Symposium on the Political Economy of Meat
Tampere University, Finland
October 8–9, 2026
Organiser: Making the Modern ‘Meat Complex’ project
Keynote Speakers: Paul Sharp (SDU), Mary Hilson (Aarhus University), Alejandro Gomez del Moral (University of Helsinki)
Main Building D14 | Join via Zoom
Program
Thursday, October 8, 2026
10:00 Opening and Introduction, Marja Jalava (Tampere University)
10:05 Keynote 1
- Cows, Capitalism and Cooperation: The Making of Modern Denmark
- Paul Sharp (SDU)
Chair: Olli Turunen (Tampere University)
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Session 1 (90 min): Constraint and Control in Meat Production and Consumption
- The Meat of the Matter: Conviction and Constraint through Four Episodes of Reduced Consumption in Finland, 1865–2025
- Kata Isenring-Szabo (Strategy and Entrepreneurship (S&E) Research Group, School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä)
- Rationalizing Fisheries – Policies and Practices on Fishing in Finland, 1870–1970
- Matti O. Hannikainen (University of Helsinki)
Chair: Marja Jalava (Tampere University)
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Keynote 2
- ’This house is built for killing’: Rethinking the rise of the Danish co-operative bacon factories, c. 1880s-1930s
- Mary Hilson (Aarhus University)
Chair: Marja Jalava (Tampere University)
15:15 Coffee Break
15:30 Session 2 (90 min): Meat, Capital, and the State: Latin American Perspectives
- Priced Out: Living in the Shadow of Industrial Animal Feed
- Enrique Antonio Mejía (Nordic Institute of Latin American Studies, Stockholm University)
- State, International Capital and the Nationalization of the Brazilian Meatpacking Industry: The Case of Frigorífico Wilson (1914-1971)”
- Osni Gabriel Rios Ribeiro (Federal University of São Paulo, UNIFESP, Brazil)
- Meatpacking in Argentina: From Crisis and Stagnation in Older Foreign-Owned Plants to a New Domestic Industry. Argentinization, Technological Change and Regionalization (1955–1973)
- Mauro Nahuel Cuk (Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas. Departamento de Humanidades. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política. Centro de Estudios Económicos de la Empresa y el Desarrollo)
Chair: Petteri Norring (Tampere University)
Friday, October 9, 2026
10:00 Keynote 3
- Painting a Picture of Quality…and Maintaining It: The Storied Development of an Ibérico Pork Subsector in Spain as Site of Commercial, Biological, and Ideological Contestation, 1930s-Present
- Alejandro Gomez del Moral (University of Helsinki)
Chair: Petteri Norring (Tampere University)
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Session 3 (90 min): Making the Modern Meat Complex
- Studying the Co-Production of Humans and Livestock in Agricultural Modernization: Goals, Focus and Methods
- Marja Jalava (Tampere University)
- Breeding pigs, processing energy – The biopolitical economy of Finnish swine husbandry
- Petteri Norring (Tampere University)
- Building Livelihoods, Industrializing Animals: Institutional Reforms to Expand Pork Production in Finland from the 1880s to the 1960s
- Olli Turunen (Tampere University)
Chair: Hilja Solala (Tampere University)
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Session 4 (90 min): Colonial Meat: Politics and Production in the Global South
- Meat Without a Market: Bovine Life, Colonial Law, and the Political Economy of Non-Production in India, 1880s–1940s
- Akanksha Sharma (Department of History, Panjab University, Chandigarh)
- Colonizing and Politicizing the Meat Production in a City in Global South
- Karunatilleka Rivindu de Zoysa (Department of History, University of Colombo)
- On the Margins: Slaughterhouses and the Politics of Urban Space in Colonial India
- Madhu (Miranda House, University of Delhi)
Chair: Olli Turunen (Tampere University)
15:30 Concluding Discussion
