Amy Field | New York University (original) (raw)
Uploads
Published Articles by Amy Field
Focaal , 2020
Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically ... more Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically and morally charged discourses about the eff ects of the industry on the nation's landscape and its role in economic globalization. German politicians and activists oft en discuss industrialized animal husbandry practices as abusive and polluting. Th is article analyzes how these debates are imbricated in forms of concern about nonhuman animals that tend to be diff erentiated geographically by urban-rural boundaries. I argue the privileging of animals as moral entities causes interpersonal friction between those who rely on animals for a living and those who do not, and expresses fundamental tensions about the rural landscape as a space of industrialized agricultural production, as opposed to a space dedicated to the conservation of the natural environment.
Anthropology News Online, May 18, 2017
Anthropology Now, 2015
This article compares the representation of animals and Kurdish protesters at a meeting at the Eu... more This article compares the representation of animals and Kurdish protesters at a meeting at the European Parliament. It argues that the human-animal boundary is certainly in flux: the animals had several European representatives there lobbying for their political and moral recognition, while the protesters had to fight to be heard and were eventually escorted out of the building. It ends with a reflection on how cultural priorities shape political possibilities.
Book Reviews by Amy Field
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2018
Social Anthropology, 2018
Anthropology of Work Review, 2016
Aquaculture, or the practice of farming fish, is the most recent chapter in the cospecies history... more Aquaculture, or the practice of farming fish, is the most recent chapter in the cospecies history of humans and Atlantic salmon in Norway. Centuries ago, wild salmon appeared in Norse mythology and in Viking-era legal texts addressing fishing practices. Today, fish farming is
Teaching Documents by Amy Field
Anthropology is an academic discipline that was founded in the nineteenth century. It takes as it... more Anthropology is an academic discipline that was founded in the nineteenth century. It takes as its primary subject the study of humankind. Four different approaches have developed to studying humankind, which are known as: physical / biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology. Sociocultural anthropology examines how contemporary people experience their social worlds and why they experience them that way. Its methodologies and key theoretical frameworks are the subject of this class. Theoretical topics covered include: fieldwork; worldview; gifts and exchange; belonging; language and communication; sex, gender, and kinship; symbols, ritual, and religion; ethnicity and nationality; and globalization, sustainability, and migration. Readings cover diverse settings including the Americas, Africa, Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the Pacific.
Conference Presentations by Amy Field
As a member of the EU, Germany imposes multiple conflicting legal orders on farmers who work with... more As a member of the EU, Germany imposes multiple conflicting legal orders on farmers who work with livestock animals. On the one hand, the Lisbon Treaty classes animals as agricultural goods, and on the other, the German constitution gives animals special protections. This makes it very difficult for farmers to determine how to treat animals in practice, as they are subject to both stiff global price competition in animal-based commodities and expensive animal welfare laws. This presentation briefly examines the history of these two legal regimes, then analyzes the discourses farmers and farm regulators use to make sense of this legal double bind. I argue that in animal welfare seminars organized by the state, farmers and regulators are able to challenge their own subjugation to international trade and governance regimes. In such settings, they re-assert their own agency and concerns in speaking frankly about the tricky moral calculus of balancing human and animal needs in contemporary farming.
Calls for reform of the meat, milk, and egg industries have focused on the large-scale and typica... more Calls for reform of the meat, milk, and egg industries have focused on the large-scale and typically non-transparent activities undertaken in large animal production stalls. Pressure for reform arises primarily out of concern for the health of humans who consume intensively farmed animal products and for the wellbeing and sentience of the animals that provide those products. Although these facilities intersect with and rely on many other commonly studied infrastructural systems – including roads, electricity, the Internet, grocery outlets, and water – their character as infrastructure is not commonly studied. This paper explores the particular politics and poetics generated by contemporary food animal production infrastructures and the urban encounter with them. These themes are examined using data from fourteen months of fieldwork in Germany, where large pig “mega-stalls” and the future of industrial agriculture are hotly contested. The paper argues that, because pig stalls and the practices within them are greatly shaped by a history of separation between urban and rural sentimentalities regarding animals, their contestation highlights the ability of this infrastructure to maintain and index social difference across the urban-rural boundary and in the wake of the urban-rural encounter. Consumer and activist criticism of farmers, and farmer attempts to defend themselves, illustrate how strongly the symbolic power of the stall masks and yet materially underpins the profound material interdependence between different types of urban and rural persons, practices, and spaces. As such the “mega-stall” gives expression not only to concerns about animals, but also to local anxieties about socioeconomic ordering.
