Sie sind auf Seite 1von 22

This article was downloaded by: [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] On: 18 August 2011, At: 15:24 Publisher:

Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Science as Culture
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csac20

Playing Chicken: Technologies of Domestication, Food, and Self


Wyatt Galusky
a a

Morrisville State College, USA

Available online: 09 Mar 2010

To cite this article: Wyatt Galusky (2010): Playing Chicken: Technologies of Domestication, Food, and Self, Science as Culture, 19:1, 15-35 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09505430903557874

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Science as Culture Vol. 19, No. 1, 15 35, March 2010

Playing Chicken: Technologies of Domestication, Food, and Self


Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

WYATT GALUSKY
Morrisville State College, USA

ABSTRACT To engage the mediating and enabling aspects of food technology, I reect in this essay on my (rueful) attempts at raising chickens. As an incompetent chicken-raising hobbyist and an STS-trained scholar, I came to view my chickens as technologies themselvesresults of human interactions with nature, through the overarching frame of domestication. Viewing the chicken human relationship as a technological one has allowed me to foreground several elements at once. First, the chicken and the systems that sustain it put in stark relief the process of dening nature very specically. Certain aspects are coveted and augmented while others are disregarded or overcome. Thus, technology does not strictly demarcate articial from natural, but rather restricts or accommodates fuller forms of nature. Second, these denitions of nature (the chicken in this case) stabilize and enable other technological forms that take the initial stability for granted (e.g. human social and geographic organizations premised on industrialized agriculture). Third, these systems of stabilities, premised on necessarily partial versions of nature, complicate normative decisions on proper human chicken relationships. In creating a uniform animal, and a relatively cheap and stable source of protein, we have empowered identities that can think about food less as necessity, and more as choice. As a result, we as consumers become increasingly dependent on the systems of domesticated nature that make such choice possible. And when the chicken itself becomes a product of that lifestyle choice (expressed as an element of consumer behavior), its very skeletal structure becomes optional. KEY WORDS : Food, agricultural, technological systems, STS, domestication, chickens, in vitro meat, identity

Correspondence Address: Wyatt Galusky, Morrisville State College, PO Box 901, Morrisville, NY 13408, USA. Email: galuskwj@morrisville.edu 0950-5431 Print/1470-1189 Online/10/010015-21 # 2010 Process Press DOI: 10.1080/09505430903557874

16

W. Galusky

Introduction In modern, Western, industrialized countries such as the United States, food for many has become a primary battleground for articulating values of all types cultural, epicureal, nutritional (see, for example, Pollan, 2006; Kingsolver, 2007). In this metaphorical battle, consumers do not just purchase foodthey proclaim allegiances and endorse or scorn particular worldviews. The contestations over food remain prominent in part because eating is something everyone does every day. We all eat, and as Wendell Berry famously wrote, eating is an agricultural act (1990, p. 145). Our food choices, then, say something about the animals and plants we choose to value in particular ways, about the types of agricultural production we support, and about the kinds of people we want to be. I confronted the question of food several years ago when I decided to raise chickens, to practice a kind of animal husbandry and shorten the agricultural production networks I depended upon but found at least partly problematic. Though a Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholar, I approached my chicken raising not to study it per se, but to engage in a kind of practice. Despite these desires, I managed to do more learning than engaging. Namely, I learned I wasnt very good at raising chickens (in fact, the chickens themselves were much better in spite of my efforts). And it was because of this failure that I ended up engaging my own identity, as an STS scholar and as a human being within natural systems. It all starts with an encounter I did not schedule, but which I did make possible. One morning, I went outside to see my wife off to work very early in the morning. Earlier than the sun. And in the semi-darkness, I was actually struck in the head by a falling object. What fell out of the sky was not an apple, or even the sky itself. It was a chicken. I wasnt surprised to nd a chicken in my yard; I raised them. I was, however, shocked it got there via my head. How did it get there? Perhaps more importantly, why? This falling chicken narrative shares with the other essays in this issue a reection on what it means to embody STS, on the complexities that arise from being situated within those technological networks I attempt to study and understand. As such, it focuses on the ambiguities of understanding (human) nature and on the seductive elements of attempting to exert control on that nature through technological intervention. It also deals with being connected to networks that both compromise and complement critique. Mostly, this essay is about chickensabout how raising chickens as an escape from industrialized technologies became possible for me only because of industrialized technologies; about how the very biology of domesticated chickens reects human relationships to the wider worldwhat we know, what we want, what we miss; about how being an STS scholar provides me with tools to map out the technological relationships I have with the animals that help provide my food, while at the same time troubles any easy notions about how to arrange or value those relationships. In this sense,

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Playing Chicken

17

the essay uses the domesticated chicken and the various ways in which humans relate to it as a meditation on what technology is and what technology does (which includes often deluding ourselves into thinking we control the nature within those technologies). More specically, I argue that what we help to turn chickens into, through our technological engagement with all facets of their existence (what they eat, where they live, what they do, what their bodies become), says a lot about what we as humans think about ourselves and what we come to value in (human) natureuniformity and control.
Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Domestication The Very Idea I want to start by reecting on the idea of domestication, which will prove illustrative of the larger argument. The concepts meaning with regard to human relationships with non-humans, while often used as a simple foil for the idea of wilderness, is varied and complex (see Cassidy & Mullin, 2007). But an original and more basic denition that preceded its application to non-humans is more appropriate, that of or belonging to the home, house, or household (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, p. 944; see also Bulliet, 2005). This denition of domestic allows us to focus on a set of relations that enables certain identities to be possible, as one becomes accustomed to a particular way of living. The chickens that I attempted to raise speak to this idea in two waysby being physically predisposed to provide me with certain outputs based upon minimal inputs; by being possible and even desirable for someone like me, with no experience and (apparently) no skill, because of the other technologies there to catch me when I failedand did I fail (more on this later). One can nd a better example of relatively successful domestication technologies, however, from the 2001 Robert Altman lm, Gosford Park. The lm is a murder mystery set in England, circa 1932, on the occasion of a shooting party. Importantly, the drama depicts two interdependent worlds. On the one hand, the audience is introduced to those to the manor born, as they participate in the weekends activities and in the petty intrigues that keep them occupied and preoccupied with each other: dalliances, indelities, attire, seating arrangements, etiquette. On the other hand, one gets to see what makes such preoccupation possible. As the movie meticulously and plainly lays out, this gathering and this focus would not happen without the multitudes of the serving class pressing clothes, shining shoes, mending clothes, cooking dinner, setting tables, washing dishes. The attentions, consternations, and very identities of the leisure classes in this case are founded upon the labor and organization of those people who make such identities possiblescullery maids, butlers, valets, cooks, chauffeurs, etc. This system of servitude is an enabling technology, a technology that enables a kind of identity. And it functions well when it is least visiblebelow stairs.

