Send message to Authors

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.