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The Resource Porkopolis : American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm, Alex Blanchette

Porkopolis : American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm, Alex Blanchette

Creator
Author
Summary
"PORKOPOLIS is an ethnographic account of hog production in "Dixon," a 15,000-resident agribusiness town in the Great Plains. In Dixon, where nearly 5,600,000 hogs are killed a year, human life has been reorganized around the life and death cycles of porcine production. Alex Blanchette accounts for the totalizing force of hog production by arguing that towns like Dixon represent a reinvestment in 20th-century notions of industry in a post-industrial United States. In practice, this means not only the taking up of industrial stock images, organization forms, and identities, but also an intense desire, on the part of agribusiness corporations, to achieve standardization-to create the "perfect" pig. To achieve standardized results, agribusiness corporations have implemented systems of full "vertical integration," in which they directly own and engineer every stage of a pig's life and death cycle. The result, Blanchette argues, is more than just an effort to create the perfect pig, but rather a calibration of human life and affect to meet the needs of porcine production. Drawing on his ethnographic fieldwork as a worker in a hog factory, Blanchette illustrates how methods of vertical integration and standardization in agribusiness factories work to transform hogs-and humans-into tokens of capitalist animality. The book is divided into five parts. Part I, "Boar," examines how corporations manage the threat of porcine diseases, and the biopolitical protocols that corporations enact in workers' homes to protect hogs. Part II, "Sow," draws from Blanchette's own experiences working the artificial insemination line, where workers are encouraged to "become the boar" with their hands to imitate mating. This part theorizes interspecies and labor politics that arise from situations in which workers are only intimate with one dimension of pigs-in this case, porcine sexual instincts. Part III, "Hog," explores the consequences of standardizing animality, where genetic refinements create litters too large to supply adequate nutrients in uterus. Part IV, "Carcass," examines the vertical integration of human workers' bodies on the assembly lines. Part V, "Viscera" explores the biological "excess" of porcine production-bones, feces, fat, livers, lungs-and corporations' desires to use "all" of the pig. This section examines how the fully integrated factory farm depends on modes of consumption that extend beyond what can be supplied by human eaters alone. This book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, animal studies, neoliberalism and globalization, capitalism, and social theory"--
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Extent
xviii, 298 pages
Note
Source of cataloging data: WCP
Contents
  • Boar. The Dover Flies
  • The Herd : Intimate Biosecurity and Posthuman Labor
  • Sow. Somos Puercos
  • Stimulation : Instincts in Production
  • Hog. Lutalyse
  • Stockperson : Love, Muscles, and the Industrial Runt
  • Carcass. Miss Wicked
  • Biological System : Breaking In at the End of Industrial Time
  • Viscera. Maybe Some Blood, but Mostly Grease
  • Lifecycle : On Using All of the Porcine Species
  • Epilogue: The (De-)Pigification of the World
Isbn
9781478008408
Instance
Label
Porkopolis : American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm
Title
Porkopolis
Title remainder
American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm
Statement of responsibility
Alex Blanchette
Creator
Author
Subject
Language
eng
Summary
"PORKOPOLIS is an ethnographic account of hog production in "Dixon," a 15,000-resident agribusiness town in the Great Plains. In Dixon, where nearly 5,600,000 hogs are killed a year, human life has been reorganized around the life and death cycles of porcine production. Alex Blanchette accounts for the totalizing force of hog production by arguing that towns like Dixon represent a reinvestment in 20th-century notions of industry in a post-industrial United States. In practice, this means not only the taking up of industrial stock images, organization forms, and identities, but also an intense desire, on the part of agribusiness corporations, to achieve standardization-to create the "perfect" pig. To achieve standardized results, agribusiness corporations have implemented systems of full "vertical integration," in which they directly own and engineer every stage of a pig's life and death cycle. The result, Blanchette argues, is more than just an effort to create the perfect pig, but rather a calibration of human life and affect to meet the needs of porcine production. Drawing on his ethnographic fieldwork as a worker in a hog factory, Blanchette illustrates how methods of vertical integration and standardization in agribusiness factories work to transform hogs-and humans-into tokens of capitalist animality. The book is divided into five parts. Part I, "Boar," examines how corporations manage the threat of porcine diseases, and the biopolitical protocols that corporations enact in workers' homes to protect hogs. Part II, "Sow," draws from Blanchette's own experiences working the artificial insemination line, where workers are encouraged to "become the boar" with their hands to imitate mating. This part theorizes interspecies and labor politics that arise from situations in which workers are only intimate with one dimension of pigs-in this case, porcine sexual instincts. Part III, "Hog," explores the consequences of standardizing animality, where genetic refinements create litters too large to supply adequate nutrients in uterus. Part IV, "Carcass," examines the vertical integration of human workers' bodies on the assembly lines. Part V, "Viscera" explores the biological "excess" of porcine production-bones, feces, fat, livers, lungs-and corporations' desires to use "all" of the pig. This section examines how the fully integrated factory farm depends on modes of consumption that extend beyond what can be supplied by human eaters alone. This book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, animal studies, neoliberalism and globalization, capitalism, and social theory"--
Assigning source
Provided by publisher
Cataloging source
NcD/DLC
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Blanchette, Alex
Dewey number
338.1/76400973
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
LC call number
HD9435.U62
LC item number
B53 2020
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • Swine breeders
  • Swine industry
  • Factory farms
  • Agriculture
Label
Porkopolis : American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm, Alex Blanchette
Instantiates
Publication
Copyright
Note
Source of cataloging data: WCP
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Boar. The Dover Flies -- The Herd : Intimate Biosecurity and Posthuman Labor -- Sow. Somos Puercos -- Stimulation : Instincts in Production -- Hog. Lutalyse -- Stockperson : Love, Muscles, and the Industrial Runt -- Carcass. Miss Wicked -- Biological System : Breaking In at the End of Industrial Time -- Viscera. Maybe Some Blood, but Mostly Grease -- Lifecycle : On Using All of the Porcine Species -- Epilogue: The (De-)Pigification of the World
Control code
on1121601580
Dimensions
24 cm
Extent
xviii, 298 pages
Isbn
9781478008408
Lccn
2019043393
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
Other physical details
illustrations
System control number
(OCoLC)1121601580
Label
Porkopolis : American animality, standardized life, and the factory farm, Alex Blanchette
Publication
Copyright
Note
Source of cataloging data: WCP
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Boar. The Dover Flies -- The Herd : Intimate Biosecurity and Posthuman Labor -- Sow. Somos Puercos -- Stimulation : Instincts in Production -- Hog. Lutalyse -- Stockperson : Love, Muscles, and the Industrial Runt -- Carcass. Miss Wicked -- Biological System : Breaking In at the End of Industrial Time -- Viscera. Maybe Some Blood, but Mostly Grease -- Lifecycle : On Using All of the Porcine Species -- Epilogue: The (De-)Pigification of the World
Control code
on1121601580
Dimensions
24 cm
Extent
xviii, 298 pages
Isbn
9781478008408
Lccn
2019043393
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
Other physical details
illustrations
System control number
(OCoLC)1121601580

Subject

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