Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations

A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 January 2015) | Viewed by 134727

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Women's and Gender Studies, University of Alberta, 116 St & 85 Ave, Edmonton, AB T6G 2C9, Canada
Interests: feminist philosophy; gender studies; sexuality studies; critical prison studies; animal ethics; environmental ethics; food politics
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Guest Editor
Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada
Interests: food; aging; nursing; women in prisons

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Guest Editor
Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada
Interests: Jacques Derrida; violence; law; marginality; social theory; sovereignty
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Societies is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal of sociology published quarterly online by MDPI. For this special topics issue, we seek articles that theorize particular types of relations between humans and nonhuman animals, for instance: companion relations, relations between urban humans and feral animals, hunter-prey relations, scientist-test subject relations, sexual relations and alimentary relations. Because one of the primary ways that humans interact with nonhuman animals today is by eating them, we are particularly interested in articles that address the ways that humans relate to nonhuman animals as food, and what processes enable us to see them as such. Food Studies scholars have demonstrated the significance of what we eat to identities and processes of subjectification, while social and political theorists have argued for the need to think about subjectivity relationally. Bringing together these strands of thought, we encourage authors to submit articles that consider animal foods in terms of relationships and relational subjectivity. How do our diets and alimentary practices involve relationships with others (human and nonhuman animals in the food industry, food providers, servers and cooks)? How do we relate to ourselves as dieters or eaters? How is food a factor in our relationship choices (e.g., vegan sexuality, changing—or not changing—our diets due to relationships)? How should we theorize the practices of cooking and eating with others, and eating the cuisines of others (e.g., postcolonial concerns)? How do people engaging in counter-cultural alimentary practices (e.g., veganism) negotiate relationships with others who do not engage in these dietary regimes? We welcome submissions that engage with these or any other topics involving the theme of animal relations.

Dr. Chloe Taylor
Ms. Kelly Struthers-Montford
Dr. Bryan Hogeveen
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • parenting and food
  • hosting and food
  • animal relations
  • mothering and food
  • philosophy of food
  • theorizing relationships through food
  • nations and food
  • violence and food
  • food relationships
  • the other (and) food

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Published Papers (9 papers)

