Paper short abstract:

In this paper based on thirteen months of fieldwork, I look at how cat and dog meat shops are organized amidst Seoul’s largest meat market and explore the discrepancies between official discourse and actual practice regarding cat and dog slaughter and meat consumption.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I show that rarely have anthropologists focused on the marketplace as a space where animals are sold as food (a notable exception being Bestor's study of Tsukiji, Tokyo's fish market (2004)). I show that even more rarely, yet understandably as there are few that fit the profile, have anthropologists carried out ethnographic research of marketplaces where some species are simultaneously identified by both sellers and buyers as pets and livestock. I show that the organization of the market follows a strict layout based on thirteen categories of goods. I show that animals are kept alive outside for customers to appraise their health before they are killed, cooked and consumed in the back of the stalls. I strive to give a voice to my participants at the market and engage with both Viallès' dichotomy between zoophagan and arcophagan attitudes towards meat consumption (1994) and Candea's account of the distance (epochè) endorsed by scientists in research that involves animal testing (2013). I argue that Korean buyers, who enter the marketplace operate a similar form of detachment that allows them to be oblivious to the discrepancy between the Korean discourse about the existence of a pet/livestock boundary, and the absence of such a divide in practice.

I also reflect on my engagement as an anthropologist in the field and show that operating a similar detachment from my own Western inclinations, in this particular context, was far from being an easy thing to do.