Matthew Cole

The Conceptual Separation of Food and Animals in Childhood

Abstract Nonhuman animals are primarily defined according to their form of relation with human beings, which broadly depends on the perceived utility of those animals to humans. These relations may be analyzed to generate typologies, membership of which circumscribes the probable fate of nonhuman animals when they enter into contact with humans. However, these judgments of utility and category membership are contingent and socially constructed, as demonstrated by cultural and historical variability in the species and individual animals assigned to particular types. This paper explores how the combination of childhood literary and film traditions relating to animals and associated promotional food tie-ins aimed at children contribute to a food socialization process whereby children learn to conceptually distance the animals they eat from those with whom they have an emotional bond or for whom they feel ethically responsible. In so doing, we develop a theoretical scheme for the differentiated positioning of animals.

Asceticism and hedonism in research discourses of veg*anism

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the dominance of an ascetic discourse of veg*anism in social research literature, and to relate it to a dominant hierarchical ordering of Western diets (to refer collectively to veganism and vegetarianism).Design/methodology/approach – A review of the extant social research literature on veg*anism was undertaken in order to discern whether a consistent type of descriptive language existed. This facilitated an understanding of the way in which that language is constitutive of research generated understandings of veg*anism.Findings – An ascetic discourse of veg*anism is dominant in social research. This is reflected in the phraseology used by authors. Typical descriptive terms of a veg*an diet include “strict”, “restrictive”, or “avoidance”. This ascetic discourse reproduces the hierarchical ordering of Western diets such that veg*anism is denigrated and made to seem “difficult” and abnormal.Research limitations/implications – Veg*anism arguably p...

The Discursive Representation of Nonhuman Animals in a Culture of Denial

Our paradoxical relationship with other animals is most apparent in relation to whether we consider them to be ‘food’ or ‘friends’ (Masson 2003; Spencer et al. 2006; Jepson 2008; Cole and Stewart 2010). Rabbits, for example, may be perceived as ‘pets’ or ‘food’, ‘vermin’, ‘entertainment’ or laboratory ‘equipment’, depending on circumstances (Stewart and Cole 2009).1 While some animals are seen as essential parts of our emotional lives and granted subjectivity, others are viewed and treated as objects. This is despite the fact that objectified animals are those with whom we have the most intimate of all relationships: the incorporation of their flesh, eggs or bodily secretions into our own bodies. Consequently, those animals with whom we have our closest relationships are reduced to ‘animal machines’ (Harrison 1964). As individuals, these animals and their conditions of life and death are usually invisible to us although exceptionally, as we will discuss later, ‘farmed’ animals may act in ways that make it harder for us to deny their capacity for individual agency. The difficulty of sustaining a subject-object distinction is also manifest in the attempt to maintain the objectification of ‘food animals’ at the same time as appearing to grant them subjectivity, in the ‘happy meat’ phenomenon (Cole 2011; and see e.g. http://www.happymeats.co.uk/ or http://www.wellhungmeat.com/index.php). This is achieved through allowing selective visibility of the lives and deaths of these animals. In constructing some animals as subjects, or more accurately quasi-subjects who approximate to human subjectivity and others as objects, we categorize them depending on our use for them.

From employment exchange to Jobcentre Plus: the changing institutional context of unemployment

The importance of employment exchanges in the governance of mass unemployment in the 1930s presented social researchers with a rich site for the investigation of the meaning of unemployment from a governmental perspective, or more precisely, of how that meaning is encoded into social spaces. Comparing writing from the 1930s and earlier with my own contemporary research in Jobcentres, Benefits Agencies and Jobcentre Plus offices facilitates an understanding of how that meaning, and its literally concrete means of deployment, has shifted. Observation conducted in these institutional spaces adds an empirical dimension to extant discursive analyses of the governance of unemployment. Broadly, there has been a move from an overt, gendered stigmatization of being without paid work as a moral failing deserving of penance in the 1930s employment exchange, to an attempt to discursively rearticulate unemployment with a mainstream nexus of work-consumerism in Jobcentre Plus. These changes are also indicative of broader societal shifts in the values ascribed to work and consumerism, and the ways in which a governmentally consecrated subjectivity can be achieved.

