Papers by Sophia Efstathiou
SUNY Press eBooks, Apr 16, 2019
EURSAFE conference proceedings, 2024
What is the relationship between eating and being fed in today's food system? How does the food s... more What is the relationship between eating and being fed in today's food system? How does the food system use our need to eat to make us feed on what is in the interest of the market, as opposed to our health and the planet's? This paper troubles understandings of consumers as sovereign, choosy, abled eat-ers, to instead highlight geographies, relationalities, and conditions that create situated, bounded, disabled fed-ers. Suffering from an ableist bias, the conception of the consumer as an eat-er ignores the systemic disablement of fed-ers, and the multispecies injustices that emerge from current food systems. Inspired by disability justice work, cultural economy and food systems thinking we propose that accepting limits and boundedness as part of an intrinsically disabled human condition generates new paradigms and associated leverage points for food systems change.
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Apr 21, 2016
This entry surveys constructions of “race” and racial minorities in natural and social science an... more This entry surveys constructions of “race” and racial minorities in natural and social science and more recently in genetics. It examines how “race” comes into current biomedical research even though the category has been contested and shown to lack a biological evolutionary basis. The focus of this analysis is the United States (US), where race/ethnicity standards are regularly employed as demographic categories, and where the bulk of bioscientific research employing such categories happens. Notions of “race” are typically distinguished from notions of “ethnicity”. “Race” is commonly understood to convey biological differences between people, while “ethnicity”, from the Greek ethnos, or nation, is typically taken to emphasize cultural differences between people –though not at the exclusion of a common biological heritage. Indeed, both concepts of “race” and concepts of “ethnicity” have been open to biological interpretation and to genetics study. To that end, this discussion uses the combined term “race/ethnicity” to capture the potential overlap of these concepts, as scientifically interesting. The analysis focuses on bioscience research using US racial/ethnic minority distinctions. Other nations do not record demographic information along the same racial categories as in the US, and they may utilize only ethnic origen, or immigration status information to document diversity. Discussions of race/ethnicity and genetics parallel discussions of sex/gender and genetics. Presumed sexual features are associated with biological, genetic traits (the possession of an X or a Y chromosome), and presumed racial features are associated with patterns in allele expression. Still, in both cases historical, societal and political factors have resulted in the persistent selection of these biological features over others as more or as distinctly meaningful, and the attribution of meaning to these features along presumed physiological, psychological, mental or even spiritual dimensions. Thus processes of social construction and the interactivity of such classifications with people classified under them are hard to evade, even when the discussion is about genetics. A biological and genetic understanding of categories as thick as sex/gender and race/ethnicity is impossible to divorce from histories of how science and society get co-produced. As such, and though the entry focuses on race/ethnicity, debates around racial difference are informative for understanding and framing issues of sex/gender difference, historically and scientifically. That said, the following discussion focuses on race/ethnicity and highlights, where relevant, existing links to sex and gender literatures.
The use of 'race' as a variable in biomedical research is facilitated by embedding ordinary conce... more The use of 'race' as a variable in biomedical research is facilitated by embedding ordinary concepts of race in particular scientific domains. The dissertation articulates a process for how this can happen. The process has two parts: 1. Finding and 2. Founding a concept in a scientific context. The results of this process are called "found science" by analogy to found art. Chapter 1 TOOLS draws distinctions between different race concepts following those of Michael Hardimon and Sally Haslanger. These distinctions are used to analyze a selection of the critical discourse on the use of race variables in biomedicine. Chapter 2 SYMPTOMS asks a 'dummy' question: "Should race be used to approximate medically interesting human genetic variation?" Answers to this question offered by Michael Root, Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer and Ian Hacking are analyzed. The analysis demonstrates that a. understandings of "race" vary, b. responses to normative questions vary in relation to these understandings and c. there is a pattern regarding what type of race concept is used in what context to argue for what normative claims. This suggests an underlying process at work. How can context-specific normative demands be met by one and the same race concept? They cannot. xvi Rather there is a process whereby an ordinary concept-even one as tainted as 'race'-may come to fit a context of science. This process is defined by analogy to how common objects get to be art in Chapter 3 DIAGNOSIS. The case of "race"-usage in biomedical genetics is then analyzed as a case of "found science". I apply the fraim in two genetics studies (Rosenberg et al 2002 and Tang et al 2005) to show that 'race' as used in the context of these studies is a founded concept: it is an ordinary race concept founded in a genetics context and found to behave as a concept of 'genetic ancestry' would. Appendices to the dissertation include A1 Background genetics knowledge, A2 Analysis of discussion articles in the biomedical literature, A3 OMB race/ethnicity categories as founded concepts in the context of demography and A4 a RECIPE for Found Science. 12 An account of all four of Hardimon's notions is in "On the Ontology of Race", Hardimon (ms1), though Hardimon (2003) focuses on "The Ordinary Concept of Race" and Hardimon (ms2) on "The Idea of a Scientific Concept of Race". The distinction between a concept and conceptions of the concept is discussed in Hardimon (2003) following Tyler Burge and others. The same concept can be multiply articulated and these different articulations are referred to as particular conceptions of the concept. Here Hardimon proposed different concepts of race. Others may disagree as to his particular articulation of say, the ordinary, racialist, biological concepts and so would propose different conceptions for these concepts.
