Politics and culture (pillar IV)
In this building block, researchers will analyze the strategies that corporations and interest groups in the German meat industry pursue in comparison to those used by civil society organizations and the state. With a view to civil society, our research focuses on the production and reproduction of a culture that corresponds to the production, sales, and consumption of meat goods. This meat culture and its upstream production of meat are currently facing a growing challenge in civil society. For example, the public is increasingly questioning husbandry, climate compatibility, and working conditions in meat production, while meat consumption is facing more and more criticism as unhealthy, ecologically dubious, and unethical. Companies and industrial organizations respond with information and PR campaigns as well as sustainability strategies.
With regard to the state, we will look at the role of managers in meat plants and their lobbyists in shaping public opinion and parliamentary lawmaking, how they deal with political parties and public administrators, and how they cooperate with public institutions (ministries, governmental offices, etc.) in different areas. Above all, we are looking at political support and economic funding for the production and sale of meat products and public communication on nutrition. Overall, we want to clarify the role of the meat industry in Germany, culturally and politically, in laying the groundwork for sustainable and socially just development.
Production and reproduction of the contested meat hegemony (subproject 5)
Coordinator: Dr. Christian Stache
In this subproject, we will look at the political, discursive, and cultural strategies used by corporations in the German meat industry with regard to members of civil society (e.g., unions, NGOs, social movements) and the public at large. On the one hand, the goal is to ascertain how companies, interest groups, and industry media organize, communicate, and shape cultural forms, subjectivities, and ways of thinking and living in society that harmonize with the sale and consumption of meat goods (meat hegemony); on the other hand, we want to determine how companies in the meat value creation-chain and industry associations express their interests to society by means of communication and marketing or political and public relations work and respond to political and cultural challenges to the meat industry from civil society. Product innovations, new technologies and markets for plant-based goods, the spread of vegan and vegetarian lifestyles, socioecological problems in meat production and distribution, and protests by labor organizations, personnel, and new social movements—for example, ecological or animal rights’ movements—could undermine the meat hegemony. But they are also an opportunity for modernization.
The relation of the German meat industry to the state (subproject 6)
Coordinator: Klara Kolhoff, MSc
The subproject is looking at strategies by corporations and associations in the German meat industry in response to political and state actors as well as the participation of corporations and associations in governmental regulation procedures. Of interest here is, among other things, the processes of support, financing, and communication. We will take a special look at legal regulations of (transgressive) meat production, meat sale, and labor markets in Germany. Above all, we want to consider how economic players take part concretely in governmental resolutions. We will also analyze which information is made available to the public regarding political processes. With regard to the entire project, we will research the role of sustainability in decisions about governmental regulation of production methods and official information on consumption patterns.