‘A new life in the countryside awaits’*: interactive lessons in the rural utopia in ‘farming’ simulation games

ABSTRACT This paper critically analyses the legitimation of exploitative human–nonhuman animal relations in online ‘farming’ simulation games, especially the game Hay Day. The analysis contributes to a wider project of critical analyses of popular culture representations of nonhuman animals. The paper argues that legitimation is effected in Hay Day and cognate games through: the construction of idyllic rural utopias in gameplay, imagery, and soundscape; the depiction of anthropomorphized nonhumans who are complicit in their own subjection; the suppression of references to suffering, death, and sexual reproduction among ‘farmed’ animals; and the colonialist transmission of Western norms of nonhuman animal use and food practices among the global audience of players. Hay Day thereby resonates with the wider cultural legitimation of nonhuman animal exploitation through establishing emotional connections with idealized representations of nonhuman animals at the same time as they inhibit the development of awareness and empathy about the exploitation of real nonhuman animals.

Critical animal and media studies: Expanding the understanding of oppression in communication research

Critical and communication studies have traditionally neglected the oppression conducted by humans towards other animals. However, our (mis)treatment of other animals is the result of public consent supported by a morally speciesist-anthropocentric system of values. Speciesism or anthroparchy, as much as any other mainstream ideologies, feeds the media and at the same time is perpetuated by them. The goal of this article is to remedy this neglect by introducing the subdiscipline of Critical Animal and Media Studies. Critical Animal and Media Studies takes inspiration both from critical animal studies – which is so far the most consolidated critical field of research in the social sciences addressing our exploitation of other animals – and from the normative-moral stance rooted in the cornerstones of traditional critical media studies. The authors argue that the Critical Animal and Media Studies approach is an unavoidable step forward for critical media and communication studies to engage with the expanded circle of concerns of contemporary ethical thinking.

Network architecture and radio resource management for satellite digital multimedia broadcast system [internetworking and resource management in satellite systems series]

How to deliver rich multimedia content to mobile users in a resource-efficient manner is a great challenge to the communication society. The Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcast (SDMB) system has emerged as a promising solution on the efficient delivery of the Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS) by implementing a satellite-based broadcast service to complement the 3G and beyond 3G terrestrial mobile cellular networks. The SDMB covers large parts of Europe by integrating both mobile networks and satellite networks. This paper presents a picture of the SDMB system focusing on Its interworking and Radio Resource Management (RRM) Refereeing of this contribution was handled by M. DeSanctis. Manuscript received March 9, 2006; revised June 21, 2006. Released for publication April 27, 2007. Authoras Current Address: L. Liang, L. Fan, H. Du, Z. Sun and B.G. Evans, CCSR, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XW, UK; C. Sener and N. Chuberre, Alcatel Space, 12 rue de la Baume, 75008, Paris, France; M. Fitch, British Telecommunications, Public limited Company, BT, Exact (831), 81 Newgate Street, London ECIA 7AJ, UK; M. Cole, LogicalCMG UK Limited, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW I ZPL, UK; T. Boivin, Alcatel CIT. 8 rue de la Baume, 75008, Paris, France; and E. Buniout, Motorola Semiconductor SAS, Avenue General Eisenhower, BPI1029, 31023 Toulouse. France. 0885/8985/07/ USA

Vegaphobia: derogatory discourses of veganism and the reproduction of speciesism in UK national newspapers†

25.00 Q02007 IEEE issues and solutions. It first presents an overview of the SDMB system; then the network architecture and interfaces for the interworking between the SDMB and the terrestrial network are specified. To support the interworking on the access layer, we define the SDMB access layer that closely follows the Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) alr interface in order to achieve maximum commonality with the Terrestrial Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (T-UMTS). A proposed radio resource allocation algorithm on the access layer leads to the optimisation of radio resources.