Elena DELL'AGNESE, Università di Milano-Bicocca, Italy
When talking about the Anthropocene and climate change, the first thought goes to the use of fossil fuels and the different forms of alternative mobility that should be implemented to increase the sustainability of our lifestyles. On the other hand, there is a tendency to underestimate the importance of eating habits and, in particular, meat consumption.
Unlike other ways of eating, which do not include meat or other animal products, and for this reason have a specific name (vegetarianism, veganism), the consumption of meat is considered normal, natural, and necessary, and that is why it is not identified in a specific way, it is the way of eating of everyone. As Melanie Joy (2010) suggests, meat consumption is a habit, related to a food choice, and for this reason it also needs to be identified with a name, carnism. Carnism is also a "discourse", conveyed by education, advertising, popular culture, which make it appear to us that the habit of consuming the body of dead animals a taken-for-granted part of our lifestyle (dell'Agnese, 2021). Moreover, meat consumption has, over time, often been associated with the idea of affluence, and on this basis, it is increasingly popular outside the Western world as well. Yet, the breeding of animals in CAFOs, land deforestation to make room for the cultivation of their crops, and the consumption of water for such cultivation are all factors that have a very heavy influence on climate. Moreover, it is increasingly clear that the consumption of meat, especially if red meat, is not only not essential to the good health of the human body but is actually also potentially the cause of diseases such as heart attack or bowel cancer. Adopting an ecocritical geopolitics perspective, the paper aims to examine the factors that shape carnism as a discourse within popular culture, in order to understand how it is possible to modify this discourse, to promote a diet that is not only healthier, but also, and above all, more sustainable.
Mots clés : carnism|popular culture|meat consumption|ecocritical geopolitics
A104489Ed