Cite as:
Stassart P, Whatmore S J, 2003, "Metabolising risk: food scares and the un/re-making of Belgian beef" Environment and Planning A 35(3) 449 – 462
Download citation data in RIS format

Metabolising risk: food scares and the un/re-making of Belgian beef

Pierre Stassart, Sarah J Whatmore

Received 15 January 2002; in revised form 23 July 2002

Abstract. In this paper we explore the event of foodscares as an example of what Callon calls 'hot situations', in which the landscape of competing knowledge claims is at its most molten, and alternative production and consumption practices galvanise new modes of sense-making against the market and state-sanctioned rationalities of industrialisation. Through a case study of the Belgian cooperative Coprosain and its meat products, we examine the 'stuff' of food as a ready messenger of connectedness and affectivity in which 'risk' is transacted as a property both of the growing distance between the spaces of production and consumption and of the enduring metabolic intimacies between human and nonhuman bodies.

Restricted material:

 Full-text PDF size: 444 Kb

 References  46 references, 6 with DOI links ()

Your computer (IP address: 54.234.67.55) has not been recognised as being on a network authorised to view the full text or references of this article. If you are a member of a university library that has a subscription to the journal, please contact your serials librarian (subscriptions information).