The Human and the Meat

Over 85 billion animals are killed in slaughterhouses yearly to sustain a profit-driven meat production system – devastating animals, workers, and the environment. How did we get here? How has capitalist society reshaped human-animal relations? Elaborating a novel materialist and intersectional framework, Chiara Stefanoni conceptualizes the social form of human-animal relations and its centrality within the interconnected structure of domination in capitalist societies, especially in relation to gender and class. Through a historical analysis of industrial slaughterhouses, the study reveals how the human/animal divide and meat-based diet are not timeless facts, but concrete social solutions crucial for the reproduction of capitalist society.

Chiara Stefanoni, born in 1992, works as a visiting researcher and lecturer in philosophy at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Her research in the field of Critical Animal Studies draws from continental political philosophy, particularly in the Marxist tradition, and incorporates queer-feminist perspectives to examine socio-political aspects of human-animal relations and their environments. She completed her doctorate in Transcultural Studies in Humanities at the University of Bergamo and was a predoctoral visiting scholar at the Center for Animal Ethics at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona.