Changing Human Sensitivity Towards Animals and Its Effects on Meat Consumption from Eliasian Perspective
Abstract
In this paper we will discuss the issue of changing human sensitivity towards animals and violence against animal and its effect on meat consumption. We will discuss how culture conditions our dietary behaviour, and, conversely, how what we choose to eat can inform us about our own identities as members of Western society and as human beings (Fiddes 1994).
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966, 1970, 1978), and Roland Barthes (1975) consider that taste is culturally conditioned and governed by patterned rules. But not only taste itself but also our food choices are driven by culture and society, as is the case with the consumption of meat and animal products.
According to Norbert Elias, people's attitudes to meat eating are highly illuminating with regard to the dynamics of human rela-tionships and personality structures (Elias, 2000: 99-103). Elias discusses the apparent advance of the threshold of feelings of repug-nance towards the carving of large and recognisable parts of animals at table.
Elias's ideas were further developed by Mennell (1996). Mennell concludes that the trends and the contrasts that Elias perceived in the 1930s have continued.
Transformation of meat consumption doesn't reflect just changes of socially correct way of behaving at table but also the specific transformation of human behaviour. In connection with the process of civilization and the monopolization of violence in the hands of the state, one can observe an increase in regulation of aggression within society.
People do not want to witness violence against animals, so slaughterhouses are being pushed to the outskirts of cities in early modern period. Although it is impossible to predict future developments, we will discuss whether this trend will intensify in the future and whether the future of Western society's diet will be increasingly influenced by vegetarianism and veganism.