Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm

This talk examines shifting meanings of human life and labor in an agribusiness company region where seven million pigs are born, raised, and killed each year. It rethinks the state of American industrial capitalism through these animals' biological condition.

Alex Blanchette is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Tufts University. In addition to a forthcoming book with the same title as this talk, he is the co-editor of How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet.