Meat matters: cultural politics along the commodity chain in India

Abstract

In a period when the global market is generally supposed to be erasing local meaning and applying uniform significance to objects and consumers, cultural commodity politics are in fact proliferating. Drawing on the case of the Indian meat economy, I argue here that the further that commodities travel in economic life, the more they affect and are affected by non-economic systems of signification. Specifically, the expanding livestock commodity chain in India has increased the political and social visibility of a long-standing carnivorous tradition, and meat is increasingly leveraged for social and political power in surprising ways.