CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Lacbawan Jr, Macario Bag-ayan |
|---|---|
| Title | RE-ASSEMBLING FOOD AND MEANING: DIRTY, UNHEALTHY AND DANGEROUS DOG-EATING IN THE PHILIPPINES |
| Summary | The key to understanding any social phenomenon is to follow how actors tread the social landscape and describe how they form groups, fuse meanings, and create associations from different frames. In this thesis, I employ Bruno Latour’s reconceptualization of assemblage to trace how NGOs and other actors create assemblages by fusing or defusing dog-eating with discourses on dirt, epidemic and human rights. More specifically, NGOs such as LinisGobyerno and Animal Kingdom Foundation (AKF) produce assemblages that align dog-eating with sanitation, violence and epidemic. On the other hand, supporters of the practice try to invert these claims by foregrounding dog-meat consumption as an entitlement that is protected by both local and international legal codes. This thesis also engages with previous attempts to analyze dog-eating and their failure to deal with the quotidian ways in which actors bundle the practice with multiple frames. Rather than presupposing how peoples’ understanding of food as inflections of deep binary-oppositions, or an epiphenomenon of productive forces, I opine that we must change gear and refocus on how actors themselves interpret contentious food practices by following their actions in a flattened social world. |
| Supervisor | Fabiani, Jean-Louis; Dorit, Geva |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/lacbawan_macario.pdf |
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