Meat Consumption in Switzerland the Role of Emotions in Practices

Appetite 150 (2020) 104637 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Appetite journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet Promoting ‘pro’, ‘low’, and ‘no’ meat consumption in Switzerland: The role of emotions in practices T ∗ Marlyne Sahakian , Laurence Godin1, Irène Courtin Institute of Sociological Research, University of Geneva, Boulevard du Pont-d'Arve 40, 1204, Geneva, Switzerland ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Meat consumption has become a contentious issue among the Swiss population. The emotional character of the Meat consumption debates surrounding the necessity for a change of habits, namely a reduction in consumption and a shift in the Emotions kind of meat we eat, reveals its particular place in our societies: as a symbolic food with roots in our affective Morality economies, as involved in the creation of a shared culture and national identity, and as a political object used to Healthy and sustainable diets defend different views. To date, research in sustainable consumption has given much attention to environmental- and animal-friendly groups and their practices. However, certain interest groups have been voicing the right to meat, or promoting alternative forms of meat consumption. In this paper, we seek to understand the affective dimension of ‘no’, ‘low’ and ‘pro’ meat consumption initiatives in the Swiss context. Based on a qualitative study and an understanding of emotions as part of social practices, we draw out what affects and related moralities are being mobilized by prescribers and how they are picked up in practice. By doing so, we contribute to further understanding the emotions and moral registers linked to different approaches to meat (non)consumption, their role in promoting certain practices over others, as well as the dynamics that make reducing meat consumption so controversial. We conclude by discussing the need to take emotions and related moralities seriously as a crucial step towards understanding opportunities for ‘healthy and sustainable’ food practices. 1. Introduction between ‘no’ and ‘pro’ meat approaches, as well as ‘low’ meat and its different forms, from gastronomy to alternative proteins. Over the last decades, meat consumption has become an ever-more Discourses aimed at influencing meat consumption tend to rely on contentious issue in relation to health and environmental impacts. Red emotions and affects in their communication strategies, which often meat has consistently been found to have a high environmental impact, reflects a moral stance. In this paper, we aim to untangle the various not least in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (Herrero et al., 2016; positions in the public debates in Switzerland about the transformation Poore & Nemecek, 2018), while increasing disease risk, such as colon of meat consumption, the moralities and values they rely on, and the cancer (Forouzanfar et al., 2015). In 2019, the successive publications emotions and affects they seek to elicit, to better understand the af- of the EAT-Lancet Commission report on healthy diets and sustainable fective dimension of meat consumption practices. We do so by ana- food systems (Willett et al., 2019) and the special report on Climate lyzing various initiatives related to either ‘no’, ‘low’ or ‘pro’ meat Change and Land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consumption in the Swiss context and the food prescriptions they are (IPCC, 2019) brought the need for reducing meat consumption at the tied up with. We draw out what emotions and related moralities are front stage of the debate on sustainability and food. To date, regarding being mobilized by prescribers, and look at how these emotions are meat, research has given much attention to environmental- and animal- performed or expressed by people engaged in different forms of (no) friendly groups and their practices. Yet, moving towards healthy and meat consumption. In this way, we contribute to further understanding sustainable diets as a normative goal requires taking the voices of pro the moral registers and emotions linked to different approaches to meat consumption advocates seriously. More research is needed on meat, their role in promoting certain practices over others, as well as understanding different initiatives aimed towards promoting or dis- the dynamics that make reducing meat production and consumption suading the consumption of animal products, namely the opposition such a contentious issue. ∗ Corresponding author. Institute of Sociological Research, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M. Sahakian), [email protected] (L. Godin), [email protected] (I. Courtin). 1 Now at: Université Laval, Department of Agri-Food Economics and Consumption Sciences, Paul-Comtois Pavillion, office no4413, 2425 rue de l’Agriculture, Québec, Quebec, G1V 0A6, Canada. