Climate Change and the Coloniality of Foodways: Linking the Replication of an Unsustainable Scale of Ruminant Consumption to Western Cultural Imperialism

Abstract

This thesis examines the cultural processes attributable to a global protein transition toward climate change inducing ruminant products. It employs the theoretical lens of the colonial matrix of power to contend that a globalized nature/culture divide permits a damaging scale of ruminant consumption that is based on a relationship of servitude and shaped by the historic and contemporary forces of colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, and racism – woven into Western cultural imperialism. Drawing on an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach, the results show that new scales of ruminant consumption in shifted dietary preferences displaces past cultural relationships toward these animals and reformulates them in adherence to a foreign way of knowing, imagining, and being. Furthermore, the research offers insight into a Chinese cultural precedent of an alternative ruminant-human relation; that if renewed can forward a solution to mitigate the dire effects ruminant livestock contribute to the global warming of planet Earth.