[lit-ideas] Re: Alternative food sources
- From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 12:27:22 +0900
On 2004/08/30, at 11:40, Mike Geary wrote:
> My question to the learned folk
> was then and is now why does this seem unethical to me whereas killing
> a
> cute little calf for a veal cutlet is just fine -- mighty fine, in
> fact? Is
> it just the newness of the idea, or is there some ethical question at
> stake/steak here?
Similar questions were pondered by British anthropologists Edmund Leach
and Mary Douglas back in the 1960s. The theories they came up with
point to degree of domestication as the critical factor. At one extreme
are animals who share human space and are treated as human beings
(given personal names, seen as having human emotions, having stories
told about them in which they appear as sentient actors, etc.). To
consume these animals is tabooed because it seems cannibalistic. At the
other extreme are animals considered totally wild, utterly beyond the
cultural pale. These, too, are tabooed as living violations of the
social and cultural order of things. Animals freely consumed are those
between these extremes. The preferred types for everyday meals are
domesticated but treated as literally inhuman, having no moral or
emotional claim on those who consume them. Special or celebratory meals
may involve game, animals which are, in effect, on the margins between
the domestic and taboo.
Cultural differences, then, are a matter of where the lines are drawn
and how strongly people feel about them. Eating other human beings is
normally taboo; it can, however, be justified by considering the dinner
inhuman, i.e., not one of us. In some places insects and grubs are,
while inhuman, co-inhabitants in the human life space and thus freely
consumed. In others they are considered dirty/polluting intruders, too
wild and filthy to be stomached. Dogs can be "Man's best friend," whose
shared humanity makes eating them appalling. Conversely, they can be
seen on the same moral plane as pigs or chickens, as they were,
traditionally, in Korea and China.
In any case, an anthropologist confronted with Mike's question, why
should beef or chicken grown in vats seem disgusting while the cute
little calf seems delicious? would ask, What is the system of
categories in which the vat-grown variety is seen as either too close
to home or too wild, while the calf is, like a little pig or chicken,
close enough to be comfortable but distant enough to be eaten?
The solution is left to the reader.
John L. McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama, Japan 220-0006
Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email mccreery@xxxxxxx
"Making Symbols is Our Business"
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