carnism

English

Etymology

From the Latin root carnis (“flesh, meat”), +‎ -ism. Coined by American sociologist Melanie Joy as an antonym of vegetarianism.

Noun

carnism (uncountable)

1. The human ideology that supports the slaughter of certain animals and the consumption of their meat or other products (leather from skin, etc).

   Antonyms: vegetarianism, veganism

   • 2012, Joshua Frye, Michael Bruner, The Rhetoric of Food: Discourse, Materiality, and Power, →ISBN, page 107:

     Mass terms like “meat,” “hamburger,” and “leather” used instead of “dead animal,” “cow,” or “skin” encourage consumers to forget that they are eating or using a dead animal. ... The commercial influence of a pervasive and legalized meat industry is strong, which may account for why speciesism and the ideology of carnism are cultural values that Freeman found national news tends to impose on audiences, naturalizing and legitimizing the exploitation of farmed animals.

   • 2018, