Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research among new wave hunters and foragers in Eastern Australia, I explore their mobilisation of imagined animal moralities in justifying their food procurement and consumption practices.

Paper long abstract:

The global demand for meat is expected to double by 2050, and conservative projections indicate that expanding the livestock industry to meet this demand would exceed biophysical limitations, dangerously exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss and ecological breakdown. Recognising this, wild meat consumption is increasingly being explored by those critical of the industrial food complex. Drawing on ethnographic research among new wave settler-descended subsistence hunters and foragers in Victoria and Tasmania, I explore their mobilisation of imagined animal moralities in the course of their valorisation of nature as a practical and ethical guide for living. In justifying meat eating, animal moralities are invoked most vividly through hunters' construction of the embodied human as predator within local ecosystems. Leaning on theoretical contributions from Plumtree and Haraway, I explore the multi-species discourses hunters and foragers extol in their claims to confounding capitalist norms, contributing to environmental sustainability, and re-engaging authentic human-nonhuman animal relationships.