Livestock/Deadstock

How humans think and feel about their work handling food animals

“"Wilkie gradually builds the foundation for her later discussion of several paradoxes such as 'sentient commodities,' the tension between remaining aloof and having feelings about stock, and the transition from livestock to slaughtered stock.... This work will be especially useful for collections in sociology and agriculture. Summing Up: Recommended." - Choice "Wilkie takes us through a fascinating history of animal domestication.... In a multifaceted work, she examines paradoxes such as these animals being 'sentient commodities'.... It is a tribute to the author's sociological research skills linked with a compassionate personal approach, that she is able to bring to the surface much thought and feeling that would otherwise, one assumes, never be voiced. The volume offers a unique insight into the often contradictory nature of animal production and care." Anthrozoos " Livestock/Deadstock should help guide a wide group of scholars studying the relationship between producers and the nature in which they work, including in fishing, logging, and ranching.... For labor and environmental sociologists, Livestock/Deadstock is essential....[H]er study of an often overlooked group of workers has much to offer labor historians, and her anti-polemical stand is welcome for a topic that attracts overheated rhetoric from both the environmental community and the meat industry. As in so many environmental controversies, the experiences of working-class people have been lost in this debate. Wilkie has done a noble job centering those voices." Labor History "Wilkie carefully undermines dichotomies not just between those who kill and those who do not, but ultimately between life and death itself. The text fits nicely among an emerging academic interest in multi-species ethnography and a renewed theoretical focus on practices of care.... This laboriously researched work is ethnographically and historically sensitive.... This is a skillful ethnography.... invaluable for academics whose research closely aligns with the questions that motivate the text."-- Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , December 2013”

"Wilkie gradually builds the foundation for her later discussion of several paradoxes such as 'sentient commodities,' the tension between remaining aloof and having feelings about stock, and the transition from livestock to slaughtered stock... This work will be especially useful for collections in sociology and agriculture. Summing Up: Recommended." - Choice "Wilkie takes us through a fascinating history of animal domestication... In a multifaceted work, she examines paradoxes such as these animals being 'sentient commodities'... It is a tribute to the author's sociological research skills linked with a compassionate personal approach, that she is able to bring to the surface much thought and feeling that would otherwise, one assumes, never be voiced. The volume offers a unique insight into the often contradictory nature of animal production and care." Anthrozoos "Livestock/Deadstock should help guide a wide group of scholars studying the relationship between producers and the nature in which they work, including in fishing, logging, and ranching... For labor and environmental sociologists, Livestock/Deadstock is essential...[H]er study of an often overlooked group of workers has much to offer labor historians, and her anti-polemical stand is welcome for a topic that attracts overheated rhetoric from both the environmental community and the meat industry. As in so many environmental controversies, the experiences of working-class people have been lost in this debate. Wilkie has done a noble job centering those voices." Labor History "Wilkie carefully undermines dichotomies not just between those who kill and those who do not, but ultimately between life and death itself. The text fits nicely among an emerging academic interest in multi-species ethnography and a renewed theoretical focus on practices of care... This laboriously researched work is ethnographically and historically sensitive... This is a skillful ethnography... invaluable for academics whose research closely aligns with the questions that motivate the text."--Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, December 2013

Rhoda Wilkie is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Aberdeen, where she earned her doctorate in 2002. She is the co-editor (with David Inglis) of the five-volume collection, Animals and Society: Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences.

How humans think and feel about their work handling food animals

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