Performing meat reduction: exploring the experiences, approaches, and challenges of Norwegian meat reducers.

Keywords: Sustainable consumption, meat consumption, meat reduction, eating, flexitarian, practice theory
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 58

Abstract

Consumers in Western societies are increasingly called upon to reduce their consumption of meat to help alleviate the many environmental consequences of industrial livestock production. This paper contributes a nuanced understanding of the experiences, approaches, and challenges faced by people who attempt to reduce their consumption of meat. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with twenty Norwegian meat reducers. By framing consumption as embedded in social practices, rather than driven by the attitudes, values and choices of individuals, this paper highlights how broader cultural, social and material condition’s structure eating and hence meat consumption. A main finding is that through processes of socialisation and habituation, performances of eating often conforms to the prevailing conventions inscribed in socio-material environment in which they are embedded, thus, emphasising the influence of social norms and material affordances in enabling and complicating meat reduction. The article proposes that a radical change towards meat-reduced diets seems unlikely without fundamental changes to the social, physical and economic structures that reproduce meat consumption as the appropriate, easy and cheapest way to eat in Norway