Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the event of farm pig slaughter performed by the neo-peasants. We interpret this event as a practice through which the peasant lifestyle is revindicated as a solution to the broadly defined social, economic and environmental crisis.

Paper long abstract:

The present paper focuses on the event of farm pig slaughter performed by the representatives of the neo-peasant movement. The neo-peasant movement in Catalonia emerged to resist productivist and neoproductivist models of agriculture by proposing a peasant way of life through its discourse, peasant-like agricultural practices and social networks. We analyse farm pig slaughter as a practice through which the peasant lifestyle is revindicated as a solution to the broadly defined social, economic and environmental crisis. We describe the practical and symbolic dimensions of this phenomenon. Elsewhere we have presented neo-peasants as social movement organized through networks of mutual exchange and support, and around the idea of a peasant reflecting a desirable lifestyle. In this sense practicing peasant lifestyle acts as a prefiguration of a better future. At the same time the peasant is as a key figure around which the movement's identity is built. Here we show how all these previously analysed aspects are performed in one event of farm pig-slaughter that, for the analytical purposes, can be treated as a lens that condensates crucial cultural practices and meanings. We also emphasize the significance of the pig slaughter as an infrapolitical practice of the neo-peasant movement, and as the performance of "negativity", a "creation" of alternative and prefiguration of the better future.