Getting down to the meat: The symbolic construction of meat consumption

Abstract

This essay examines the symbolic construction of meat consumption in U. S. culture. Commodity fetishism in marketplace exchange removes the production process from the meaning of meat and, thereby, silences the slaughter of animals. Through the critical employment of a Burkean associational analysis and the identification of symbolic alignments, this essay traces the rhetorical transformation of a live animal into a consumer product. In so doing, product, food, meals, tradition, and masculinity emerge as meat's core cultural meanings.