Meat, medicine, and materialism: A dialectical analysis of human relationships to nonhuman animals and nature

Abstract

The idea that humans are innately competitive and cruel is a dominant theme throughout Western thought. These notions that legitimate human cruelty to each other and other animals have their origins in biological sciences and have greatly influenced the social sciences. Sociologists, particularly Marxist sociologists, however, have often contested this view of human nature. This notion has also come under fire by evolutionary biologists. In line with these critical analyses, this paper will continue to challenge this theory of human nature principally through examination of human relations to nonhuman animals, and secondarily in reference to nature as a whole. Approaching this from a dialectical materialist perspective, we employ an interdisciplinary approach and reject reductionist, idealist and teleological explanations. We attempt to uncover the underlying structures that promote the competitive and cruel (exploitative) nature of humanity, illustrating this in terms of agribusiness and biomedical research.