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.104637 Received 7 October 2019; Received in revised form 29 January 2020; Accepted 20 February 2020 Available online 25 February 2020 0195-6663/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. M. Sahakian, et al. Appetite 150 (2020) 104637 We start by introducing our conceptual framework, rooted in proposes that practices are made of understandings and rules, but also Norbert Elias' notion of an affective economy and based on relating what he terms teleoaffective structures, defined as: ‘…a range of prescriptions to social practices and emotions, to then focus on the case normativized and hierarchically ordered ends, projects and tasks, to of meat consumption in relation to emotions and morality. We in- varying degrees allied with normativized emotions and even moods’ (p. troduce our methodological approach, involving mixed methods, fol- 80). Emotions are thus embedded into the goal people might try to lowed by a section where empirical results are presented around dif- reach, and the means by which they do so. As such, emotions are central ferent ‘pro, and low’ as well as ‘no’ meat consumption initiatives, and to how practices play out, deeply embedded in contexts and con- how they relate to consumer practices. We conclude with a discussion stitutive of relationships between people, objects, and their environ- of the relevance of Elias' ‘process of civilization’ thesis to meat con- ment. This is aligned with Scheer’s (2012) work, whereby emotions can sumption today, in light of debates around planetary and human health, be viewed as a practical engagement with the world, emerging from as well as animal wellbeing. ‘bodily dispositions conditioned by a social context, which always has cultural and historical specificity’ (p. 193). For Scheer, emotions are 2. Conceptual approach part of practices in three ways: emotive expressions are performative, and thus practices express emotions; emotions are also communicative, 2.1. Food prescriptions and practices as part of an ‘affective economy’ in that they engender a form of exchange with others; lastly, emotions can be mobilized in practices, as a form of mood management. Fol- In his seminal work The Civilizing Process (1978 [1939]), sociologist lowing Sahakian (2019), we posit that studying emotions in practices Norbert Elias argues that in the Late Middle Ages, European royal can help uncover how people understand priorities in terms of how courts became a breeding place for new codes of conduct or a new things should or ought to be, revealing tensions or harmony in the in- étiquette, which revolved around pleasing the higher orders such as terpretation of different prescriptions which oftentimes seek to mobilize kings and queens through the suppression of the ‘animal character’ of emotions. courtesans. This progressive distancing of people and their ‘animality’ is The study of emotions, tied up to prescribing one form of food what Elias designates through the concept of ‘civilizing process’. This consumption over another, relates to how different moralities with re- translated into evolving table manners which gradually make it un- gard to meat consumption have a hold on how meat consumption acceptable to spit at the table and eat with hands, or by efforts to erase practices play out at the household level. Following Zigon (2007),a bodily odours and public defecation. While being critical of the notion distinction must be made ‘between the unreflective moral dispositions of ‘civilizing’ as a normative goal, Elias argues that the process of ci- of everyday life and the conscious ethical tactics performed in the vilization operates through what he terms an ‘affective economy’ in ethical moment’ (p. 148). For him, an ‘ethical moment’ represents a which appropriate conduct in relation to the body is enforced through moral breakdown, during which conscious choices must be made in the exchange of emotions, particularly anxiety, shame and blame, order to ‘return to the unreflective state of being moral’ (p. 133), or which serve as sanctions for allegedly inappropriate conduct. The ‘af- conforming to the ethical expectations of one's social group through fective economy’ is thus a heuristic device for understanding how and ‘ethical tactics’. Emotions, in prescriptions and practices, can play a role in what way certain codes of conduct are promoted over others, and in that moral breakdown, as part of an ‘affective economy’ in that they with what emotional handles. lie in the interdependencies between people, practices and prescrip- The process of civilization was built through the development of tions. Our focus on ‘pro, low or no’ meat consumption initiatives in ever more complex rules around table manners and, more generally, Switzerland is an effort to see how unreflective moral dispositions are bodily self-control. The rules were formalized, among other places, in either maintained or contested, and the role of emotions as a potential books made of either blunt statements or amusing rhymes about what is trigger towards intervening in and changing practices – towards the good and bad, including how to consume animal products. Elias in- normative goal of reduced meat consumption. troduces the reader to one such rule book. The Distichs of Cato (3rd or 4th century AD) were part of a popular medieval schoolbook for 2.2.

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