As a top EU exporter of pork and dairy products, Germany is home to highly mechanized animal prod... more As a top EU exporter of pork and dairy products, Germany is home to highly mechanized animal production infrastructures such as intensive animal feeding and confinement facilities and the high-throughput slaughterhouses. However, the German Federal Department of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) conceded in 2015 that the livestock sector shows undeniable deficits in animal and environmental protection. The animal welfare movement is often depicted as being cultivated away from contexts of animal use, gaining momentum in urban centers through the circulation of what are now electronically mediated and politically pointed images of suffering farm animals. Based on 20 months of ethnographic research in Thuringia, Germany, this paper traces out how industry insiders – former workers, veterinarians, and consultants – share vivid narratives and critiques of their work experiences witnessing animal suffering with each other, activists, and kin. I argue that these narratives are able not only to transfer affectively charged impressions of the functioning of animal production infrastructures to publics off the farm, but they also begin to build critique of the industry from the inside out. Although these are fragmented collectivities, composed of dispersed critics whose stories move both geographically and affectively, they point to potentially generative dimensions of the violences that the infrastructures of the meat and dairy sector have on the human beings, animals, and the environment: to de-naturalize industrialized meat production as the best way of producing nourishment, and to build common understanding as the basis for local thinking about its transformation.
Papers by Amy Field
Focaal
Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically ... more Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically and morally charged discourses about the effects of the industry on the nation’s landscape and its role in economic globalization. German politicians and activists oft en discuss industrialized animal husbandry practices as abusive and polluting. This article analyzes how these debates are imbricated in forms of concern about nonhuman animals that tend to be differentiated geographically by urban-rural boundaries. I argue the privileging of animals as moral entities causes interpersonal friction between those who rely on animals for a living and those who do not, and expresses fundamental tensions about the rural landscape as a space of industrialized agricultural production, as opposed to a space dedicated to the conservation of the natural environment.
Focaal , 2020
Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically ... more Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically and morally charged discourses about the eff ects of the industry on the nation's landscape and its role in economic globalization. German politicians and activists oft en discuss industrialized animal husbandry practices as abusive and polluting. Th is article analyzes how these debates are imbricated in forms of concern about nonhuman animals that tend to be diff erentiated geographically by urban-rural boundaries. I argue the privileging of animals as moral entities causes interpersonal friction between those who rely on animals for a living and those who do not, and expresses fundamental tensions about the rural landscape as a space of industrialized agricultural production, as opposed to a space dedicated to the conservation of the natural environment.
Anthropology News Online, May 18, 2017
Anthropology Now, 2015
This article compares the representation of animals and Kurdish protesters at a meeting at the Eu... more This article compares the representation of animals and Kurdish protesters at a meeting at the European Parliament. It argues that the human-animal boundary is certainly in flux: the animals had several European representatives there lobbying for their political and moral recognition, while the protesters had to fight to be heard and were eventually escorted out of the building. It ends with a reflection on how cultural priorities shape political possibilities.
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 2018
Social Anthropology, 2018
Anthropology of Work Review, 2016
Aquaculture, or the practice of farming fish, is the most recent chapter in the cospecies history... more Aquaculture, or the practice of farming fish, is the most recent chapter in the cospecies history of humans and Atlantic salmon in Norway. Centuries ago, wild salmon appeared in Norse mythology and in Viking-era legal texts addressing fishing practices. Today, fish farming is
Anthropology is an academic discipline that was founded in the nineteenth century. It takes as it... more Anthropology is an academic discipline that was founded in the nineteenth century. It takes as its primary subject the study of humankind. Four different approaches have developed to studying humankind, which are known as: physical / biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology. Sociocultural anthropology examines how contemporary people experience their social worlds and why they experience them that way. Its methodologies and key theoretical frameworks are the subject of this class. Theoretical topics covered include: fieldwork; worldview; gifts and exchange; belonging; language and communication; sex, gender, and kinship; symbols, ritual, and religion; ethnicity and nationality; and globalization, sustainability, and migration. Readings cover diverse settings including the Americas, Africa, Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the Pacific.
