‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign

This paper addresses UK society’s relationship with meat and specifically explores the extent to which a process of ‘de-meatification’ is underway in this context and one of the mechanisms involved. It does so through analysis of reporting of the Meat Free Mondays (MFM) campaign in the national and...

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Main Author: Morris, Carol
Format: Article
Published: Wiley 2017
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40321/
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author Morris, Carol
author_facet Morris, Carol
author_sort Morris, Carol
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper addresses UK society’s relationship with meat and specifically explores the extent to which a process of ‘de-meatification’ is underway in this context and one of the mechanisms involved. It does so through analysis of reporting of the Meat Free Mondays (MFM) campaign in the national and regional British print news media. MFM offers a convenient yet powerful vehicle for trying to understand shifting meanings of meat not least because it directly challenges, and generates debate about the dominant – meat based – diet. The paper concludes by arguing that a shift is taking place in the status of meat within UK society with the print news media acting as a mechanism that is working in support of de-meatification. However, these conclusions are qualified in a number of important ways, including the anthropocentrism of the (de)meatification debate, its geographical variability and its weakly politicised character.
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spelling nottingham-403212020-05-04T18:38:12Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40321/ ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign Morris, Carol This paper addresses UK society’s relationship with meat and specifically explores the extent to which a process of ‘de-meatification’ is underway in this context and one of the mechanisms involved. It does so through analysis of reporting of the Meat Free Mondays (MFM) campaign in the national and regional British print news media. MFM offers a convenient yet powerful vehicle for trying to understand shifting meanings of meat not least because it directly challenges, and generates debate about the dominant – meat based – diet. The paper concludes by arguing that a shift is taking place in the status of meat within UK society with the print news media acting as a mechanism that is working in support of de-meatification. However, these conclusions are qualified in a number of important ways, including the anthropocentrism of the (de)meatification debate, its geographical variability and its weakly politicised character. Wiley 2017-03-16 Article PeerReviewed Morris, Carol (2017) ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign. Sociologia Ruralis . ISSN 1467-9523 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soru.12163/full doi:10.1111/soru.12163 doi:10.1111/soru.12163
spellingShingle Morris, Carol
‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign
title ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign
title_full ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign
title_fullStr ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign
title_full_unstemmed ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign
title_short ‘Taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in UK national and regional newspaper coverage of the Meat Free Mondays campaign
title_sort ‘taking the politics out of broccoli’: debating (de)meatification in uk national and regional newspaper coverage of the meat free mondays campaign
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40321/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40321/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40321/