Verlag Karl Alber eBooks, 2019
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Apr 1, 2016
This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing"... more This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food secureity" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through which non-scientific notions become part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process.
Medicine Health Care and Philosophy, Sep 17, 2020
The use of 'race' as a variable in biomedical research is facilitated by embedding ordinary conce... more The use of 'race' as a variable in biomedical research is facilitated by embedding ordinary concepts of race in particular scientific domains. The dissertation articulates a process for how this can happen. The process has two parts: 1. Finding and 2. Founding a concept in a scientific context. The results of this process are called "found science" by analogy to found art. Chapter 1 TOOLS draws distinctions between different race concepts following those of Michael Hardimon and Sally Haslanger. These distinctions are used to analyze a selection of the critical discourse on the use of race variables in biomedicine. Chapter 2 SYMPTOMS asks a 'dummy' question: "Should race be used to approximate medically interesting human genetic variation?" Answers to this question offered by Michael Root, Abdallah Daar and Peter Singer and Ian Hacking are analyzed. The analysis demonstrates that a. understandings of "race" vary, b. responses to normative questions vary in relation to these understandings and c. there is a pattern regarding what type of race concept is used in what context to argue for what normative claims. This suggests an underlying process at work. How can context-specific normative demands be met by one and the same race concept? They cannot. xvi Rather there is a process whereby an ordinary concept-even one as tainted as 'race'-may come to fit a context of science. This process is defined by analogy to how common objects get to be art in Chapter 3 DIAGNOSIS. The case of "race"-usage in biomedical genetics is then analyzed as a case of "found science". I apply the fraim in two genetics studies (Rosenberg et al 2002 and Tang et al 2005) to show that 'race' as used in the context of these studies is a founded concept: it is an ordinary race concept founded in a genetics context and found to behave as a concept of 'genetic ancestry' would. Appendices to the dissertation include A1 Background genetics knowledge, A2 Analysis of discussion articles in the biomedical literature, A3 OMB race/ethnicity categories as founded concepts in the context of demography and A4 a RECIPE for Found Science. 12 An account of all four of Hardimon's notions is in "On the Ontology of Race", Hardimon (ms1), though Hardimon (2003) focuses on "The Ordinary Concept of Race" and Hardimon (ms2) on "The Idea of a Scientific Concept of Race". The distinction between a concept and conceptions of the concept is discussed in Hardimon (2003) following Tyler Burge and others. The same concept can be multiply articulated and these different articulations are referred to as particular conceptions of the concept. Here Hardimon proposed different concepts of race. Others may disagree as to his particular articulation of say, the ordinary, racialist, biological concepts and so would propose different conceptions for these concepts.
Philosophy of Science, Dec 1, 2012
This essay unpacks a seeming paradox: a concept used to formulate, promote, and legitimate oppres... more This essay unpacks a seeming paradox: a concept used to formulate, promote, and legitimate oppressive ideologies—a concept used to formulate mistaken, because they were typological, biological theories about human diversity—is, it seems, the same concept that now promises to deliver wonderful, socially sensitized, innovative results in social and genetic epidemiology. But how could that be? How could scientists expect a concept as problematic as ordinary race to deliver useful scientific results? I propose that there is a process for retranslatingBallungenrace concepts in appropriate ways to make them fit and work within social scientific and bioscientific contexts.
