“Meat Lovers”: Pastoralism, Carnist Education, and the Settler Colony

Following from our discussion last month on “Teaching Meat,” this session focuses on modes of socialization that encourage desensitization to the consumption of more-than-human beings. Specifically, we will read texts that deploy and subvert pastoral as a literary form used in settler literature to naturalize the appropriation of Indigenous lands for agribusiness and the commodification of living beings. Our examples will come from Aotearoa New Zealand, a country whose national identity is closely tied to pastoral agriculture, with the hope that this will open discussion to conversations about the relationship between land practices, carnism, and empire more broadly.