18

W. Galusky

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

A slightly different example can be found in Nick Parks Wallace and Gromit short lm, A Close Shave (Sallis et al., 1996). One must move from live action to plasticine, but despite what appear to be vast differences between the two lms, one can nd a very similar technological enabling. In this case, all of the people from Gosford Park working below stairs are replaced by machines. Rube Goldberg contraptions do certain tasks so that Wallace, in particular, can put his attentions on other things. Cheese, usually. Human activity has been transformed and translated into machine design and infrastructure, gaining certain advantages (e.g. the reduction of the number of people in ones immediate employ) and certain disadvantages (like the need to remove porridge from the wall and ones clothes when the machine malfunctions). Importantly, the support systems in Gosford Park are not de facto less technologicalin fact, for the smooth working of upper-class identities, the roles become more crucial than the actors. Ideally, from the perspective of those for whom the structure is organized, the preparations themselves are prioritized over those who make them. Both lms demonstrate how a household can be created through routinized patterns of behavior, through roles themselves that take on the specic aura of domesticationdomestic servants, machines for domestic tasks, even companion species. This is domestication in the sense of tamed, of familiar, of accustomed; and, somewhat broadly, as related to a household or the possibility of a household. This sense of stability, of assumed presence mediated by a set of relationships made manifest through people or things, becomes the premise for a certain set of realitiesof who one is. If those relationships prove ethically or socially problematicif questions of inequality plague servitude, if the sources and various costs of electricity undermine the value of machinesthen the necessary changes can be profound. One often sets about challenging these relationships situated within them. At least, I was. And I did it through a decision to raise chickens, and through a need to understand more fully how that decision made prominent my connection to food, to technological systems, and to myself. As Donna Haraway has noted, [f]ollow the chicken and nd the world (2008, p. 274). Technologies of Domestication as Possibility and Peril These examples of domestication culled from popular culture suggest how one builds a household through interrelated systems of humans and things, which may seem a far cry from ideas of domesticating animals and in particular chickens. In fact, there is a rich literature in various disciplines on the specic processes of domestication in plants and animals.1 However, in my own life, and in my education and work in environmental ethics and STS, as an educator and a scholar, I have come to see my relationships to technological systems, and to food systems and raising chickens in particular, as connections to the natural world in very specic and non-necessary ways. That is, my engagement with technological systems mediates between myself and what comes to count as the world.2

Playing Chicken

19

This mediation works both ways. In terms of the world, technology can be understood to create a lter that enables a more or less stable simplication of that vast plasma, or metaplasm, or noumena.3 That is, all the stuff out here, prior to human attempts to understand itparsing signal from noise, gure from ground, the differences that make a difference. As Theodor Adorno notes, technology is what allows humans to speak their own language, to say something about the world (see Morris, 2001). Importantly, this understanding of nature as mediated disrupts and troubles any simple recourse to some denite, inescapable nature that dictates truth or value. Put more forcefully, [Nature] may recommend certain types of action, and it will always have its say in determining the effects of what we do, but it does not enforce a politics (Soper, 1996, p. 142). This understanding of nature as present but not strictly deterministic is one I try to represent in my writing, communicate in my teaching, and engage in my living. But technology, understood in this way, does not just implicate the worldit also implicates me. As noted in the domestication examples above, certain denitions of self and certain ways of seeing myself in the world are made possible through the intervening power of those specic technological systems. Verbeek (2005) parses these changes in terms of action and interpretation, emphasizing what one can do in the world and how one sees that world. In part, he follows Heidegger, who discussed how tools disclose particular worlds through the actions made possible when a person interacted with the world through a tool. When functioning well, tools hide in the work they do. Heidegger (1962) called this ready-to-hand. The self in the world becomes different because what one can do has changed. The same can be said for interpretations of the world and the self, in that how one sees the world (if one is holding a hammer, for example, as a series of nails) and how the world sees you (as a dangerous wielder of a hammer) changes by virtue of the mediating power of that tool (see Ihde, 2002; Latour, 1999; Feenberg, 2003). These technologies do not determine what the world will look like, or how we will see it. Rather, they can inuence what we see as possible, as necessary, and even as desirable in a world that is both present and malleable. Of course, understanding how technological systems shape the world and the self only goes so far in helping to decide how the world and the self should be shaped and who should do the shaping. That distinction between what is possible and what is right forms the crux of many contemporary problems and choices people make about how they want to live (like, for example, growing their own food). This is especially so since the choice is not between technology and no technology but between types of technology that have their own respective problems. Bruno Latour (2002) elucidated that dual nature of technology in his essay, Morality and Technology: the End of the Means. He there distinguishes two modes of existence, the moral mode and the technological mode. They are modes of existence because they are each directly related to the proliferation of things in the world. They bring things into existence.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

