Biopower and an ecology of genes : seeing livestock as meat via genetics

Holloway, Lewis

Abstract

This book chapter focuses on some of the implications of what has been represented as a radical change in livestock breeding for thinking about meat in relation to living farm animals: the use of genetic techniques in selecting breeding animals. The chapter draws on Foucault’s theorisation of biopower to describe some of the key dimensions of this shift, articulating this concept with an argument that breeders’ engagement with these techniques is part of a changing political ecology of livestock farming at the inter-related scales of the gene, the body, the herd or flock, the farm and the meat production system.

Citation

Holloway, L. (2015). Biopower and an ecology of genes : seeing livestock as meat via genetics. In J. Emel, & H. Neo (Eds.), Political Ecologies of Meat (178-194). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315818283

• Online Publication Date: May 26, 2015
• Publication Date: May 15, 2015
• Deposit Date: Aug 19, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 19, 2016
• Journal: Political ecologies of meat
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 178-194
• Book Title: Political Ecologies of Meat
• Chapter Number: 11
• ISBN: 9781317816409; 9780415736947; 9780415736954
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315818283
• Keywords: Livestock
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/442303