Caring (Enough) to Kill: On Making Meat & Eating Well in Rural Egypt (original) (raw)
2023, Anthropology Now
-- Please contact me for the full text of this article (n.fikry@mail.utoronto.ca) -- This article explores women farmers who rear animals in their courtyards or on their rooftops in rural Egypt. In these home-rearing practices, caring for animals begins with the inevitability of killing in mind. Rather than regarding caring and killing as unrelated, dichotomous or contradictory, I argue that caring and killing are co-constitutive in some human–animal relations. In caring for animals, women farmers in rural Egypt rendered these animals knowable and controllable, a process that made killing easier and more manageable. The act of killing animals, then, was part of a broader relation of care for humans. In the broader quest of caring for and feeding families well, caring for animals involved killing animals to make meat, and the promise of a wholesome meal drew caring and killing as everyday bedfellows.
Related papers
Equality among Animals and Religious Slaughter (Historical Social Research)
2015
Current laws on the treatment of animals in all liberal countries demand that animals be stunned before being slaughtered in order to prevent their suffering. This is derived from a widely-shared concern for animal welfare. However, in many Western countries, exemptions from this legal requirement have been granted to Jewish and Muslim communities so that they can continue to perform ritual slaughter. Hence, there seems to be a clash between the right to religious freedom and the duty to minimize animal suffering during slaughter. In this paper, I want to propose a solution to this seemingly irreconcilable clash. To understand whether these two principles are really incompatible, we need to establish exactly what they demand of us. I argue that there is no convincing reason to take the suffering involved in the killing of animals more seriously than the suffering experienced by animals during their lives (on farms). If so, we might demand that ritually slaughtered animals be “compensated” for their experiencing a more painful death by raising these animals in better conditions than others.
When we were children learning the names of animals, farm utensils and food products from picture books, talking about farming animals and related food products appeared simple. However, the intricate realities of modern-day farming practices differ momentously from this primary reference - the picture books. The topic brings about polarized responses, both rationally and emotionally, reflecting very diverse outlooks on the world. This dissertation reports on a research, set in the Netherlands and Turkey, that was designed to improve our understanding of the everyday-life construction of the acceptability -or non-acceptability- of keeping and killing animals for food, or in other words: to disentangle the domestic contract.
Food and companion animal welfare: the Islamic perspective
CABI Reviews
Much has been published regarding the animal welfare aspects of Halal slaughter, particularly when carried out without stunning. Although a significant number of animals are being stunned prior to Halal slaughter in the developed world, in fact, the majority of non-Muslims in these countries are still of the view that Muslims do not generally have compassion when it comes to the treatment of food animals, particularly at the point of slaughter. This is, however, a direct contrast to the teachings of Islam, as laid down in the Quran and the Hadith (Islamic scriptures). The Prophet of Islam, Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him), through whom the Quran was revealed, was a known animal welfare advocate, and it is well documented that he disapproved and reprimanded any of his companions who fell short of the etiquette with respect to the treatment of animals in their care. This paper explores some important verses in the Quran, authentic narrations from the Hadith and academic literature on the ...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.