In the mid-nineteenth century, animal flesh was subject to a range of treatments in an effort to preserve meat grown on the fringes of the British Empire (in Australia and New Zealand, South and North America) for consumption in urban centers in Britain. Focusing on the publications of the British Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufacture, and allied sources such as the Lancet, this article demonstrates that the more a preservative technique transformed animal flesh, the more likely consumers—often presumed to hail from the poor and working classes—were to resist it. This resulted in frustration among elite “men of science and industry,” who held that tinned, canned, dried, or chemically treated meats were a “great boon” to precisely these classes. By refusing to consume industrial charqui, which was salted and dried, or by purchasing imported tinned Australian beef or mutton only unwillingly, the lower classes frustrated the ambitions of would-be tastemakers in the Society of Arts, who interpreted consumer resistance in their articles and published reports as the lower orders’ refusal to act in their own best interest. Importantly, it was the very changeability of meat—its figurative malleability as well as its material inconstancy—that enabled industrial transformations, consumer resistance, and its cultural symbolisms, making it a particularly rich object of study for historians of science.

中文翻译：

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肉的形状

在 19 世纪中叶，为了保存在大英帝国边缘（澳大利亚和新西兰、南美洲和北美洲）生长的肉类，供英国城市中心食用，动物肉经过了一系列处理。本文重点关注英国艺术、商业和制造业促进协会的出版物以及《柳叶刀》等相关来源，表明防腐剂技术对动物肉的转化越多，消费者就越有可能——通常被认为来自穷人和工人阶级——要抵制它。这导致了精英“科学和工业人士”的沮丧，他们认为罐头、罐头、干肉或经过化学处理的肉正是这些阶级的“大福音”。拒绝食用经过盐渍和干燥的工业炭，或者只是不情愿地购买进口的澳大利亚罐装牛肉或羊肉，下层阶级挫败了艺术协会潜在的时尚引领者的雄心壮志，他们在文章和发表的报告中将消费者的抵制解释为下层阶级拒绝按照自己的意愿行事最大利益。重要的是，正是肉的可变性——其象征性的可塑性和材料的无常性——促成了工业转型、消费者抵制及其文化象征，使其成为科学史学家的一个特别丰富的研究对象。他们在他们的文章和发表的报告中将消费者的抵抗解释为下级拒绝为自己的最佳利益行事。重要的是，正是肉的可变性——其象征性的可塑性和材料的无常性——促成了工业转型、消费者抵制及其文化象征，使其成为科学史学家的一个特别丰富的研究对象。他们在他们的文章和发表的报告中将消费者的抵抗解释为下级拒绝为自己的最佳利益行事。重要的是，正是肉的可变性——其象征性的可塑性和材料的无常性——促成了工业转型、消费者抵制及其文化象征，使其成为科学史学家的一个特别丰富的研究对象。