The geographies of everyday meat consumption: Foodscapes and the stubbornness of food practices

Keywords: Meat, consumption, social practice, everyday geographies, Norway
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 46

Abstract

The high levels of meat consumption in affluent societies are a defining part of the Anthropocene and at the core of global unsustainability. In order to confront overconsumption of meat, the entire chain from farm to fork needs to better understood. The growing literature on the geographies of meat has tended to focus on production and supply, while the everyday geographies of meat consumption has only recently attracted attention. As a niche within these studies, even less is known about efforts to reduce meat consumption and how these are shaped, enabled and constrained by socio-spatial context.

Based on a national survey and interviews in two rural and two urban settings, this paper studies the geographies of meat consumption and efforts towards meat reduction in Norway. It does so following a scalar logic. First, it consider regional differences in meat consumption, with particular attention towards rural-urban dimensions. Second, it zooms in on the geographies and political economies of everyday food practices, focusing in particular on food shopping and eating out. In doing so, we employ the concept of foodscapes to study the spatial intersection between the geographies of food provisioning systems and everyday meat consumption. We pay particular attention to the stubbornness of food practices and the potentials and barriers for eating less meat in a meat-intensive foodscapes.