Changing Meat Cultures: Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals [Paperback]

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.Arve Hansen is a researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway. Karen Lykke Syse is an associate professor at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway.

This book goes right to the heart of the most wicked issue in addressing climate change - getting people to change their consumption habits. The authors' global reach shows us how this common problem has deeply diverse roots in local cultures, economies and cuisines. Richard Wilk, distinguished professor emeritus, Indiana University

A groundbreaking contribution to current discussions in human-animal studies, Changing Meat Cultures advances understandings of the revolutionary transformations under way in the cultivation and satisfaction of humans' tlã/