20

W. Galusky

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Whereas the technological mode brings forth novel entities by making new networks of associations possible, though, the moral mode brings forth hidden ones by exposing the necessary components of existing networks. The Gosford Park example above proves helpful here. In the technological mode, domestic service is viewed only in terms of what it allows, namely preoccupations with etiquette and the time to worry about social standing. In the moral mode, one would need to think of at least part of the people, the class divisions, the marshalling of resources, etc., that enable dinner to be served. Importantly, we must continue to live in this world even while trying both to understand it and make it better. This leaves the basic questions unanswered: how does one attempt to live in this world? How can one attempt to account for relationships while still being dependent upon them? These questions lead me to turn back to the chickens. A Life with Chickens, or Making and Being So there I was with the one chicken left from what had been eight. Foxes, or opossums, or raccoons had whittled the number down. Foxes seem much more romantic, somehow, so lets say it was foxes. Whats more important is not what killed the seven chickens but why I still had one. How, then, did this one lone chicken survive? And why did the other ones die so easily? The previous occupants of my rented rural home had already established chicken accommodationsa spacious, multi-chicken dwelling, with modern conveniences like dirt oors, nesting boxes with sloped roofs, roosts with a cool little ramp, and a small door to the outside. I couldnt wait to use it. Some local predators couldnt wait for me to use it either. The chickens probably could have waited. Unfortunately for them, the building contained many subtle entrances for unwanted guests. I was quite distressed by the loss of the rst chicken. I had had them for about two months when suddenly the undulating mass of chicken appeared less bulky. I lost two more a few nights later, followed, in turn, by all but a single chicken. The amount of chicken feathers no longer on chickens was rivaled only by the amount of denial I exhibited. Maybe the chickens were molting? And then out touring the neighborhood? At some point I had to give up on the notion that the vacation my chickens were on was something more than just metaphoric. The scatterings of feathers and reduced ock amounted to evidence too compelling to ignore. The missing chickens were gone. Eaten. Not by me. Attempting to be stoic about the dwindling numbers, I sought solace in thoughts about the naturalness of their passing, how they were to die anyway, and what more romantic way for them to die than as nature intended. Gruesomely, perhaps, but nature could tend toward the dramaticespecially when shot for television. My visions of The Discovery Channel not withstanding, such thoughts brought little comfort. The notion that I had helped orchestrate some grand one with nature episode was quickly undermined by a feeling of complicity in their

Playing Chicken

21

demise. Nature may have been active in their deaths, but not so much in their lives. Through extension, I arranged their existence, constructed the architecture that conditioned their days and nights. Their very physiologyso conducive to being eatenwas designed for the benet of my survival, not theirs. The chickens are, at least in part, human creations.4 Artifacts. Technologies. After all, they have been designed (bred, genetically altered, and honed) to provide food for human populations. They have not been specically designed to ght for their lives. They provide us with eggs and esh; we feed and shelter them so they can do that. I failed to do my part adequately. I even ended up aiding the other predators by keeping the hens penned up. I could not escape my responsibility. And I did feel responsible, just as I had felt proud seeing the ock, my ock, rooting through the yard eating bugs and grass, taking dirt baths and chasing each other around. The rst egg was a revelation. It was relatively small (though they would get much bigger) but with a rich, deep yellow yolk that made store-bought eggs literally pale in comparison. Pretty soon there were more eggs than the two of us could eat. I went from consumer of eggs to provider of eggs. I had shortened part of my food-producing network by bearing primary responsibility for it. I was up at dawn and home by dusk opening and closing the door of their house; providing a supply of fresh water and supplemental feed; cleaning out the house regularly; keeping unsanctioned predators at bay (ideally). In fact, raising chickens imposed upon me a much more routinized schedule than I had typically kept as an academic (I also came to rue the much earlier sunrise of summer). And so I got to witness how one failuremy failure exposed the vulnerability of even such a small network. I also came to realize how truly dependent I was on those vaster food networks I found so problematic. I had access to immense human nature networks to keep me fed and to keep me safe. My chickens primarily had me. The one chicken that made it had to take it upon herself to nd a safe haven. Eschewing her human-made connes, she ew into the trees. It was from this roost that she surprised me that morning. I had no idea she could get that high, and I even felt a little hurt. My role as a chicken protectorludicrously inadequatewas being usurped by a strong-willed chicken. In confronting this unaccounted for behavior, and in particular my own reaction to it, I began to question the role and responsibilities I had in her life. Here I nally began to question what was best for her. In seeking refuge in the trees, was she obeying some evolutionary imperative, was she doing what was natural, was she trying all means just to stay alive? If so, why did it feel so wrong? Or was that behavior the result of my interference in her life, with my attempts to keep her penned up, cultivating an animal for the express purpose of being yummy? Should I seek to control that behavior or leave her to the whims of wind and rain? Whatever the answer, my chicken was ill-suited to defend herself from unsanctioned predators, but well-suited for the purposes of a sanctioned oneme. Bred to be consumed, my modern chicken is indeed a technological marvel. She is also,

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

22

W. Galusky

at the same time, a natural marvel. These two classications are not mutually exclusive, though their relationship often appears at odds. And the domesticated chicken body that was shaped by design and situated within larger systems helps to reveal the complex interplay of nature and technology that humans help to orchestrate. The Nature of this Technology The history of the domesticated chicken shadows that of humans. The origins of the modern, domesticated chicken (Gallus domesticus) goes back tens of thousands of years, with some uncertainty about its direct lineage. Whatever its heritage, the chicken has occupied the place in human society primarily of food provider. They are yummy and tend to stick around. They (can be coerced to) lay eggs at a prodigious and maladaptive rate. In fact, the modern egg layer, a variant of the Leghorn, became the favored industrial breed in part because she could be easily dissuaded from her urge to brood, and thus could be kept in her production cyclelaying eggs productively instead of just sitting on them (see Smith & Daniel, 1975, p. 239). Having a reliable and regenerative food supply allows us to live in one place, to build communities, to erect identities based upon those practices. The relative dependability of the chicken, as with other domesticated animals, enables civilization. The chicken also operated as vessel of cultural meaning; particularly sexual meaning. Like many animals, the chicken has had to bear the brunt of human projections regarding gender roles and sexuality. The cock has long been a symbol of male virility, of which my own delicacies prohibit the saying of much more. Hens and eggs, on the other hand, carried more mixed meaningsboth the sacred and the profane. In many societies, women have been prohibited from both eating hens which were seen to lay here and there in different places and eggs more generally, for the same reasonpromoting promiscuity (see Smith & Daniel, 1975). The logic of such associations involves the idea that eating eggs increases sexual appetite which in turn increases the likelihood of seeking sexual satisfaction wherever it presents itselflaying here and there. This line of thought works in concert with the belief that hens have their eggs fertilized by the wind. Chickens also played roles in religious ceremony and divination, allowing insight into the wisdom of the spirit world. The two most common visions obtained from these sacricial birds: Beware sharp objects near throats and Enjoy a stiff breeze now and then. In modern Western mythology, the chicken occupies a much less sacred position. The butt of that most confoundingly unfunny joke form about perambulation (why did the frog cross the road? It was stapled to the chicken), it also has the ignominy of being associated with all manner of cowardiceas Bob Dylan once sung, The sun is not yellow, its chicken. Having now spent time with chickens, I can vouch for their tendency to run. If I were designed to be eaten, however, I would
Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Playing Chicken

