Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
where they raise dogs just for the meat…they raise these special kind of dogs and
they slaughter [them]…and they sell the meat in the grocery stores out there.'
Knowledge was profoundly uneven, however, and there were many examples of
ignorance of basic information. The most spectacular example cropped up at the
end of the focus group:
SUSAN: Does anybody have any stories or has anyone ever heard of people having
sex with animals? In [a rural town], we used to hear stories about people
having sex with sheep.
IRENE: Yeah, you can get a sheep pregnant, but the lamb won't live once it's born.
LAURA: [mumbling] Half-human, half-animal.
Animal practices: socio-cultural context, family histories and
individual behaviour
Discussions about animal practices generated the richest commentary, the most
intense debate, and the most in-depth historical narratives of the focus group.
Interestingly, most of the discussion revolved around animal (meat) consumption,
including individual and family practices and perceptions, practices of other
cultures and the perceptions of those practices, and histories of animal
consumption. Within the general rubric of animal consumption, the conversation
ranged from individual and family consumption practices to those of other cultures,
from gendered and cultural knowledge to consideration of cultural and ethnic
survival, from the most mundane and innocuous family narratives (for example,
raising worms) to historical accounts of the significance of animal consumption to
household and cultural persistence. The strongest theme that emerged was the
necessity to eat meat—often of animals or animal parts devalued by mainstream
white society—in order to survive. The general rationale that meat is necessary to
survive is a common psychological mechanism for enabling humans to harm
animals while still seeing themselves as compassionate (Plous 1993), but one that
carries particular force for African-Americans given their historical and
contemporary oppression. Their perspectives from the margin also allowed them to
view the animal practices of other cultural groups with understanding rather than
condemnation, despite the conflict between such practices and their own forms of
animal consumption.
Individual practices: influences of generation and place
The practice of meat consumption by focus group members was framed in the
following ways: (1) what was explicitly or implicitly
eaten;
(2) what was explicitly or
implicitly
not eaten;
(3) what constitutes an 'appropriate' meat and/or consumable
animal in an (African-)American context; and (4) what does not. The social and
cultural construction of (food) animals and of the parts therein (such as gizzards,
tripe and the like) emerged as a fascinating topic and one that the discussants