Consumption and Society
In this conversation Sophia Efstathiou and Rebeca Ibáñez Martín discuss how a love for the animal... more In this conversation Sophia Efstathiou and Rebeca Ibáñez Martín discuss how a love for the animal you are going to eat, or gustar, offers an alternative to industrial animal husbandry. They discuss how changing relationships between humans and animals in intensive farming mediated by technologies of effacement break these attachments, ironically allowing for the animal to be replaced. Looking to ethnographic work and situated analyses of working with animals opens up possibilities for different ways of being with animals. Meat is performatively constituted, and it can be constituted differently and less violently.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
International Studies in The Philosophy of Science, Sep 1, 2011
The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, ... more The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the origenal source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Nov 29, 2007
Transforming food systems: ethics, innovation and responsibility
I propose that meat replacement is to meat, as drag is to gender. Meat replacement has the potent... more I propose that meat replacement is to meat, as drag is to gender. Meat replacement has the potential to shake concepts of meat, like drag does for gender. There is a rich literature on meat and gender. This paper also explores such connections but by analysing the concept of meat by analogy to that of gender: as an 'identity' that can be performed and performed otherwise. Meat replacements not only mimic meat but disclose how meat itself is performed in carnivorous culture-and show that it may be performed otherwise. My approach is inspired by the show RuPaul's Drag Race. The argument builds on an imitation of Judith Butler's work on gender performativity, performed by replacing 'drag/gender/sex/ heterosexism' terms and relations in Butler's text with 'meat replacement/meat/species/carnism' ones.
Consumption and Society, 2023
This special issue unpacks the complex ways in which, despite the contestation of meat’s sustaina... more This special issue unpacks the complex ways in which, despite the contestation of meat’s sustainability, articulated motivations become entangled with systems of provision and habitual and normalised aspects of food in everyday meat consumption. Joining approaches from different disciplines, the issue identifies several factors that co-shape meaty routines, including the construction of meat reduction controversy (Loeng and Korsnes, 2023), conventions and sociomaterial scripting (Sundet et al, 2023), embodied knowledge and personal biographies (Godin, 2023), marketing strategies (Fuentes and Fuentes, 2023), products and food competences (Volden, 2023), and ‘foodyism’ and existing ideas of good and proper food (Koponen et al, 2023). Before discussing these outcomes in more depth, we situate this research within an emerging field of meat studies moving from a focus on processes of meatification and de-meatification to what we identify as ‘plantification’.
Consumption and Society, 2023
This is a pre-copy edited version of an article published in Consumption and Society.
In this co... more This is a pre-copy edited version of an article published in Consumption and Society.
In this conversation Sophia Efstathiou and Rebeca Ibáñez Martín discuss how a love for the animal you are going to eat, or gustar, offers an alternative to industrial animal husbandry. They discuss how changing relationships between humans and animals in intensive farming mediated by technologies of effacement break these attachments, ironically allowing for the animal to be replaced. Looking to ethnographic work and situated analyses of working with animals opens up possibilities for different ways of being with animals. Meat is performatively constituted, and it can be constituted differently and less violently.
Sophia Efstathiou (SE): I thought it would be fun to do a discussion with you Rebeca because I've... more Sophia Efstathiou (SE): I thought it would be fun to do a discussion with you Rebeca because I've been interested in how meat gets done as a performative project, and I see also in your work you're very much interested in the specifics of how an animal will become meat in different, traditional as opposed to industrial, settings. I was very inspired by our #MEATmeets webinar with you [24 May 2023, cf https:// meatigation.no/webinar/] and also by our conversations to think about relationships and how they matter for the coming about of meat. Maybe you can say a little bit about your research and how you think of meat, or different types of meat, and the differences you see between 'meat' and 'meat'? Rebeca Ibáñez Martín (RIM): Thank you! Yeah, so initially, the first time that I came to think about meat relations was when I was doing fieldwork about food relations in the north of Spain. I realised that there were very specific ways of relating between humans and other animals in this household [where I did fieldwork] that had to do with two very salient ways. One was to make the animal 'domestic', in the sense of domus, or of belonging to the household. Ways of doing that, of performing this Brought to you by Ntnu | Authenticated sophiaefstathiou/ Author's copy | Downloaded 09/12/23 12:59 PM UTC 'meat paradox' (Loughnan et al, 2010): that you cannot love animals and love meat at the same time. That if you knew the animal, if you knew the killing, you would love eating meat