Going Plant-Based and Anti-Capitalism

Şafak Çubukçu Ö.

Historical Materialism: Rethinking Rationalities and Irrationalities within the Times of Crisis and Radical Transformations, İstanbul, Türkiye, 5 - 07 Nisan 2024, ss.43, (Özet Bildiri)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: İstanbul
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.43
  • Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Neoliberal transformation of Turkish agriculture involves rapid urbanization, ongoing processes of primitive accumulation, and further environmental degradation, as the capital relation penetrates deeply into the rural contexts. Increasing scale of production of agricultural crops and livestock contributes to the metabolic rift under capitalism.

Masses are separated from their means of subsistence, as land and labour-power have increasingly been commodified. This experience of rural masses is mirrored by a separation from the nature/natural for the urban masses, as consumption patterns develop in line with the profit-based requirements of global food systems. On the other hand, there is an increasing awareness about the ecological crisis and the damages of large-scale food production, especially in the meat industry; reflected in recent tendencies of shifting to plant-based diets. Sustainability of existing food systems has been questioned; even though capital accumulation is not directly referenced in the discourses of the individuals pursuing a plant-based diet, as much as its consequence, that is, animal exploitation.

Based on the argument that a reference to capitalist production relations is indispensable in grasping the current ecological crisis, this paper revolves around the question of whether and to what extent the vegetarian/vegan diet could be considered as an anti-capitalist stance. Semi-structured interviews with 20 vegetarian/vegan people living in Turkey constitute the method. All the participants are labourers, familiar with the exploitative nature of capitalism. Limiting the participants to the Turkish context also facilitates revealing the level of awareness about the neoliberal transformation process, which had affected food production severely, in the country. While individual lifestyles are emphasized and political activism is individualized under neoliberal capitalism, its crises create its own challenges, as evidenced by the protest against the meat industry building an emergent collectivism and holding seeds for the search for an alternative.