They are doing this to me: an anthropological study on workers and animals in a slaughterhouse in the state of São Paulo

• Grant number: 13/00771-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2013
• End date: February 28, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Felipe Ferreira Vander Velden
• Grantee: Míriam Rebeca Rodeguero Stefanuto
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to study, from an anthropological perspective, a slaughterhouse situated in the urban area of a small town in the state of São Paulo, that slaughter cattle in the morning and pigs in the afternoon. In this sense, it becomes crucial to understand the process of symbolic transformation of animal flesh in which workers take an active part. From this, the focus will be given mainly to the way the workers are living there, considering the ways they perceive the animals they must deal with every day, even if not in a direct way; how they perceive their own work of turning live animals into meat; and finally, how to deal with their situation, considering studies that suggest an identification between the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of workers (LANSBURY, 1985; PORCHER, 2004; FARAGE 2011). Thus, we intend to explore how the category "work" is influenced, from the perspective of these workers, by daily relationship with the death of living beings and their transformation into food, and how this activity reverberates in how workers understand the animals and its relations with these humans as well as in the ways it affects other instances of their knowledge and practices.(AU)