Knowing cows: Transformative mobilizations of human and non‐human bodies in an emotionography of the slaughterhouse. Issue 3 (7th May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McLoughlin, Eimear
• Other Names: Sayers Janet guestEditor.; Hamilton Lindsay guestEditor.; Sang Kate guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Gender work and organization. Volume 26:Issue 3(2019:May)
• Page Start: 322
• Page End: 342
• Publication Date: 2018-05-07
• Subjects: dirty work -- emotion work -- hegemonic masculinity -- multispecies ethnography -- slaughterhouse; Sex role in the work environment -- Periodicals; Sexual division of labor -- Periodicals; Sex discrimination in employment -- Periodicals; Organizational sociology -- Periodicals; Industries -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 306.361505
• DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12247
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0968-6673

Abstract

Abstract : This 'emotionography' of the slaughterhouse elucidates how the identities of both human and non‐human individuals are constructed by line and lairage workers. Hegemonic masculine ideals that underpin slaughterhouse work mean that the emotions of workers as well as the emotional experience of cattle are either denied, diminished or repressed. Based on fieldwork in an Irish slaughterhouse, I articulate how the industrial slaughter of animals entangles human and non‐human life in metamorphic processes that seek to diminish the emotionality of individuals, maintaining the boundary between human/non‐human animals. These transformations simultaneously pacify the emotional toll of killing non‐human individuals and reinforce perceptions of cows as sellable, killable and edible in the commodification of bovine bodies. Amidst the relative absence of emotions in slaughterhouse ethnographies, this article reveals how emotions emerge, erupt and confound the act of slaughtering cattle for slaughterhouse workers unsettling categorizations of masculinity and 'animals as food'.