23

probably ee, too. Surprise a hen quickly enough when escape seems futile, and she will hunch down, wings slightly out, and stamp her feet. She performs this action to protect herself. Thats it. About to get eaten? Stand still, throw a tantrum. Running may be the better option. This instinct carries on even in death. Scientists will tell you that the chickens body responds to the rings of the autonomic nervous system. I think the chicken is just frightened by the sharpness of its own beak. While the chicken garners little association with the sacred, this animal occupies a large and important, if often under-appreciated, place in our food supply. Humans had already begun keeping these birds in large numbers several thousand years ago. The ancient Egyptians are reported to have kept chickens, incubating eggs in heated roomsat some estimates, between 10,000 and 15,000 eggs at a time (see Smith & Daniel, 1975, p. 14). Since that time, the chicken has gone through many iterations and been modied to service huge urban populations, occupying a vital place in human organization, while they themselves have occupied less and less space (and, it turns out, time). In the United States today, a lone chicken in industry can produce close to two dozen eggs a monthindustry-wide that number is seven billion [see US Egg & Poultry Association (2008) for up-to-date numbers]. For the 1.2 billion eggs that are hatched, those chicks will grow large and fat enough to slaughter in just over a month (and hopes remain high that the time will be reduced by half in the near future).5 In fact, most commercial producers never see their chickens mature into adulthood, harvesting them while still juveniles (see Roberts, 2008). The process of producing the large, eshy bird we buy now emerged in part from a contest in the middle of the last century sponsored by the A&P food store called the Chicken of Tomorrow (Horowitz, 2004; see also Boyd, 2001). This contest pitted chicken producers against an ideal archetype of chicken, where entrants were judged in terms of meat yield and body proportionality, among other variables. The goal was to create a better meat-type chicken that would be more efcient to produce and yield a larger quantity of meat. In a lm about that contest produced in 1948, the viewer is presented with a sideby-side comparison of the current chicken carcass and the ideal model molded waxa model, I should note, that looks a lot like the chickens one nds in the supermarket today.6 Importantly, this transformation has been aided through the use of antibiotics and hormones, enabling chicken bodies to spend less time ghting illness and more time growing muscleso much muscle, in fact, that the chickens circulatory and skeletal systems struggle to support them (Roberts, 2008; see also Langston, 2008). Judged by consumer standards, however, this process of chicken development has been successful, if by success we consider the reality that the US poultry industry, in a month, brings three billion more pounds of chicken esh to the mouths of Americans in one form or another. Thats a lot of Egg McMufns and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) Value Buckets. These chickens are efcient

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

24

W. Galusky

protein producing cogs in our industrialized food machine. Left to themselves, of course, chickens would likely not be so productive. They probably wouldnt live in cages either. But would leaving them alone be enough to consider them natural? This modern industrialized food production system is precisely what positioned me to desire raising chickens in the rst place, even while making it materially possible. The modern food industry can produce more food than people need while isolating us from those production processes and the lives that are sacriced for that bounty. This system swallows up animals and humans: the esh plays the part of the raw material while workers represent the cogs that produce and process that material. As Strifer (2005) points out, the industrial food system that grew around the chicken is a particular case in point. What had been a way for rural homesteads to produce supplemental protein and income in the early part of the twentieth century in the US, chicken raising became a largely consolidated, vertically integrated system controlling all parts of the chicken lifecycle by the late 1980s. And these aspects of the lifecycle, as Strifer attests, made uniform not just the chicken body, but the actions and activities of the humans who interacted with them in growing, hauling, and processing the birds. For example, growers would contract with companies who promised to buy chickens, but only if those birds were purchased from particular hatcheries, fed particular feed on particular schedules, grown to particular specications and harvested at particular times. Meanwhile, consumers came to know chicken less as a whole bird, and more as a valueadded, processed component of tenders, nuggets, and patties (see also Horowitz, 2006). As the farm became the factory, we were lifted from the tyranny of necessity and shoved into the alienation from that which we eat. Compared to the producers employed in factories, one might say that my chicken lived a much more humble and natural life. Barring the stock pot, she will live for between four and six years. She scratches for bugs, eats grass, rolls in the dirt, and pecks at my feet. She is less prone to the diseases prevalent in mass habitation, but more prone to being eaten by foxes. I had originally presumed this naturalness, motivating me to raise chickens in the rst place. Because of modern food production practices, and my isolation from them, I had taken to practicing a kind of vegetarianism. I was not against the consumption of esh. I just thought that we shouldnt kill animals twicetaking their life along with their living. I would eat animals if I knew where they came from and how they lived. Generally. Questions persist for me as to how strongly and meaningfully the distinction holds, but its where I found myself. I wanted chickens precisely so they would live the life they wanted, and I could watch them do it. When I ate their eggs, and later them, I could at least have had the experience of caring for, and killing, that which fed me. My living conditions and my lifestylemy material selfplaced me in a position to do just that. So I found myself with chickens.

