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Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2020

Christian Stache

It is widely accepted among critical human–animal scholars that an absolute ontological distinction between humans and animals, the human–animal dualism, is an ideological…

Abstract

It is widely accepted among critical human–animal scholars that an absolute ontological distinction between humans and animals, the human–animal dualism, is an ideological construction. However, even some of the most radical animalists make use of a softer version of it when they explain animal exploitation and domination in capitalism. By criticizing the reintroduction of the human–animal dualism through the back door, I reopen the terrain for a historical–materialist explanation of bourgeois animal exploitation and domination that does not conceptualize them as a matter of species in the first place. Rather, with reference and in analogy to ecosocialist arguments on the greenhouse effect, it is demonstrated that a specific faction of capitalanimal capital – which uses animals and animal products as means of production, is the root cause, key agent, and main profiteer of animal exploitation and domination in the current mode of production. Thus, the reworked concept of animal capital presented here differs from the original, postoperaist notion introduced by Nicole Shukin since it is based on a classic sociorelational and value theoretical understanding of capitalism. According to this approach, animals are integrated socioeconomically into the capitalist class society via a relation of superexploitation to capital, which can be called the capitalanimal relation.

Abstract

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The Capitalist Commodification of Animals
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-681-8

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2020

Abstract

Details

The Capitalist Commodification of Animals
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-681-8

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2020

Charles Thorpe and Brynna Jacobson

Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split…

Abstract

Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split between mind and nature and between subject/observer and observed object that characterizes scientific epistemology. Abstract mind reflects an abstracted objectified world of nature as a means to be exploited. Biological life is rendered as abstract life by capitalist exploitation and by the reification and technologization of organisms by contemporary technoscience. What Alberto Toscano has called “the culture of abstraction” imposes market rationality onto nature and the living world, disrupting biotic communities and transforming organisms into what Finn Bowring calls “functional bio-machines.”

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The Capitalist Commodification of Animals
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83982-681-8

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Article
Publication date: 1 September 2004

Bill Winders and David Nibert

The number of animals raised and slaughtered for food in the U.S. has increased dramatically since 1945. We examine how two factors have been fundamental in this expansion of…

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Abstract

The number of animals raised and slaughtered for food in the U.S. has increased dramatically since 1945. We examine how two factors have been fundamental in this expansion of “meat” consumption: the market and the state. U.S. agricultural policies that emerged form the New Deal centered on price supports and production controls. While these policies were aimed at controlling supply, they instead spurred intensive and industrial techniques that resulted in continuous overproduction, especially in corn, wheat and soybeans. As a result, farm organizations and the state promoted “meat” production and consumption as a way to alleviate the surplus. To handle this expansion, intensive and industrial methods reshaped “meat” production, resulting in more oppressive living conditions for animals raised as “meat”. We explore this connection between the market, state policy and animal oppression. We also briefly analyze how this relationship has likewise affected workers and peripheral nations in the world economy.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 24 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

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Book part
Publication date: 25 March 2010

Gregory Clark

Estimates are developed of the major macroeconomic aggregates – wages, land rents, interest rates, prices, factor shares, sectoral shares in output and employment, and real wages…

Abstract

Estimates are developed of the major macroeconomic aggregates – wages, land rents, interest rates, prices, factor shares, sectoral shares in output and employment, and real wages – for England by decade between 1209 and 2008. The efficiency of the economy in the years 1209–2008 is also estimated. One finding is that the growth of real wages in the Industrial Revolution era and beyond was faster than the growth of output per person. Indeed until recently the greatest recipient of modern growth in England has been unskilled workers. The data also create a number of puzzles, the principal one being the very high levels of output and efficiency estimated for England in the medieval era. These data are thus inconsistent with the general notion that there was a period of Smithian growth between 1300 and 1800 which preceded the Industrial Revolution, as expressed in such recent works as De Vries (2008).

Details

Research in Economic History
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-771-4

Book part
Publication date: 18 April 2015

Pavel Illich Popov

This chapter offers the first full translation from Russian to English of the Balance of the National Economy of the USSR, 192426’s first chapter. Involving 12 authors and…

Abstract

This chapter offers the first full translation from Russian to English of the Balance of the National Economy of the USSR, 192426’s first chapter. Involving 12 authors and composed of 21 chapters, the Balance is a collective work published in June 1926 in Moscow by the Soviet Central Statistical Administration under the scientific supervision of its former director, Pavel Illich Popov (1872–1950). In this first chapter, titled ‘Studying the Balance of the National Economy: An Introduction’, Popov set the theoretical foundations of what might be considered as the first modern national accounting system and paved the way to multisector macroeconometric modelling.

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2004

Anna Williams

This essay critiques the assertion that an appreciation of animal sentience necessarily runs counter to their exploitation as industrial resources. It is argued that the U.S…

856

Abstract

This essay critiques the assertion that an appreciation of animal sentience necessarily runs counter to their exploitation as industrial resources. It is argued that the U.S. meatpacking industry has consistently engaged animals as sentient creatures in order to elicit behavior that enhances manufacturing efficiency. This discipline of animals in and around the packing plant is exemplified in Temple Grandin’s “humane” slaughter technologies. The author suggests that even as the representation of these innovations tends to obscure the role of labor in industrial meat production, they demonstrate that discipline is a cross‐species regime, recasting the packing plant as a continuum of violence.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 24 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

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Content available
Article
Publication date: 1 May 2003

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Abstract

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Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, vol. 12 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0965-3562

Article
Publication date: 5 March 2021

Carlos J.O. Trejo-Pech, Jared Bruhin, Christopher N. Boyer and S. Aaron Smith

The purpose of this study is to estimate the amount of cash flow deficit, if any, needed to maintain the operating costs and service debt of a startup cow–calf enterprise. The…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to estimate the amount of cash flow deficit, if any, needed to maintain the operating costs and service debt of a startup cow–calf enterprise. The study compares long-term profitability and risk between starting small and building a herd to full carrying capacity or by starting at desired herd capacity.

Design/methodology/approach

A dynamic cattle growth model was developed to capture expanding and maintaining the desired herd size. Discounted cash flow (DCF) models over a 15-year period were calculated to estimate net present value (NPV), modified internal rate of return (MIRR) and cash flow deficit to keep the business operating and service debt. Simulation analyses were conducted considering price and production risk.

Findings

Starting at the desired herd size was preferred, according to NPV/MIRR and cash flow deficit, but the differences were not substantial. Assuming the operation is liquidated at book values, there was a 36.3% probability of this enterprise having a zero or positive NPV. If the conservative terminal value assumption is relaxed up to feasible market values, the cow–calf enterprise is economically attractive at an estimated 2.4% opportunity cost of capital. However, the producer would experience a cash flow deficit during the first seven years, which was simulated to be $14,892 and $15,985 annual for both strategies.

Originality/value

Innovative methods used in this study include varying the annual opportunity cost of capital as a function of financing decisions, stochastic prices by cattle type and stochastic weaning weights that are a function of a dynamic cattle model.

Details

Agricultural Finance Review, vol. 82 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-1466

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