Animals as producers, consumers and consumed: the complexities of trans-species sustenance in a multi-faith community

Abstract

Anthropological engagements with nonhuman animals in religious contexts have tended to focus either on animals as sacrificial offerings, whose physical bodies are consumed by suppliants and the divine, or as symbolic entities whose physiological or behavioural characteristics are consumed by human imaginations. More generally, animals, especially those classified as livestock, constitute ‘animal products’ – their flesh, milk, eggs and skins readily consumed by both humans and those nonhumans privileged enough to be our close companions. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative research conducted at a multi-species, multi-faith ashram, and in dialogue with recent ethological research which challenges dominant understandings of nonhuman subjectivities, it will be suggested that animals, especially those traditionally classified as ‘livestock’ can acquire the status of producers, consumers and consumed in ways which challenge normative expectations and practices of production and consumption.