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Playing Chicken

25

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

The naturalness of these specic chickens, however, is not self-evident. In order to get them, I went to a local farm where they sold chickens in manageable numbers (one can order them online, but in clutches no smaller than 25). I was interested in getting hens, primarily (though not exclusively) for the eggs. Beyond the hen issue, however, modern chickens are not typically designated as both edible and useful for egg production. One can choose either a layer (for eggs) or a broiler (for meat)the chickens name and fate all rolled into one. Emphasizing eggs, I chose the layers. Unfortunately, it is not easy to know for certain that I was picking hens instead of roosters. It is difcult to tell if a chick will be a rooster or a hen with just a casual glance. Having one or more unproductive roosters would be an annoyance for me, as well as for chicken-raisers within city limits forbidding animals that crow. For commercial growers tending ocks in the thousands with carefully calibrated feed schedules, egg quotas, and slim prot margins, the prospect of not knowing which birds were male or female could be catastrophic. There are two common methods of determining sex: venting and feathering. Venting involves peering carefully at the sex organs of the chick inside the bodya delicate procedure that requires a great deal of skill and concentration.7 A quicker, biological solution was found through selective breeding, a form of feathering which involves identifying external characteristics, like feather color, specic to sex. My chickens were Red Star Sex-linked. All the hens were red. Thus, in making my choice of chicken type and in specically acquiring these birds, I exposed another one of the ironies in my contemporary chicken raising. That is, I sought to raise chickens to avoid chicken products generated through birds bred, grown, and processed through industrialized systems. Yet my own knowledge and acquisition of the small ock were enabled by a physiology engineered to service the divisions of labor and goals of efciency required by those self-same systemsegg layers easily identied through the color of their feathers. In a very real way, I hadnt circumvented the system, present as it was in the very body of the chicken. Instead, I had become an adjunct to that system, simply taking over a more immediate responsibility. But I was responsible, nonetheless, to a being whose nature has been shaped to t within certain technological constraints. A nature that is shaped through technology, however, is not a nature that is controlled by technology. Control and Responsibility With regard to our responsibility to non-human animals generally, the notion of stewardship has been well established through time. From less bellicose interpretations of Genesis, to St. Francis of Assisi, to Aldo Leopold, humans have been making efforts to articulate a form of benevolent caretaking with the natural world. Whether because God would have it so, or because it is a form of enlightened self-interest, these views suggest that care of the natural world is a good thing.

26

W. Galusky

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

But what happens when we shape non-human nature to suit us, rather than suit itself? Its possible that early humans treated early domesticated animals with care, empathy, and even reverence. Regardless of the intent, however, we have modied them to t, even to enable, certain forms of human civilization. These animals live in an ecology, but a highly managed, industrialized one. Weve altered all chickens, regardless of where they residetheir breed selected over generations to increase egg production, their lifestyle and physiology conducive to easy pickins. By us, by everything. We have simplied the chicken so that it does one thing wellproduce proteinat the expense of all other things, such as being reduced more completely to an element in egg [and meat] production (Smith & Daniel, 1975, p. 296). In this sense, we have created this technology to t our needs, and thus we owe particular diligence to protect our creation. Thus, the chickens death in this case, and the chicken itself, is not natural, but a human construct demanding human oversight. This is so at least in terms of the chicken-producing system, of which the individual animal is simply a part. Even if my chicken is a technology, she is still also an animal. A machinimal, if you like, an animal altered both within a technological system and as a technological system. While some might wish to claim that the most profound change has been from natural to technological, from animal to machine, we must not forget the nature that resides within the chicken. Nor must we take the stance that nature altered by design no longer counts as nature. Too often arguments about environmental stewardship and duty (which tend to leave out domesticated animals) operate from a position of purity. Natural is good; artice is bad. Thus domesticated chickens, especially chickens in factories, deserve less consideration than truly natural, wild animals. But this stance imposes a troubling dichotomy. To say that we can either leave nature alone or despoil it results in treating nature as a collectible. Much of the nature we encounter and rely upon every day merely nds expression in a simplied state; nature perseveres even within our most elaborate contrivances. We should not be asking the question whether the chicken is natural or articial. No, the real question we should ask, with domesticated chickens as with all of technology, is what denition of nature remains. Fixing the Problems of Technology with More Technology At some point, my chicken (I actually called her chicken) decided that she did not want to sleep in the structure built for that purpose. Perhaps she got spooked by some less subtle predator, perhaps she just realized that it wasnt safe in that place. For whatever reason, she sought alternate accommodations. Chickens, famously, dont y. Their wings cannot generally support their bulk. But a more svelte, free-range chicken can manage a pretty high wing-assisted jump. My chicken had to clear six and a half feet. From a still position, she jumps, aps, and squawks her way up onto the lower branch of the tree in the front yard. She then nds a suitable point to jump onto the next limb, up and

Playing Chicken

27

up, until she nds the perch on which she feels the most comfortable. She would spend the night there. And she would descend to the earth from there, at least once by way of my scalp. My domesticated chicken, for all her characteristics that have been changed and ordered, still had other natural qualities that I had not accounted for. Her technological status had deluded me into thinking her actions were predictable and controllable. I was wrong. She would sleep in the wrong place, lay eggs in the wrong place (she was one of those promiscuous chickens), do things that I never expected. Human intervention with her make-up made the chicken somewhat predictable, but never totally so. In this sense, technologies (here in the guise of the chicken body) simply represent and incorporate nature in specic ways. Each technological system we produce and use and discard contains within it a denition of nature. These denitions assume nature to be a certain way, and not others. All other aspects may be ignored or forgotten. But they do not go away. When these features do make themselves manifest, they return as strangersas aberrations, as surprises, as threats. Things that need to be overcome to ensure the smooth functioning of the systemthe awed assumption being that the solution to technology (not incorporating enough nature) is technology (incorporating more nature). The tighter we try to exert control, however, the more things tend to slip away. Here the tale of coccidiosis as told by Smith and Daniel (1975) is illustrative in chicken terms. Coccidiosis is a naturally occurring intestinal parasite that can cause what intestinal parasites are known to cause in all manner of animals. For chicken producers looking for maximal and consistent yield, sick birds are disruptions to the stability of that system. The solution to this so-labeled problem involved wire oors that limited the birds exposure to the parasite found in fecal matter. Prior to this innovation, a chick might get sick and then develop an immunity to coccidiosis early on. Paradoxically, birds became more prone to this illness as adults due to reduced early exposure, which in turn required increased use of antibiotics, which in turn weakened the birds overall immune systems, leading to greater constraints on outside workers for fear that they would bring in external pathogens. These hybridized, isolated birds became more susceptible to disease, to the extent that what used to be home (the world outside the factory) had become a threat. A more current example can be found in the case of avian u. Instead of focusing on the disease, I want to focus on how the threat is incorporated by the existing poultry production structure, which is happening in two rather telling ways. On the one hand, large poultry producers exclaim the existence of this u virus as vindication for the current practice. A spokesperson for Tyson Foods Inc., recently touted the relative safety of enclosed spaces as opposed to more free-range growing methods (see Tyson Foods, 2005). On the other hand, the problem of avian u has been reinterpreted as a weakness of the chickensomething that can be genetically engineered out of the population (see Henderson, 2005).

