Moralizing meat consumption: Bringing food and feeling into education for sustainable development

Abstract

This article critiques the way the topic of meat and its consumption is addressed in geography education within the remit of education for sustainable development (ESD). We argue that current approaches perpetuate normative food discourse by: (a) framing participation in the food system solely in terms of consumption; (b) simplifying and moralizing food systems as 'good' or 'bad'; and (c) largely omitting animals from a discussion of meat and agriculture. As a result, students learn that their role is to consume 'good' not 'bad' meat, but are ill-equipped to analyse the politicaleconomic, cultural and affective dimensions of food. Meat and consumption topics, although rarely addressed, fall under the broader pedagogy of ESD. Although emancipatory approaches to ESD explore contradictions inherent in and personal aspects of sustainability, ESD in practice often leads to binary schemata of 'right' and 'wrong'. Based on our qualitative review of geography curricula in Austria and Germany (Lower Saxony and Bremen), we find that they neglect meat production and consumption, but that these subjects can be addressed within broader topics about sustainability and agricultural land use. Interviews with secondary school teachers and students indicate that ESD ignores the interpersonal, relational and more-than-human elements of food systems. However, we show that students still rank animal welfare as an important component of sustainability. This indicates that they are influenced by education beyond institutional settings and, furthermore, highlights opportunities for making students aware of the visceral (dis)connections they make between taste and political economy. Finally, we suggest future directions for ESD in order that these links can be explored, probing students to develop their own ethics of the gut.

The Contested Space of Animals in Education: A Response to the “Animal Turn” in Education for Sustainable Development

“…It is in the above roughly outlined conceptual terrain that we find the two articles "Moralizing meat consumption: Bringing food and feeling into education for sustainable development" [28] and "A posthuman approach to human-animal relationships: advocating critical pluralism" [29]. I anticipate that forcing these two different texts together in a critical review may be perceived as enacting a form of discursive violence on both.…”

“…There are divergent voices within the field, but a core tenet of ESD has unfolded around a critique of its perceived normativity stipulating what sustainable development "is" and how education addressing problems of unsustainability "should" be carried out (see, for instance, [34]). Bruckner and Kowasch [28] (p. 5) even raise a concern that ESD will be "mis-educative" because "pre-determined actions for a specific future reduce possibilities for students to act on their own initiative and develop their own ideas and projects." In a similar vein, Lindgren and Öhman draw on a tradition of a "pluralistic" approach to ESD, driven by a skepticism of an education "that serves a specified end" [29] (p. 1), and that rather promotes an "education of participation" open to conflicting views.…”

“…With posthumanism, anthropocentrism in education has shifted from being a taken-for-granted normality to, if not an outright bad word, at least a contested position demanding argumentation, reflection, and debate. As a shorthand for manifesting an enlightened distance to anthropocentrism, analytic focus on more-than-human relationships is advocated by an increasing body of scholarship in education and elsewhere, including the two articles addressed here [28,29].…”

“…Bruckner and Kowasch's article [28], bringing together food geographies, affect studies, and ESD, is an empirical investigation of how the topic of meat and meat consumption is addressed in geography education in Germany and Austria involving students aged 10-18. Data were produced through geography/economics curricula analyses (comprising eight curricula), a large-scale quantitative survey (comprising 481 student respondents), and qualitative interviews (individual and group interviews) with students, teachers, and also with seven meat-producing farmers from "educational farms"; i.e., farms hosting study visits by school classes.…”

“…The way education theory and practice explicitly or implicitly acknowledge the problem of animals in education, thus, has consequences for the life conditions of both animals and humans in and beyond institutionalized settings of teaching and learning, as well as for fraught society/nature demarcations at large. As we shall see, this problem complex is made visible in particular ways in contested spaces of ESD.Recognizing the wide range of scholarly and scholar-activist work on animals in education (e.g., [11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]), the present paper provides a critical response to two particular co-authored contributions to the nascent area of animals in ESD research: Bruckner and Kowasch's article "Moralizing meat consumption: Bringing food and feeling into education for sustainable development" [28], and Lindgren and Öhman's article "A posthuman approach to human-animal relationships: advocating critical pluralism" [29]. I consider these two articles as particularly interesting contributions to the debate of animals in education for several reasons.…”