To eat or not to eat meat? That has become a central question in the sustainability conversation. There is growing scientific consensus that the global meat consumption issocially and ecologically unsustainable. Planetary and human health concerns aside, there is also a moral dimension to meat, that is, the rights and responsibilities we have towards the animals that make the meat. While there is, indeed, mounting ethical discomfort with meat consumption, scientific and public moral inquiries tend to omit on-farm perspectives. This thesis zooms in on the moral sustainability of cattle farming and does so from the perspective of lived experience. Two Swedish cattle farms are selected as case studies and the question is how rearing animals for food is morally possible. Combining discursive and non-discursive methods of research, I uncover the narratives behind the farms’ different farming practices. For the analysis, I build an eclectic conceptual framework that draws on practice theory, the concept of morality, and human-animal studies. I show how human values, the physical environment of the farm, and understandings of animality interplay to create a specific farming practice. In these practices, certain human-animal relationships are possible while others are impossible. The nature of the human-animal relationships has implications for what is perceived as moral when animals are reared for human food. By showing how ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in our relationships with nonhumans form, the study broadens the meat discussion beyond concerns for human and planetary health. The aim is to equip the reader with tools to reflect over what human-animal relationship the meat we eat represents and, ultimately, what relationship we want it to represent.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-192715 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Wernersson, Hanna |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Stockholm Resilience Centre |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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