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

28

W. Galusky

Thus isolating the problem in the nature of the chicken, and not in the technology that mediates it. In both cases, the status quo of the systems organization remains untouched, ensuring that chickens will be produced and available as expected.8 To work as intended, technologies depend upon a set of givens, a set of constants, a stable natural world. This stability, or at least presumption of stability, restricts how nature can nd sanctioned expression; at the same time it promotes other technological interventions, like the use of antibiotics and growth hormone, that regulate the health and growth of an animal within a particularized environment. This idea of a stable and limited nature is built into our technologies. In turn, technologies enforce that denition back on nature. As noted earlier, each technology anticipates a set of relations, a user, a setting. In the case of the chicken, both producers and consumers have sought out particular natural qualitiesegg laying ability, relative docility, and eshiness, for exampleand coveted them, isolated them, magnied them for particular purposes. In so doing, we modied this animal into something that is easily preyed upon by all manner of creatures and more susceptible to disease. Because of this quality, other predators and organisms reemerge in this systemthis technology of domesticated chicken productionnot as agents of ecological balance or robustness, but as threats to economic investment and stable functioning. These natural characters must be excised for the system to function in its current form. The system itself does not become unnatural. Instead, the nature within the chicken just becomes less robust, more one-dimensional. These animals become simply a protein machine with aws, to quote Michael Pollan (2006, p. 219). Other natural qualities, like desires for space, for pecking orders, which have been ignored in the breeding process but which remain (the animal part of the machinimal), must also be accounted forthrough cauterizing beaks, through forced moltingto maximize the stability of the system. Thus, in this relationship, humans augment and seek to stabilize some aspects of nature, while ignoring or attacking others which threaten that particular denition of stability. And we do so within the technocratic logic of the system itself, offering technological patches to the social and ethical problems of technological design (see Rosner, 2004). Chickens form a part of a presumed, stable food production system that enables us to go about doing other things, to make other aspects of life meaningful, without having to think about whether food will be available. As Gene Kahn, the founder of Cascadian Farm, told Michael Pollan (2006), This is just lunch for most people. Just lunch. We can call it sacred, we can talk about communion, but its just lunch (p. 153). Therein lies the rub. Talk of removing chickens from the processes which deny certain natural characteristics is itself a threat to many things that take those processes as given, as stableeconomies, lifestyles, identities. If our protein supply was to become less cheap, less abundant, or less reliable then aspects of our own lives would have to adapt. The slow food movement merits mention here, as it ties together an awareness of food production and

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Playing Chicken

29

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

locality with a sense of identity and an articulation of values (Petrini, 2006). For those who see food as a necessary means for other aspects of life, however, or for those who, to quote Marge Simpson, cant afford to shop at a store that has a philosophy (Groening et al., 2005), the disruption of the current agricultural system would be seen as a burden rather than a possibility. Thus, as our lives become more entwined with technological systems and as we become more machinimal-like, the more nature will be required to be one way and not others, the more it will become impossible for chickens to live as mine does, and the more surprises will come to be seen exclusively as threats. As Hannah Arendt (1958) once wrote in another context, the problem is not that its false, but that its becoming true. My original choice to raise chickens was motivated by a desire to escape, or at least mitigate, the ethical problems I associated with industrialized food production systems. But my own actions were not simply better by default, and were not simply closer to nature. Instead, they opened up new ethical questions and responsibilities about how nature should nd expression within the body of the chicken and the systems that attempt to keep that body safeat least long enough to eat. With regard to technological systems, the ethical questions that emerge, then, do not revolve around deciding whether one wants nature or technology, but rather how much of nature, and how variable a nature, our technologies should accommodate or allow expression. My chicken is not more natural, but rather her natural elements are allowed more expression in the system that surrounds her life, both happy and sad. Understanding the nature in technology does not dismiss ethical questions under the guise of technological sin, but rather makes the questions that much more relevant. The choice is not between technology and nature, but in the best way to have both. Playing Chicken, or a Solution that Doesnt Really Solve Anything On one of the kitchen cabinets, theres a picture I drew of a chicken behind bars, bearing the caption Free the chicken! (see Figure 1). It was meant as a subtle reminder to my wife to let the chicken out in the morning. I had nally taken the hint (one live chicken living in a tree, seven dead ones not) and built a smaller, more secure house to protect the chicken from predators, wind, and rain. The chicken was now safer, but less free; she depended upon one of us to lock her in at night and let her out in the morning. Since she gets up at sunrise, thats awfully early. On weekdays, I dont have to do it. My wifes up anyway. I sleep in. On weekends, I have to set the alarm. Would that it were that easy all around. Free all chickens and get more sleep. Unfortunately, the prospect of loosing billions of chickens worldwide to live like my chicken doesnt seem plausible. Visions of roving bands of cocks and hens, taking over parks, leaving eggs everywhere, and promoting promiscuity do not bring me pause. No, part of the issue revolves around survivability. The

30

W. Galusky

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Figure 1. A reminder to let the chicken out. Credit: Wyatt Galusky.

