Political Geography of Protein

Abstract

Sociological and anthropological research on the consumption of meat and dairy demonstrates that most societies are meat cultures, in which the consumption of animals and animal products such as dairy and eggs is socially and culturally completely normalized (Potts 2016; Joy 2010; Fiddes 1991). Because meat and dairy are routine practices and the dominant ideology (Fox 2018), studies of the consumption of animal proteins have focused on “alternative diets”, notably vegetarianism and veganism (=veg*nism), challenging the hegemonic status of meat and dairy (Twigg 1983; Beardsworth & Keil 1992; Ruby 2012).

Meat and dairy (non)consumption is connected with political identities and practice (Jylhä et al. 2019), linked to processes of social distinction (Paddock 2015), gender ideologies (Rothgerber, 2013; Sikka 2019), and spatial and cultural belonging (Clarke 2008). Similar to the dynamics around climate change, and recently the politics of COVID-19, the environmental aspects of meat and dairy seem to be increasingly politically contested, emerging as a new fault-line of political polarization. This polarization revolves around cleavages of individual liberties versus collective responsibilities (Oleschuk 2019; McCright et al 2016), but also the uneven geographies of sustainability transitions (Bridge et al 2013).

This growing contestation of the consumption and production of meat and dairy between groups of consumers is also related to the specific spatial context in which people live, work and identify with. There is a growing literature that links political polarization more generally to the diverging socio-demographic composition of urban versus rural areas, but also connected to place-based political processes (Johnston 2019; Huijsmans et al 2021). These contextual effects have been associated with diverging political trust between rural and urban areas (Mitsch et al 2021); regional identities (De Winter & Tursan 2013) but also with specific place-based political topics such as placing of wind power parks (Otteni & Weisskircher 2021). This paper sketches the landscapes of production and consumption of meat and dairy and studies how they come become connected to political polarization. Using a combination of GIS, mixed effect regression analysis, and critical content analysis of social media data this paper starts to develop a political geographical approach to the protein transition.