S5E7: Politics of Domestication with Chi Mao Wang
In this episode Claudia chats to Chi Mao Wang about “the politics of domestication” which involves talking about the global-agri food industry, the meatification of diets in east Asia, and how this has resulted in increasing biosecurity measures in Taiwan. This leads them to a discussion about the westernization of domestication and the significance of decoupling the eating of meat from ideas of civilization.
Chi-Mao Wang
Chi-Mao Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development, National Taiwan University. His research interests include food geographies and more-than-human geographies. He is currently undertaking research on animal geographies and food politics in East Asia, with particular attention to the management of animal life through modern scientific knowledge. He is the author of Securing participation in global pork production networks: biosecurity, multispecies entanglements, and the politics of domestication practices. You can find out more about him on his website and connect with him via Twitter (@chimaowang)
Featured Readings:
Securing participation in global pork production networks: biosecurity, multispecies entanglements, and the politics of domestication practices by Chi Mao Wang
A food regime genealogy , by Philip McMichael
Big Farms make Big Fluby Rob Wallace
Pathological Lives: Disease, Space and Biopolitics by Steve Hinchliffe, Nick Bingham, John Allen, Simon Carter
Domestication Gone Wild: Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations edited by Heather Anne Swanson, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Gro B. Ween
Animal Highlight: Salmon
In this highlight, Amanda contrasts the lives of salmon in farming operations with that of their wild kin. Amanda talks about the biosecurity threats in salmon farming, the sea-lice that torment the fishes, and those that figure out ways to escape. She contrasts that with wild salmon who navigate vast distances, carry out incredible physical feats of salmon, and their varied social worlds.
Featured: What a fish knows by Jonathan Balcombe; Dying salmon fish (How farmers turn their Salmon pink)
"Through ethnographic attention to domestication assemblages that are marginalized, we can show how multispecies relations become implicated in contexts of colonial expansion, in the making of resource frontiers, and in other efforts associated with progress" - Heather Swanson, Marianna Lie, and Gro Ween (2018)
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research Collective for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Christiaan Menz for his editing work, and Amanda Bunten-Walberg for the Animal Highlight