reason Im not that preoccupied with my chickens wanderings (or deaths) results from my lack of need for them. Not having to buy eggs from a store is a convenience, even a luxury, not a necessity. My rhetorical positioning is made possible by a rm material foundation itself made possible in part and ironically by the very industrial practices I decry. Thus, there is a very real difference between contemplating my relationship with a chicken because I am hungry versus because I am full. If I required those eggs to survive (as my primary source of protein, as my primary source of income) I would be much more conscious, and restrictive, of where my chicken goes, what she eats, what threatens her. I have a friend whose ability to earn a living is contingent on the function of his car. As such, he knows a lot more about how well his car functions at any given time than I do. The chicken is not an automobile. But in our society, it has a similar function. We dont ride in it, but we depend upon this restricted chicken, and food production practices more generally, to live the way we do. As I look at chickens, then, I see that complex interplay of nature and technology humans help to orchestrate. I see a being that reects the nature of technology inscribed in a body that is also part of a larger systemoverseen by large, vertically integrated companies, or by me. Either way, nature is not absent. Nature is

Playing Chicken

31

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

understood through boundariesinside and outside, right and wrong. And as I live with chickens, I see myself. I am embedded within those self-same systems, struggling to understand nature beyond utility, but knowing that I require nature to be particular ways, so that I myself can be secure enough to seek out that understanding and try to share it with others. This essay acknowledges that embodiment in a way that does not sacrice our normative urges on the altar of complexity and complicity. Understanding the embeddedness of chickens, of technologies, within our society and within ourselves, we can begin to face the questions that will mediate between the nature that is possible and the nature that is (technologically) necessary. Can we re-envision threats as possibilities, can we make room for more of nature in our technology? What would we be willing to give up? It will have to be something. Its not a question of asserting control or no control, of simplifying nature or not simplifying nature, but rather doing justice to all elements of the mediated relationship. The task of re-visioning the relationship between technology and nature must be one of both/and rather than either/or. In thinking through the interconnectedness of the two, we might be able to articulate systems that permit a more dynamic nature, or which might indulge more of natures characteristics. We would have to allow for, and perhaps even cherish, surprise. Donna Haraway (2008) puts it this way: Once again we are in a know of species co-shaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down. Response and respect are possible only in these knots with actual animals and people looking back at each other, sticky with all their muddled histories. Appreciation of complexity is, of course, invited. But more is required too. Figuring out what that more might be is the work of situated companion species. It is a question of cosmopolitics, of learning to be polite in responsible relation to always asymmetrical living and dying and nurturing and killing (p. 42). In the meantime, however, outside of a strong push toward greater politeness and more complicated engagement with the animals that make our lives possible, what does this trend toward greater simplication bode for humans? What does the story of the chicken say about the human experiment, besides an increasing systemic aversion to surprises? Humans, according to Hacking (1999) are interactive kinds, prone to adapting to and modifying the concepts and categories meant to dene us. But such interactivity does not make humans immune to the technologies we use on other forms of nature. After all, we, materially at least, are natural too and subject to the same kind of evolutionary and domestication pressures (see Russell, 2003). In fact, the life cycle and developmental history of the chickenfrom a more robust but tenuous relationship between specic farmer and specic chicken and specic environment, through to the sterile creation of embryonic proteincan

32

W. Galusky

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

also be read as an allegory of modern human life. The requirements of the laboratorycontrol, puritycontinue their encroachments into the basic life of the chickencreating a uniformity in living conditions, breed, feedstock, genotype, through a dialogue between the natural inclinations of the physical chicken and the social demands of (certain) humans. The animals natural inclinations are honed, simplied, and amplied to express an increasingly narrow phenotype. This train of development has already made its next logical step: forgoing the animal altogether to produce meat muscle protein itself, in vitro (see Edelman et al., 2004). Controls of diet, environment, and activity notwithstanding, new techniques seek to isolate desirable protein/fat/nutrient combinations based upon current human dietary ideals. As a consequence of deliberating about my night job (raising chickens) based on the thinking and teaching I do during my day job (on the philosophy of technology and the environment), the question I want to ask is, what kind of human is anticipated by this technology? Perhaps a human more accustomed to increasingly controlled environments, increasingly engineered food, increasing intervention on ideal body types via surgery and genetic alteration, increasing reliance on chemical controls of disease and mood, which in turn create a greater dependence on those systems that provide such necessities. Perhaps the domesticated chicken suggests a harbinger of things to come for humans who themselves seek to fully control their diet, their environment, and their stimulation. To live in a technologically mediated world where surprise is only bad. Humans, it appears, are playing chicken.

Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Ben Cohen and Chris Henke for reading early and subsequent drafts of this essay, and helping to put it into its current shape. He would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the contributors to this issue for their helpful suggestions. The author would like to thank Kelly Ann Nugent for her editorial and personal guidance. Finally, he would like to thank chicken (alas, posthumously) for the inspiration to pursue this line of thought. Early drafts were presented as talks at the 2005 annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, at Colgate University, and at Hamilton College.

Notes
1

On anthropological takes on domestication, see for example Clutton-Brock (1989), and Cassidy and Mullin (2007). Historically, see Kalof (2007) for a broad sweep of animals within human culture; Anderson (2004) for uses of domesticated animals as tools of colonization; Pauly (2007) on the cultivation of plant species; and Horowitz (2006) on animals as meat commodities. In sociology, see Tanaka and Busch (2003) on the standardization of agricultural practices. In philosophy, see Wolfe (2003) for a collection of essays on human relationships to animals.

Playing Chicken
2

33

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

For earlier work on the Internet as a specic kind of mediating tool, see Galusky (2003, 2004). More recent research involves agricultural practice and rural alternative energy development in upstate New York. 3 Those terms are employed, in order, by Latour (2005), Haraway (2003) and Kant (1958). 4 For more on humans as agents of evolutionary change, see Russell (2004). 5 According to Bugos (1992), the egg laying capacity of chickens has nearly tripled in just over 50 years, from an average of 93 per year in 1930, to an astounding 246 per year in 1983. The same increase in efciency can be found in broilers, from an average of 3.8 pounds in 112 days in 1928, to an average of 4.1 pounds in 43 days in 1990. These efciencies also hold true for plants, going from ve acres to half an acre needed to feed a single person over a year (see Pew Commission, 2008). 6 More so than you might thinkas the winner of the Chicken of Tomorrow contest, a Cornish New Hampshire crossbreed, did not actually get adopted as the industry standard. That role went to the runner up, a Plymouth Rock chicken, because it had white feathers, instead of the winners red, which would be harder to see if a few remained after plucking (see Horowitz, 2004). 7 Mistakes can still be made. Some breeders simply offer a replacement guaranteeif your chick turns out to be a rooster, you can return it for a hen. 8 Though this is not universal, as poultry producers in Loue, France, have taken to promoting their free range chickens through the slogan Un bon poulet est un poulet libre, in part because they have created a niche market for free chickens which is now threatened by emerging external threats (Sciolino, 2006).

