This article uses qualitative and ethnographic methods to trace the beef production chain. An analysis of bovine artificial insemination, calving, and the trafficking of cattle as commodities reveals the various ways kinship and economic bonds are created between ranchers and cattle. These bonds are dynamic and at different times position cows as capital, calves as babies, and ranchers—both male and female—as inseminators, mothers, and traffickers of nonhuman animal bodies. Looking seriously at the ways love, connection, and kinship operate in the context of cattle production shows how animal treatment is experienced at different stages of production and by different members of the ranch family.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Adams, C. J. (1990). Sexual politics of meat: A feminist-vegetarian critical theory. New York: Continuum.
Adams, C. J., & Gruen, L. (2014). Ecofeminism: Feminist intersections with other animals and the earth. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Barry, U. (2014). The beef book: Fundamentals of the beef trade from ranch to table. North American Meat Institute.
Bonanno, A., & Constance, D. H. (2001). Globalization, Fordism, and Post‐Fordism in agriculture and food: A critical review of the literature. Culture & Agriculture, 23(2), 1-18.
Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities. University of California Press.
Coulter, K. (2016a). Animals, work, and the promise of interspecies solidarity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Coulter, K. (2016b). Beyond human to humane: A multispecies analysis of care work, its repression, and its potential. Studies in Social Justice, 10(2), 199-219.
Coulter, K. (2017). Humane jobs: A political economic vision for interspecies solidarity and human—animal wellbeing. Politics and Animals, 3, 31-41.
Crate, S. A. (2006). Cows, kin, and globalization: An ethnography of sustainability. New York: Rowman Altamira.
Dietz, T., & York, R. (2015). Animals, capital and sustainability. Human Ecology Review, 22(1), 35-54.
Ellis, C. (2013). The symbiotic ideology: Stewardship, husbandry, and dominion in beef production. Rural Sociology, 78(4), 429-449.
Ellis, C. (2014). Boundary labor and the production of emotionless commodities: The case of beef production. The Sociological Quarterly, 55(1), 92-118.
Ellis, C., & Irvine, L. (2010). Reproducing dominion: Emotional apprenticeship in the 4-H youth livestock program. Society & Animals, 18(1), 21-39.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1951). Kinship and marriage among the Nuer. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fitzgerald, A. J. (2015). Animals as food: (Re)connecting production, processing, consumption, and impacts. East Lancing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Fitzgerald, A. J., Kalof, L., & Dietz, T. (2009). Slaughterhouses and increased crime rates: An empirical analysis of the spillover from “The Jungle” into the surrounding community. Organization & Environment, 22(2), 158-184.
Foot, R. H. (2002). The history of artificial insemination: Selected notes and notables. Journal of Animal Science, 80(1), 1-10.
Franklin, S. (2007). Dolly mixtures: The remaking of genealogy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Gillespie, K. (2014). Sexualized violence and the gendered commodification of the animal body in Pacific Northwest US dairy production. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(10), 1321-1337.
Gunderson, R. (2011). From cattle to capital: Exchange value, animal commodification, and barbarism. Critical Sociology, 39(2), 259-275.
Herman, H. A. (1981). Improving cattle by the millions: NAAB and the development and worldwide application of artificial insemination. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Hurn, S. (2008). What’s love got to do with it? The interplay of sex and gender in the commercial breeding of Welsh cobs. Society & Animals, 16(1), 23-44.
Kalof, L. (2007). Looking at animals in human history. London, UK: Reaktion Books.
Knight, K. E., Ellis, C., & Simmons, S. B. (2014). Parental predictors of children’s animal abuse: Findings from a national and intergenerational sample. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 29(16), 3014-3034.
Luke, B. (2004). Animal sacrifice: A model of paternal exploitation. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24(9), 18-44.
Nibert, D. (2013). Animal oppression and human violence: Domesecration, capitalism, and global conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.
Porcher, J. (2011). The relationship between workers and animals in the pork industry: A shared suffering. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 24(1), 3-17.
Porcher, J. (2017). Animal work. In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies (p. 302). Oxford University Press.
Porcher, J., & Schmitt, T. (2012). Dairy cows: Workers in the shadows?. Society & Animals, 20(1), 39-60.
Rifkin, J. (1992). Beyond beef: The rise and fall of the cattle culture. New York: Plume.
Ritvo, H. (1987). The animal estate: The English and other creatures in the Victorian age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rosenberg, G. (2016). A race suicide among hogs: The biopolitics of pork in the United States 1965-1930. American Quarterly, 49, 1865-1930.
Rubin, G. (1975). The traffic in women: Notes on the “political economy of sex.” In R. R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an anthropology of women (pp. 157-210). New York: Monthly Review Press.
Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2012). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rudy, K. (2011). Loving animals: Toward a new animal advocacy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Sachs, C. E. (1996). Gendered fields: Rural women, agriculture, and environment. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Schwabe, C. W. (1994). Animals in the ancient world. New York: Routledge.
Selk, G. (2009). Artificial insemination for beef cattle. ANSI-3164. Stillwater, OK: Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service.
Shukin, N. (2009). Animal capital: Rendering life in biopolitical times. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Simmons, S. B., Knight, K. E., & Ellis, C. (2015). Youthful animal abuse and later problem behavior outcomes: Findings from two generations. Contemporary Justice Review, 18(4), 435-448.
Stuart, D., & Gunderson, R. (2018). Nonhuman animals as fictitious commodities: Exploitation and consequences in industrial agriculture. Society & Animals. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-12341507.
Stuart, D., Schewe, R. L., & Gunderson, R. (2013). Extending social theory to farm animals: Addressing alienation in the dairy sector. Sociologia Ruralis, 53(2), 201-222.
United States Department of Agriculture. (2016). Farms, land in farms, and livestock Operations 2015 Summary (February 2015). Washington, DC: USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service.
United States Department of Agriculture. (2018). Livestock slaughter. Washington, DC: USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service. https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/rx913p88g/1831cq39g/j9602492p/lstk1218.pdf.
Wilkie, R. M. (2005). Sentient commodities and productive paradoxes: The ambiguous nature of human—livestock relations in northeast Scotland. Journal of Rural Studies, 21(2), 213-230.
Wilkie, R. M. (2010). Livestock/deadstock: Working with farm animals from birth to slaughter. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Wood, E. M. (2002). The origin of capitalism: A longer view. Brooklyn, NY: Verso.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 446 | 93 | 12 |
Full Text Views | 65 | 20 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 114 | 38 | 0 |
This article uses qualitative and ethnographic methods to trace the beef production chain. An analysis of bovine artificial insemination, calving, and the trafficking of cattle as commodities reveals the various ways kinship and economic bonds are created between ranchers and cattle. These bonds are dynamic and at different times position cows as capital, calves as babies, and ranchers—both male and female—as inseminators, mothers, and traffickers of nonhuman animal bodies. Looking seriously at the ways love, connection, and kinship operate in the context of cattle production shows how animal treatment is experienced at different stages of production and by different members of the ranch family.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 446 | 93 | 12 |
Full Text Views | 65 | 20 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 114 | 38 | 0 |