Playing Chicken: Technologies of Domestication, Food, and Self

Abstract

Abstract To engage the mediating and enabling aspects of food technology, I reflect in this essay on my (rueful) attempts at raising chickens. As an incompetent chicken-raising hobbyist and an STS-trained scholar, I came to view my chickens as technologies themselves—results of human interactions with nature, through the overarching frame of domestication. Viewing the chicken–human relationship as a technological one has allowed me to foreground several elements at once. First, the chicken and the systems that sustain it put in stark relief the process of defining nature very specifically. Certain aspects are coveted and augmented while others are disregarded or overcome. Thus, technology does not strictly demarcate artificial from natural, but rather restricts or accommodates fuller forms of nature. Second, these definitions of nature (the chicken in this case) stabilize and enable other technological forms that take the initial stability for granted (e.g. human social and geographic organizations premised on industrialized agriculture). Third, these systems of stabilities, premised on necessarily partial versions of nature, complicate normative decisions on proper human–chicken relationships. In creating a uniform animal, and a relatively cheap and stable source of protein, we have empowered identities that can think about food less as necessity, and more as choice. As a result, we as consumers become increasingly dependent on the systems of domesticated nature that make such choice possible. And when the chicken itself becomes a product of that lifestyle choice (expressed as an element of consumer behavior), its very skeletal structure becomes optional. Keywords: Foodagriculturaltechnological systemsSTSdomesticationchickens in vitro meatidentity Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank Ben Cohen and Chris Henke for reading early and subsequent drafts of this essay, and helping to put it into its current shape. He would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the contributors to this issue for their helpful suggestions. The author would like to thank Kelly Ann Nugent for her editorial and personal guidance. Finally, he would like to thank chicken (alas, posthumously) for the inspiration to pursue this line of thought. Early drafts were presented as talks at the 2005 annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, at Colgate University, and at Hamilton College. Notes On anthropological takes on domestication, see for example Clutton-Brock Citation(1989), and Cassidy and Mullin Citation(2007). Historically, see Kalof Citation(2007) for a broad sweep of animals within human culture; Anderson Citation(2004) for uses of domesticated animals as tools of colonization; Pauly Citation(2007) on the cultivation of plant species; and Horowitz Citation(2006) on animals as meat commodities. In sociology, see Tanaka and Busch Citation(2003) on the standardization of agricultural practices. In philosophy, see Wolfe Citation(2003) for a collection of essays on human relationships to animals. For earlier work on the Internet as a specific kind of mediating tool, see Galusky (Citation2003, Citation2004). More recent research involves agricultural practice and rural alternative energy development in upstate New York. Those terms are employed, in order, by Latour Citation(2005), Haraway Citation(2003) and Kant Citation(1958). For more on humans as agents of evolutionary change, see Russell Citation(2004). According to Bugos Citation(1992), the egg laying capacity of chickens has nearly tripled in just over 50 years, from an average of 93 per year in 1930, to an astounding 246 per year in 1983. The same increase in efficiency can be found in broilers, from an average of 3.8 pounds in 112 days in 1928, to an average of 4.1 pounds in 43 days in 1990. These efficiencies also hold true for plants, going from five acres to half an acre needed to feed a single person over a year (see Pew Commission, Citation2008). More so than you might think—as the winner of the Chicken of Tomorrow contest, a Cornish–New Hampshire crossbreed, did not actually get adopted as the industry standard. That role went to the runner up, a Plymouth Rock chicken, because it had white feathers, instead of the winner's red, which would be harder to see if a few remained after plucking (see Horowitz, Citation2004). Mistakes can still be made. Some breeders simply offer a replacement guarantee—if your chick turns out to be a rooster, you can return it for a hen. Though this is not universal, as poultry producers in Loué, France, have taken to promoting their free range chickens through the slogan 'Un bon poulet est un poulet libre', in part because they have created a niche market for 'free' chickens which is now threatened by emerging external threats (Sciolino, Citation2006).