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Research

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122 KiB  
Article
Against the Use of Knowledge Gained from Animal Experimentation
by Rebecca Tuvel
Societies 2015, 5(1), 220-244; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc5010220 - 23 Mar 2015
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 12337
Abstract
While there exists considerable protest against the use of animals in experimentation, less protest is voiced against the use of knowledge gained from animal experimentation. Pulling from arguments against the use of Nazi data, I suggest that using knowledge gained from animal experimentation [...] Read more.
While there exists considerable protest against the use of animals in experimentation, less protest is voiced against the use of knowledge gained from animal experimentation. Pulling from arguments against the use of Nazi data, I suggest that using knowledge gained from animal experimentation both disrespects animal victims and sustains the practice. It is thus pro tanto morally wrong. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
694 KiB  
Article
Eating Serial: Beatrice Lindsay, Vegetarianism, and the Tactics of Everyday Life in the Late Nineteenth Century
by Liam Young
Societies 2015, 5(1), 65-88; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc5010065 - 22 Jan 2015
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 7610
Abstract
This paper derives from research I conducted in the archives of the Vegetarian Society, in Manchester, in October 2011 on the figure of Beatrice Lindsay, a graduate from Girton College, Cambridge, who, in 1885, became the first female editor of the Society’s journal, [...] Read more.
This paper derives from research I conducted in the archives of the Vegetarian Society, in Manchester, in October 2011 on the figure of Beatrice Lindsay, a graduate from Girton College, Cambridge, who, in 1885, became the first female editor of the Society’s journal, the Dietetic Reformer and Vegetarian Messenger. In addition to her position as editor, Lindsay contributed a monthly column on “New Foods” in which she displayed her fluency with scientific terminology not simply to advocate the vegetarian diet, but to make the diet practicable for readers. I argue that her column uses the serial form of the periodical, which presents novel content within a regular structure, to shape inchoate vegetarianism: she gradually constituted the emerging diets, habits, and bodies of vegetarians by, each month, introducing readers to novel content (“new foods”) within a recurrent form. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
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94 KiB  
Article
Animal Bodies, Colonial Subjects: (Re)Locating Animality in Decolonial Thought
by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Societies 2015, 5(1), 1-11; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc5010001 - 24 Dec 2014
Cited by 99 | Viewed by 23965
Abstract
In this paper, I argue that animal domestication, speciesism, and other modern human-animal interactions in North America are possible because of and through the erasure of Indigenous bodies and the emptying of Indigenous lands for settler-colonial expansion. That is, we cannot address animal [...] Read more.
In this paper, I argue that animal domestication, speciesism, and other modern human-animal interactions in North America are possible because of and through the erasure of Indigenous bodies and the emptying of Indigenous lands for settler-colonial expansion. That is, we cannot address animal oppression or talk about animal liberation without naming and subsequently dismantling settler colonialism and white supremacy as political machinations that require the simultaneous exploitation and/or erasure of animal and Indigenous bodies. I begin by re-framing animality as a politics of space to suggest that animal bodies are made intelligible in the settler imagination on stolen, colonized, and re-settled Indigenous lands. Thinking through Andrea Smith’s logics of white supremacy, I then re-center anthropocentrism as a racialized and speciesist site of settler coloniality to re-orient decolonial thought toward animality. To critique the ways in which Indigenous bodies and epistemologies are at stake in neoliberal re-figurings of animals as settler citizens, I reject the colonial politics of recognition developed in Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s recent monograph, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford University Press 2011) because it militarizes settler-colonial infrastructures of subjecthood and governmentality. I then propose a decolonized animal ethic that finds legitimacy in Indigenous cosmologies to argue that decolonization can only be reified through a totalizing disruption of those power apparatuses (i.e., settler colonialism, anthropocentrism, white supremacy, and neoliberal pluralism) that lend the settler state sovereignty, normalcy, and futurity insofar as animality is a settler-colonial particularity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
213 KiB  
Article
Eating Animals to Build Rapport: Conducting Research as Vegans or Vegetarians
by Katie MacDonald and Kelly Struthers Montford
Societies 2014, 4(4), 737-752; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4040737 - 10 Dec 2014
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 6529
Abstract
Notions of hospitality, community, and the fostering of rapport and connection are foundational concerns for conducting research across difference. Drawing on methodological literature, this paper considers how access to various communities and “good” data is structured by the notion that in order to [...] Read more.
Notions of hospitality, community, and the fostering of rapport and connection are foundational concerns for conducting research across difference. Drawing on methodological literature, this paper considers how access to various communities and “good” data is structured by the notion that in order to develop rapport researchers accept the “food”, specifically “meat” offered by their hosts. When researchers are vegetarians or vegans, this can entail a conflict in which questions of hospitality, relationships, and responsibility to ethical commitments come to the fore. As such, we analyze methodological literature in which the logic of nonhuman animal sacrifice is considered a means to the ends of research through the development of “rapport”—often coded as an ethical relationship of respect to the participant. We draw on experiences of veg*n researchers to explore how this assumption functions to position the consumption of meat as a necessary undertaking when conducting research, and in turn, denies nonhuman animal subjecthood. We interrogate the assumption that culture and communities are static inasmuch as this literature suggests ways to enter and exit spaces leaving minimal impact, and that posits participants will not trust researchers nor understand their decisions against eating nonhuman animals. We argue that because food consumption is figured as a private and individual choice, animals are not considered subjects in research. Thus, we articulate a means to consider vegan and/or vegetarians politics, not as a marker of difference, but as an attempt to engage in ethical relationships with nonhuman animals. In so doing, we call for the inclusion of nonhuman animals in relationships of hospitality, and thereby attempt to politicize the practice of food consumption while conducting research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
119 KiB  
Article
Vegan Killjoys at the Table—Contesting Happiness and Negotiating Relationships with Food Practices
by Richard Twine
Societies 2014, 4(4), 623-639; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4040623 - 5 Nov 2014
Cited by 94 | Viewed by 30912
Abstract
This article reports upon research on vegan transition, which I bring into dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s figure of the killjoy. Ahmed’s work on affect and the feminist killjoy is found to be apt for considering contemporary vegans and their transgression of normative scripts [...] Read more.
This article reports upon research on vegan transition, which I bring into dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s figure of the killjoy. Ahmed’s work on affect and the feminist killjoy is found to be apt for considering contemporary vegans and their transgression of normative scripts of happiness and commensality in a dominant meat and dairy consuming culture. The decentring of joy and happiness is also found to be integral to the critical deconstructive work of the vegan killjoy. Ahmed’s ideas further complement the frame of practice theory that I draw upon to understand the process of transition especially in the sense of opposing the meanings of dominant practices. Although food and veganism are not commented upon by Ahmed, the vegan subject constitutes, I argue, a potent further example of what she terms an “affect alien” who must willfully struggle against a dominant affective order and community. Drawing upon interviews with 40 vegans based in the UK, I illustrate examples of contestation and negotiation by vegans and those close to them. The article finds in the figure of the killjoy not only a frame by which to partly understand the negotiation of relationships between vegans and non-vegans but also an opportunity for further intersectional labour between veganism and feminism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
74 KiB  
Article
Social Networks as a Coping Strategy for Food Insecurity and Hunger for Young Aboriginal and Canadian Children
by Benita Y. Tam, Leanne Findlay and Dafna Kohen
Societies 2014, 4(3), 463-476; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4030463 - 11 Sep 2014
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 9172
Abstract
Traditional foods and food sharing are important components of Aboriginal culture, helping to create, maintain, and reinforce social bonds. However, limitations in food access and availability may have contributed to food insecurity among Aboriginal people. The present article takes a closer examination of [...] Read more.
Traditional foods and food sharing are important components of Aboriginal culture, helping to create, maintain, and reinforce social bonds. However, limitations in food access and availability may have contributed to food insecurity among Aboriginal people. The present article takes a closer examination of coping strategies among food insecure households in urban and rural settings in Canada. This includes a comparative analysis of the role of social networks, institutional resources, and diet modifications as strategies to compensate for parent-reported child hunger using national sources of data including the Aboriginal Children’s Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Descriptive statistical analyses revealed that a majority of food insecure urban and rural Inuit, Métis, and off-reserve First Nations children and rural Canadian children coped with hunger through social support, while a majority of urban food insecure Canadian children coped with hunger through a reduction in food consumption. Seeking institutional assistance was not a common means of dealing with child hunger, though there were significant urban-rural differences. Food sharing practices, in particular, may be a sustainable reported mechanism for coping with hunger as such practices tend to be rooted in cultural and social customs among Aboriginal and rural populations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
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273 KiB  
Article
You Are How You Eat? Femininity, Normalization, and Veganism as an Ethical Practice of Freedom
by Megan A. Dean
Societies 2014, 4(2), 127-147; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4020127 - 10 Apr 2014
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 13076
Abstract
In this paper I argue that the practice of veganism is, or can be, a Foucauldian ethical practice of freedom. I begin by sketching out the problematization of alimentary practices within a normalizing patriarchal framework, which some feminists argue is dominant within contemporary [...] Read more.
In this paper I argue that the practice of veganism is, or can be, a Foucauldian ethical practice of freedom. I begin by sketching out the problematization of alimentary practices within a normalizing patriarchal framework, which some feminists argue is dominant within contemporary North American society. Within this problematization, eating—for many women—is a way to manage the body’s appearance and bring it into conformity with feminine norms, and also an ongoing opportunity to exercise the will over unruly bodily desires. I then consider the narratives of women who claim that veganism helped them to relinquish disordered eating habits, temper the emotional and psychological turmoil that surrounded their alimentary practices, and mitigate antagonism toward their own bodies. In short, the practice of veganism appears to have reproblematized eating for these women. Thus, I suggest, veganism can be an ethical practice of freedom: it can loosen the tight grip of patriarchal normalization as constituted in and through disordered eating habits, and constitute subjects that are “a little less governed” by this form of power. I conclude by considering objections to this thesis, and in particular, the concern that veganism is linked to healthism, another worrying form of normalization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)