References
Altman, R., Balaban, B., Levy, D., Fellowes, J., Atkins, E., Gambon, M. et al. (2001) Gosford Park (Universal City, CA: Universal). Anderson, V. D. (2004) Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Berry, W. (Ed.). (1990) The pleasures of eating, in: What are People for?: Essays (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press). Boyd, W. (2001) Making meat: science, technology, and American poultry production, Technology and Culture, 42(4), pp. 631664. Bugos, G. E. (1992) Intellectual property protection in the American chicken breeding industry, Business History Review, 66(Spring), pp. 127168. Bulliet, R. (2005) Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human Animal Relationships (New York: Columbia University Press). Cassidy, R. and Mullin, M. H. (2007) Where the Wild Things are Now: Domestication Reconsidered (Oxford: Berg). Clutton-Brock, J. (Ed.). (1989) The Walking Larder: Patterns of Domestication, Pastoralism and Predation (London: Unwin Hyman). Edelman, P. E., McFarland, D. C., Mironov, V. A. and Matheny, J. G. (2004) In Vitro Cultured Meat Production [online]. Available at: http://www.new-harvest.org/img/les/Invitro.pdf Feenberg, A. (2003) Active and passive bodies: comments on Don Ihdes Bodies in Technology, Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 7(2) [online]. Available at: http://scholar. lib.vt.edu/eJournals/SPT/v7n2/feenberg.html Galusky, W. (2003) Identifying with information: citizen empowerment, the internet, and the environmental toxins movement, in: M. McCaughey and M. Ayers (Eds) Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice (London: Routledge).

34

W. Galusky

Galusky, W. (2004) Virtually Uninhabitable: A Critical Analysis of Digital Environmental AntiToxics Activism (Blacksburg, VA: University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), [online]. Available at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd06252004-091513/. Groening, M., Castellaneta, D., Kavner, J., Cartwright, N., Smith, Y., Azaria, H. et al. (Ed.). (2005) Scenes from the class struggle in Springeld, The Simpsons. The Complete Seventh Season (Beverly Hills, CA: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment). Hacking, I. (1999) The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Haraway, D. J. (2003) The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Signicant Otherness (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press). Haraway, D. J. (2008) When Species Meet (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time (New York: Harper). Henderson, M. (2005) Scientists aim to beat u with genetically modied chickens, The Times Online, 29 October [online]. Available at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251491847760,00.html Horowitz, R. (2004) Making the chicken of tomorrow: reworking poultry as commodities and as creatures, 1945 1990, in: S. R. Schrepfer and P. Scranton (Eds) Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History (New York: Routledge). Horowitz, R. (2006) Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press). Ihde, D. (2002) Bodies in Technology (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Kalof, L. (2007) Looking at Animals in Human History (London: Reaktion Books). Kant, I. (1958) Critique of Pure Reason (New York: Modern Library). Kingsolver, B., Hopp, S. L. and Kingsolver, C. (2007) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (New York: HarperCollins). Langston, N. (2008) Modern meat: synthetic hormones, livestock, and consumers in the post-WWII era. Paper presented at Yale Agrarian Studies Colloquium Series, New Haven, CT [online]. Available at: http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/papers/05langston.pdf Latour, B. (1999) Pandoras Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Latour, B. (2002) Morality and technology: the end of the means, Theory, Culture & Society, 19(5/ 6), pp. 247260. Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to Actor Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Morris, M. (2001) Rethinking the Communicative Turn: Adorno, Habermas, and the Problem of Communicative Freedom (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Oxford English Dictionary (Ed.). (1989) Domestic, The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, p. 944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Pauly, P. J. (2007) Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Petrini, C. (2006) Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair (New York: Rizzoli Ex Libris). Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (2008) Putting Meat on the Table (Washington, DC: Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production) [online]. Available at: http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Industrial_Agriculture/ PCIFAP_FINAL.pdf Pollan, M. (2006) The Omnivores Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Press). Roberts, P. (2008) The End of Food (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifin Company).

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Playing Chicken

35

Downloaded by [Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile] at 15:24 18 August 2011

Rosner, L. (Ed.). (2004) The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems (New York: Routledge). Russell, E. (2003) Evolutionary history: prospectus for a new eld, Environmental History, 8(2), pp. 204228. Russell, E. (2004) Introduction: the garden in the machine: toward an evolutionary history of technology, in: S. R. Schrepfer and P. Scranton (Eds) Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History (New York: Routledge). Sallis, P., Reid, A., Baker, B. and Park, N. (1996) Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave ([S.l.]: BBC Video). Sciolino, E. (2006) In the land of coq au vin, soul-searching over bird u, The New York Times, 23 February [online]. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/international/europe/ 24france.html?_r2&orefslogin&pagewantedall# Smith, P. and Daniel, C. (1975) The Chicken Book (Boston, MA: Little, Brown). Soper, K. (1996) Nature/nature, in: G. Robertson, M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis and T. Putnam (Eds) FutureNatural: Nature, Science, Culture (London: Routledge). Strifer, S. (2005) Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of Americas Favorite Food (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Tanaka, K. and Busch, L. (2003) Standardization as a means for globalizing a commodity: the case of rapeseed in China, Rural Sociology, 68(1), pp. 2545. Tyson Foods (2005) American Chicken and Avian Inuenza (Tyson Foods, Inc.) [online]. Available at: http://www.tyson.com/Corporate/PressRoom/ViewArticle.aspx?id1938. US Poultry & Egg Association (2008) Economic Data US Poultry & Egg Association), [online]. Available at: http://www.poultryegg.org/economic_data/ Verbeek, P.-P. (2005) What Things Do: Philosophical Reections on Technology, Agency, and Design (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Wolfe, C. (2003) Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press).

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen