Introduction contours of eating: Mapping the terrain of body/food encounters

This chapter reveals aspects of human-animal relationships that are routinely withheld or glossed over as meat is consumed during an era when the actualities of farm life have receded far from public view. The popular metaphor of the food chain frames contemporary farming as a mechanized system, an idea that bypasses the physicality inherent in production practices involving living bodies. The chapter discusses prevalent stereotypical images of pigmen and their work and considers how these representations are socially reproduced. In arguing for the positive aspects of the culture of stockmanship, my account departs from prevalent notions of contemporary capitalist agri-business as a dystopia in which animals are routinely subjected to calculative discipline, dominance, indifference or sheer brutality. Of course the pig farm is not a utopia for humans or animals, but the alternative picture offered here suggests that care and commitment involving intimacy, affection, professional pride, and ethical treatment are not automatically precluded from so-called factory farming.