Modes of slaughtering as a question of survival and living-together

Abstract

Sheep and goats in Addis Ababa die three ways: They are either home-slaughtered in private compounds or slaughtered in a state-owned abattoir historically located in the middle of the city which is supplying urban meatscapes (Ahmad 2018). Thirdly they are increasingly redirected towards new private (export) abattoirs at the urban outskirts, passing the middle of the city only as meat on the way to the airport and to some supermarkets. Often labelled as ‘modern’ those slaughterhouses reflect urban and agricultural policies of re-directing livestock out of the city and more towards export markets, replacing sheep and goat meat in the city through a ‘poultry revolution’ to be able to increase important revenues. Sheep and goats are thus becoming a contested resource and those who value their death differently in the city (as well as pastoralists and peasants who raise them) are strangely related. Home slaughtering is not openly called illegal, as it is a too integral part of urban life. In times of crisis and war, slaughtering and sharing animals seems to become on the contrary even more important and people turn towards sheep and goats as alive cattle is already widely excluded from the urban landscape. However, the animals are increasingly labelled illegal in certain spaces, and people who work with them are suddenly illegal and ‘out of place’ too. While for those who value killing at home, the animals are important to live-well together, for those who make a living out of them, they are a way to survive in the city. While killing sheep and goats becomes increasingly a privilege of the rich, traders are struggling to keep the animals in the city and feel that they and their animals “are treated like waste”. After Covid, re-ordering livestock landscapes in the name of fighting zoonotic diseases, was another narrative to assign animals and people to ‘safer’ spaces. Many who make a living on markets are wondering if they will be relocated, as some markets have been disassembled and re-assembled into bigger markets at the ever moving seems of the city. Every market relocation is a dis-entanglement of human relations, human-animal relations, and more (scavenger birds and hyenas for example play an important role in cleaning market spaces). However, relationships do not just disappear overnight, some find a way to survive differently. Some markets for example have moved but still relate as a community to places that are long gone. Others are becoming mobile and occupy temporary spaces– close to those who want to kill. How is something as deadly as slaughtering so intricately connected to lively spaces and decides about the ongoingness (Haraway 2016) of urban livestock, human-animal relations, and the lives of people who care for and about sheep and goats? Starting from different modes of slaughtering, I will think about how dying differently in the middles (or not) is related to how living-together is imagined and redone.