Eating Roo: Of Things That Become Food

Australian Humanities Review

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.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environmental Studies (ISLE)., 2019

Patterns of food production and consumption have immense environmental impact. While much public discussion of meat eating centers on economic, environmental, and ethical issues and is based on reasoned arguments and facts, the contention of this article is that justifications of meat eating also have a more physical and less rational element which is more fully captured in the discourses of literature, marketing, and reflection on personal experience. Many people do not confront the ethical and environmental implications of their meat eating. The impact of industrial farming, or even the fact that meat is dead animal flesh, are often either not considered in justifications of meat eating, or treated as less significant than meat eating as a physical, personal, and social experience. Meat eating for many remains solely a matter of taste, in both the biological and social senses of the word. By combining ecological themes with a focus on an embodied and emotional engagement with food of the kind found in literature, this article’s critique of the contradictions inherent in justifications of meat eating fits well with the ethical and philosophical aims of ecocriticism, as it furthers exploration of “the meanings of the natural environment and the complexities of human relationships with each other, and with the more-than-human world” (ASLE). On the one hand, human food choices have an obvious impact upon the environment, especially when accompanied by exponential population growth, climate change and diminishing resources. On the other, literature has much to tell us about the emotive and social power of food, as now widely recognized in literary studies: Literary critics who write about food understand the use of food in … works of literature can help explain the complex relationship between the body, subjectivity and social structures regulating consumption. (Fitzpatrick 122) Although this article is not centrally concerned with literary analysis, our contention is that the insights of literature into food choice and its meaning may serve as a starting point, when considering food choice in the real world, to look beyond the merely economic and recognize the strength of other, less rational and tangible factors. To do this, and in illustration, we begin with some—albeit somewhat selective and arbitrary—literary references to the taste of food. We then embark, in the main part of the article, on a more systematic and rigorous examination of references to taste and to meat in data from our own research. In our analysis we hope to show that non-literary discussion of food—in marketing, personal reminiscences, and conversation—share with literature an emphasis on food as a sense experience.

Lexia, 2015

“New meat” is meat obtained either from stem cells or totally synthetically, and promises to drastically reduce pollution and to abolish animal killing, despite raising safety issues. This study analyses how the media have been constructing “new meat” since , the year of the first test–tube hamburger. Peirce () finds four different ways through which people accept new beliefs; they are based either on past models, or on power and economic interests, or on individual accommodation, or on science. Moreover, new meat is a human artefact that aims to replace a natural product, and therefore it raises foundational issues linked to the relationships between Nature and Culture. While old theories see these two concepts as separate and conflicting, this work builds on newer, bio–semiotic perspectives according to which the two concepts are linked to each other by mutual and ever changing relationships. Articles published in online versions of British and American magazines, newspapers and broadcasters have been purposely sampled and semiotically analysed. The results show that the media represent new meat either as a utopian product able to clean the world of evil (pollution, illness, animal suffering, etc.), or as a dystopian food, similar to GM products and continuing the long list of dangerous techno–foods. The utopian representations adopt Peirce’s power–led fixation of belief; instead, the dystopians rely on Peirce’s a priori method. Thus, Nature and Culture are still considered as two separate entities in conflict with each other. However, further semiotic analysis of the forms and names that scientists and designers are giving to new meat demonstrate that the new perspectives on Nature and Culture as interacting are slowly entering the field. In conclusion, the newer approach to Nature and Culture is more practiced by scientists and designers, while the media lag behind, still anchored to old schemes.

Australian humanities review, 2011

Australians consume and enjoy a variety and abundance of meats. The preferred protein sources in the typical Western diet are flesh foods derived from cattle, sheep, pig, bird and aquatic species. There is, however, an emerging marketplace that offers alternatives. This paper explores the centrality of meat alternatives in the food habits and practices of Australian vegetarians and vegans. The term 'meat alternatives' refers to the variety of foods that are commonly referred to as 'mock meats'. They are plant-based products that approximate the aesthetic qualities and/or nutritional value of certain types of meat, and they are part of a quietly booming alternative food economy. The data reported here are drawn from a grounded theory study of alternative diets. A majority of the informants in this study discussed their consumption of a variety of meat-like foods. Of all 44 informants interviewed, 34 (77%) rely on and enjoy foods that they refer to as, 'burgers', 'hot dogs', 'chicken', 'schnitzels' and 'bacon'. This essay describes the social contexts in which these products are enjoyed, and explains their function, cultural meaning and ethical value to consumers. The potential significance of meat alternatives in modernity has yet to be fully accounted for in studies of food across disciplines. An explication and critical analysis of how meat alternatives challenge, accept, or subvert established gastro-ontological assumptions about what is 'real', healthy, ethically sound, or 'authentic', will therefore contribute to broader empirical and theoretical expositions of human cultures, and food and eating practices.