Other

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106 KiB  
Essay
This Side of the Fence: Some Remarks on the Animal Liberation of the Anthropos
by Kris Forkasiewicz
Societies 2015, 5(2), 314-324; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc5020314 - 15 Apr 2015
Viewed by 4002
Abstract
Informed by body-phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory, this aphoristic essay comprises a consideration of some of the more dire consequences of human Empire-building among anthropic animals. The notion of human teleology, active beneath social class, gender, and other anthropic qualifiers, is theorized as [...] Read more.
Informed by body-phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory, this aphoristic essay comprises a consideration of some of the more dire consequences of human Empire-building among anthropic animals. The notion of human teleology, active beneath social class, gender, and other anthropic qualifiers, is theorized as a dead end, an abstraction translated into real power and propped up at the cost of actual bodyselves—fully corporeal living individuals—and attentiveness to their needs. In this context, animal liberation, usually referring to ending the domination of other animals at anthropic hands, is posited as pertinent to anthropic animality, especially under late modernity’s “desomatizing regime”. Animal liberation, it is held, speaks to each and every one of us, though in ways depending on the specificity of our lived situations, and unmasks the ultimate absurdity of attempts to overcome our animal condition, attempts historically coalescing precisely in human Empire. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
122 KiB  
Discussion
Animal Personhood in Mi’kmaq Perspective
by Margaret Robinson
Societies 2014, 4(4), 672-688; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc4040672 - 3 Dec 2014
Cited by 31 | Viewed by 26296
Abstract
The Mi’kmaq are the First Nation people that traditionally inhabited the eastern coast of North America. This article explores the Mi’kmaq cultural view of non-human animals as siblings and persons, including elements shaping the Mi’kmaq relation with animals such as the belief that [...] Read more.
The Mi’kmaq are the First Nation people that traditionally inhabited the eastern coast of North America. This article explores the Mi’kmaq cultural view of non-human animals as siblings and persons, including elements shaping the Mi’kmaq relation with animals such as the belief that animals sacrifice themselves for food, that human and animal spirits are eternal, and a belief in reincarnation. The role of reciprocity in the animal–human relationship is examined through the concepts of respect and honor, and the Mi’kmaq value of avoiding scarcity (netukulimk) is expanded to include non-human animals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Alimentary Relations, Animal Relations)
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