. At first sight this may be surprising since important aspects of meat production and consumption are addressed by classical sociological authors. Norbert Elias ([1939] 2000, p. 100),

2004

Globalization and urbanization are spreading worldwide. Big companies and western cultures influence the lifestyles in the developing countries including diets leading to dietary transition. Traditional diets are replaced by new ones based on increased consumption of tobacco, alcohol, sugar, salt, fat, animal food products, refined carbohydrates, and processed food. In this way the young urban society becomes addicted to cheaper and easily affordable food with permanent consequences on their health in form of noncommunicable (chronic) diseases. All of them could be largely prevented. Animal borne diseases represent another threat to human health. Overnutrition with low physical activity, which replaces undernutrition represents heavy burden for developing societies and globally threatens quality of life in many areas. These are, besides the health issues and proper nutrition, also the global food security supply within rising world's population and worsening climate conditions, the environmental aspects, and preservation of natural resources. Natural laws have important place in our lives and they can not be denied. Human life depends on sun, photosynthesis, laws of thermodynamics and food chains. Among the energy-rich seeds it is mainly the cereal grain, which is essential staple food for both humans and livestock. Thus cross-competition for food between humans and livestock is a major problem in production of animal food products. Although developing countries proportionally consume much less concentrate feed, this situation is quickly changing upwards due to increasing consumption of animal food products. Advocates of the so called "livestock revolution" argue that the raising income levels in the third world should be utilized for greater consumption of animal food products improving thus environmental and public health stress. In fact, the opposite is reality regarding both health and environmental issues. The internalization of the external costs into prices of animal products is very much needed. The field study took place in my home country-Slovakia, which is a transition country. The study has proved that demand for fertile land to grow feed for animal rearing exceeded 50% on the national level and varied in between one quarter and almost one half on the regional level of my home town. In the economy sector of animal production the pricing policy based on subsidies creates uncompetitive business environment in Slovakia causing severe losses to farmers. The countries' protective measures and subsidies degrade the environment and affect the poorer states by cheaper import into these developing countries. Moreover, they contribute to global overproduction. The globalization and liberalization of international trade, on the other side, is not done equally, creates uncompetitive environment for again the poorer ones and increases the global food prices. The real cases from individual states or communities have proved that it is possible, indeed, to increase the overall living standard without adopting all the negatives of globalization including the dietary transition and out of it the increasing consumption of the animal food products. The alternative options in more sustainable way of nutrition exist in form of vegetarian diet, wise utilization of abandoned pastures and feed plant by-products, return to moderate rural lifestyle, and enlightenment through customer and children education and new state policies. OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE My thesis is divided into two parts. In the first part, I have provided the latest evidence and scientific results from nutritional research relating to rapid increase of chronic diseases, recommended nutrient intakes and the latest layout for the healthy nutrition-the new food pyramid, aiming to decrease total burden of the chronic (noncommunicable) diseases. These serve as the scientific support for healthy nutrition to my further second part. The major focus has been also placed on the health issues, namely the chronic diseases. I have discussed the current trends in food consumption leading to overnutrition. Livestock diseases have been also discussed. Further, I have tried to analyze aspects of the dietary transition influenced by several factors worldwide and its impact on expansion of chronic diseases. It deals mainly with the fact of globalization and urbanization, rising importance of the transnational corporations and role of mass media influencing the dietary changes. It also analyses the role of trade and marketing. The increased consumption of animal food products is not the only cause of the dietary shift, but the important one.

2008

In this essay I will look at the symbolism that meat holds within our ‘modern’ ‘Western’ society. I will begin by briefly introducing the study of food in general within the social sciences, setting a framework of reference for the exploration of meat specifically. In examining meat I will firstly set the context by turning to the global livestock sector and its relationship with the environment, before probing meat’s physical properties and their ensuing symbolism, which, as we will see, is the basic foundation for meat’s high culinary and dietetic value in our culture. I will then continue to investigate meat’s symbolism by asking what place, if any, may meat hold within our wider cultural cosmology, within our systems of social and moral ideas, before drawing some conclusions.

A Research Agenda for Food Systems, 2022

This chapter considers the rise of alternative proteins (APs) and their current and potential impacts on food systems. Using the conceptual lens of cultural political economy, we analyse APs through two separate 'moments'. First, we explore the promissory narratives and resistances APs have encountered as they have been marketised and mainstreamed. Here we pay particular attention to the ways that the narratives of urgency, anxiety and crisis, plus the scale of livestock-related problems in the Anthropocene, have (re)authorised Big Food's role in delivering sustainable food systems. Our second moment is more speculative. Refracted through philosophical and geographical treatments of APs, we explore the ethical, material and spatial implications of cell-cultured meat and ask what is disrupted and what is maintained through this particular version of doing meat differently. We conclude with questions for future research on APs in the context of the changing contours of the food system.

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2003

In this paper we explore the event of foodscares as an example of what Callon calls ‘hot situations’, in which the landscape of competing knowledge claims is at its most molten, and alternative production and consumption practices galvanise new modes of sense-making against the market and state-sanctioned rationalities of industrialisation. Through a case study of the Belgian cooperative Coprosain and its meat products, we examine the ‘stuff’ of food as a ready messenger of connectedness and affectivity in which ‘risk’ is transacted as a property both of the growing distance between the spaces of production and consumption and of the enduring metabolic intimacies between human and nonhuman bodies.

The ethical food movement signals a significant transformation of cultural consciousness in its recognition of the intimate politics of what we eat and what kind of socio-political systems we sustain. The recent resurgence of economic localization exemplifies a grass roots attempt to undermine the hegemony of transnational corporations and build ecologically and economically sustainable communities. Social justice plays a key role in the guiding philosophies of these movements, and yet, while many ecocritical discourses examine the uncomfortable relationship of anthropocentricism and sustainability, some contemporary texts of the ethical food movement evidence a reluctant embrace of omnivorous eating, while simultaneously indicating a gendered, if ironic, machismo at odds with the principles of ethical eating. An analysis of the rhetoric of three popular nonfiction books that construct a similar narrative of the story of meat—Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Susan Bourette’s Meat, a Love Story, and Scott Gold’s The Shameless Carnivore—reveals an attempt by these authors to naturalize what is essentially an economic and lifestyle activity. Working within a vegetarian ecofeminist framework, though recognizing that multiple compelling philosophical positions exist for considering the ethics of meat eating, this paper intends to argue, not that “ethical” and “omnivorous” are contradictory terms, but rather that a moral ambivalence prevails in these texts despite these authors’ claims to the contrary. In elucidating these authors’ reactions to their own participation in “the omnivore’s dilemma” this paper pinpoints those areas where a resistance to a deeper examination of human-nonhuman relations is in operation.

A. Igor de Garine, Hubert and R. Avila (Eds). Man …, 2004

In human society, meat is highly prized nutritionally, but possesses a high symbolic value, involving cost and sacrifice. Humans' attitude towards meat eating is ambiguous, as witnessed by cultures that do not condone killing, cannibalism, the sacrificial rituals of slaughter and patterns of abstention, including modern vegetarianism. The "dietary murder" that precedes carnivorousness can either be festive or provoke shame. * With the collaboration of Valerie de Garine.