As a member of the EU, Germany imposes multiple conflicting legal orders on farmers who work with... more As a member of the EU, Germany imposes multiple conflicting legal orders on farmers who work with livestock animals. On the one hand, the Lisbon Treaty classes animals as agricultural goods, and on the other, the German constitution gives animals special protections. This makes it very difficult for farmers to determine how to treat animals in practice, as they are subject to both stiff global price competition in animal-based commodities and expensive animal welfare laws. This presentation briefly examines the history of these two legal regimes, then analyzes the discourses farmers and farm regulators use to make sense of this legal double bind. I argue that in animal welfare seminars organized by the state, farmers and regulators are able to challenge their own subjugation to international trade and governance regimes. In such settings, they re-assert their own agency and concerns in speaking frankly about the tricky moral calculus of balancing human and animal needs in contemporary farming.
Calls for reform of the meat, milk, and egg industries have focused on the large-scale and typica... more Calls for reform of the meat, milk, and egg industries have focused on the large-scale and typically non-transparent activities undertaken in large animal production stalls. Pressure for reform arises primarily out of concern for the health of humans who consume intensively farmed animal products and for the wellbeing and sentience of the animals that provide those products. Although these facilities intersect with and rely on many other commonly studied infrastructural systems – including roads, electricity, the Internet, grocery outlets, and water – their character as infrastructure is not commonly studied. This paper explores the particular politics and poetics generated by contemporary food animal production infrastructures and the urban encounter with them. These themes are examined using data from fourteen months of fieldwork in Germany, where large pig “mega-stalls” and the future of industrial agriculture are hotly contested. The paper argues that, because pig stalls and the practices within them are greatly shaped by a history of separation between urban and rural sentimentalities regarding animals, their contestation highlights the ability of this infrastructure to maintain and index social difference across the urban-rural boundary and in the wake of the urban-rural encounter. Consumer and activist criticism of farmers, and farmer attempts to defend themselves, illustrate how strongly the symbolic power of the stall masks and yet materially underpins the profound material interdependence between different types of urban and rural persons, practices, and spaces. As such the “mega-stall” gives expression not only to concerns about animals, but also to local anxieties about socioeconomic ordering.
As a top EU exporter of pork and dairy products, Germany is home to highly mechanized animal prod... more As a top EU exporter of pork and dairy products, Germany is home to highly mechanized animal production infrastructures such as intensive animal feeding and confinement facilities and the high-throughput slaughterhouses. However, the German Federal Department of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) conceded in 2015 that the livestock sector shows undeniable deficits in animal and environmental protection. The animal welfare movement is often depicted as being cultivated away from contexts of animal use, gaining momentum in urban centers through the circulation of what are now electronically mediated and politically pointed images of suffering farm animals. Based on 20 months of ethnographic research in Thuringia, Germany, this paper traces out how industry insiders – former workers, veterinarians, and consultants – share vivid narratives and critiques of their work experiences witnessing animal suffering with each other, activists, and kin. I argue that these narratives are able not only to transfer affectively charged impressions of the functioning of animal production infrastructures to publics off the farm, but they also begin to build critique of the industry from the inside out. Although these are fragmented collectivities, composed of dispersed critics whose stories move both geographically and affectively, they point to potentially generative dimensions of the violences that the infrastructures of the meat and dairy sector have on the human beings, animals, and the environment: to de-naturalize industrialized meat production as the best way of producing nourishment, and to build common understanding as the basis for local thinking about its transformation.
Focaal
Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically ... more Animal husbandry, a major part of the contemporary German economy, is the subject of politically and morally charged discourses about the effects of the industry on the nation’s landscape and its role in economic globalization. German politicians and activists oft en discuss industrialized animal husbandry practices as abusive and polluting. This article analyzes how these debates are imbricated in forms of concern about nonhuman animals that tend to be differentiated geographically by urban-rural boundaries. I argue the privileging of animals as moral entities causes interpersonal friction between those who rely on animals for a living and those who do not, and expresses fundamental tensions about the rural landscape as a space of industrialized agricultural production, as opposed to a space dedicated to the conservation of the natural environment.