2020

This ethnographic study of meat as part of humble daily practices contributes new insights to the existing anthropology of meat eating and its implications. Drawing on the emerging field of design anthropology, the thesis is inspired by Marcus's exhortation to 'follow the thing' (meat) in household shopping, food handling, preparation and consumption practices across national borders. The thesis addresses the following research questions: What are the interconnected rituals and routines in everyday household meat consumption practices in middle-income households in Australia and Indonesia? How do these practices relate to, and negotiate, local histories and regional-global networks? What can design anthropology methods offer in understanding everyday foodways? What insights can a comparison of these practices provide in relation to the circulation of meat? I focus on 18 households in urban Australia and Indonesia because, while culturally distinct, they are connected through a transnational and global meat trade. Drawing on the concepts of improvisation, habitus, intersecting technologies and friction, I find everyday household foodway practices to be shaped by individual habitus as well as knowledge of frictions in the ways that meat is produced and circulated. I consider Indonesian meat purchasing and handling practices to argue that it is for structural, not cultural, reasons that Indonesia is a 'wet' (fresh) meat market. By following meat in everyday usage and routines the thesis reveals unexpected connections and disconnections. I conclude that the increased technical capacity to produce and circulate meat globally needs to sit alongside understandings of local practices and regional networks. Making temporal and spatial links across regions and technical-social worlds, focused on the subject matter of meat, is part of the original contribution of this thesis. Declaration by author This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly authored works that I have included in my thesis.

Consumption and Society, 2023

This is a pre-copy edited version of an article published in Consumption and Society. In this conversation Sophia Efstathiou and Rebeca Ibáñez Martín discuss how a love for the animal you are going to eat, or gustar, offers an alternative to industrial animal husbandry. They discuss how changing relationships between humans and animals in intensive farming mediated by technologies of effacement break these attachments, ironically allowing for the animal to be replaced. Looking to ethnographic work and situated analyses of working with animals opens up possibilities for different ways of being with animals. Meat is performatively constituted, and it can be constituted differently and less violently.

2012

envplan.com

Agriculture and Human Values, 2018

In recent decades, there has been a proliferation of alternative food networks (AFNs) which promote an agenda of reconnection, allegedly linking consumers and producers to the socio-ecological origins of food. Rarely, however, does the AFN literature address "origins" of food in terms of animals, as in the case of meat. This article takes a relational approach to the reconnection agenda between humans and animals by discussing how the phenomenon of animal welfare and "happy" meat are enacted by producers and consumers in mundane, embodied, and nuanced ways. Utilizing hybrid conceptualizations of human-animal relations through "natureculture" and "being alongside", we demonstrate that consumers and producers of AFNs perform natureculture entanglements daily, often considering humans and animals as part of one another and the ecological system. Nonetheless, we also point to how participants in AFNs set boundaries to distance themselves from moments of animal life and death, explaining away uncomfortable affective naturecultures through commodification logics. Drawing on qualitative data from consumers and producers of food networks in Austria, we introduce the concept of "human-animal magnetism" to illustrate that the draw for humans to care about other animal lives exists within a spectrum of attraction and disassociation, engendered through specific human-animal interactions. Ultimately, we offer a cautiously hopeful version of alterity in AFNs of meat in which more caring human-animal relations are possible. Keywords Human-animal relations • Alternative food networks • Visceral • Meat • Natureculture It would be a mistake to assume that the 'externality' of nature can be suspended, on the sole grounds of its metaphysical or ontological implausibility: in empirical practice, it takes a lot of work to establish relations between environmental entities and social practices or assemblages. (Asdal and Marres 2014, p. 2057) For me what's important is that animals are multidimensional, living beings. There's this emotional relationship they have with us, where you really understand the animal…farming is fundamentally about being with animals as living creatures, the key is making those human-animal relationships more visible.