Production and reproduction of the contested meat hegemony

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.