ABSTRACT

Meat is both a loved and hated everyday consumption object across cultures and has become an icon throughout history. This article traces meat’s trajectory in the Global North and identifies four periods that contribute to its iconicity. Meat’s iconic status has been shaped by discourses on health, morality, ecology, class, science, and gender. It has been central to colonialism, wars, the Industrial Revolution, and scientific developments. We pinpoint the role of marketplace actors – from butchers to slaughterhouses to political institutions to corporations and scientists – in making meat a contested object and a marketplace icon. We conclude the article with a call for more research outside the Global North. We also invite researchers and policymakers to consider existing scholarly work that acknowledges a view of nature that is grounded in interspecies reciprocity, which can resolve enduring moral tensions that rely on rigid binary oppositions between humans and animals.

摘要

肉类在不同文化中既是又爱又恨的日常消费品，并已成为贯穿整个历史的标志。本文追溯了肉类在全球北方的发展轨迹，并确定了促成其标志性的四个时期。关于健康、道德、生态、阶级、科学和性别的论述塑造了肉类的标志性地位。它一直是殖民主义、战争、工业革命和科学发展的核心。我们指出了市场参与者——从屠夫到屠宰场，从政治机构到公司和科学家——在使肉类成为有争议的对象和市场图标方面的作用。我们在文章结尾呼吁在全球北方之外开展更多研究。