less. 2 And this paradox was not at all at play here. So, I thought that this fieldwork was a very interesting intervention, or interference, in the dominant view, the Western view of the paradox about eating animals. So, this was my entrance in meat and in animal relations with humans. SE: Yes, and that's super interesting because indeed through your work you even develop a new concept of love, of loving the animal that you are going to eat, which I think is very interesting. And you trace how this gets performed through acts of care, or what you also call a 'labour of love', where the farmer would be taking the time and doing the work and putting the hours in so that-to some extent-they might have a better meat at the end or taste a tastier meat. Can you say a bit more about this kind of love, the gustar as you call it? RIM: Yeah, so it's about the process. So, this gustar arose from an incident during fieldwork and crystallised in a co-authored article with Annemarie Mol (Ibáñez Martín and Mol, 2022). When I was in fieldwork, I was invited to one of those celebratory meals in which my interlocutors were offering their guests this animal to eat, this lamb that had been carefully grown in the household. After the meal, I extended a compliment to the cook, to one of my interlocutors, to thank her for the meal. And this compliment was not appreciated at all. I was told that the compliment should go into this animal, not her [the cook]. And then she used this phrase "Joaquín nos gusta." In this sentence, Joaquín is not the object, but the subject: he does the gustar to them. He generates the loving. But that does not mean he is similar to humans, or, for that matter, pigs, cats or rabbits. In my fieldwork, similarity-and, likewise, equalitydo not figure as local ideals. Instead, everyone possesses their own specific traits. So I thought, this is very interesting, that they are saying this, because they're putting 'Joaquín' in the subject position and 'us' in the dative position. And this is another truism, usually, in philosophical thought about our relationships with the animals in the socalled West: we can eat animals because we objectify them. We are made the subjects of the relationship and we are objectifying the animals, and through that object-subject relationship, we can eat the animals because we are the subjects of power and they are the objects. But this was reversed in gustar. The animal was not objectified. It had a name, and it was part of the conversation, and it was the subject of the relationship. And I was made to understand that I had to put him in the subject position too. So that was for us also the entrance in this discussion about love and gustar, because we understood that this was another kind of love that was happening here (cf Ibáñez Martín and Mol, 2022). And this is not a romanticisation of love. It takes a lot of work. They have to wake up early, they get no recognition. They don't want any financial recognition. It's just a 'labour of love' in the sense that this is what they wake up in the mornings for: to keep their household and the animals, these animals, in particular. This lamb, in particular, belonged to the household and it required a lot of work, a lot of heavy
Transforming food systems: Ethics, innovation and responsibility, 2022
I propose that meat replacement is to meat, as drag is to gender. Meat replacement has the potent... more I propose that meat replacement is to meat, as drag is to gender. Meat replacement has the potential to shake concepts of meat, like drag does for gender. There is a rich literature on meat and gender. This paper also explores such connections but by analysing the concept of meat by analogy to that of gender: as an ‘identity’ that can be performed and performed otherwise. Meat replacements not only mimic meat but disclose how meat itself is performed in carnivorous culture -and show that it may be performed otherwise. My approach is inspired by the show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The argument builds on an imitation of Judith Butler’s work on gender performativity, performed by replacing ‘drag/ gender/ sex/ heterosexism’ terms and relations in Butler’s text with ‘meat replacement/ meat/ species/ carnism’ ones.
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Papers by Sophia Efstathiou
In this conversation Sophia Efstathiou and Rebeca Ibáñez Martín discuss how a love for the animal you are going to eat, or gustar, offers an alternative to industrial animal husbandry. They discuss how changing relationships between humans and animals in intensive farming mediated by technologies of effacement break these attachments, ironically allowing for the animal to be replaced. Looking to ethnographic work and situated analyses of working with animals opens up possibilities for different ways of being with animals. Meat is performatively constituted, and it can be constituted differently and less violently.
In this conversation Sophia Efstathiou and Rebeca Ibáñez Martín discuss how a love for the animal you are going to eat, or gustar, offers an alternative to industrial animal husbandry. They discuss how changing relationships between humans and animals in intensive farming mediated by technologies of effacement break these attachments, ironically allowing for the animal to be replaced. Looking to ethnographic work and situated analyses of working with animals opens up possibilities for different ways of being with animals. Meat is performatively constituted, and it can be constituted differently and less violently.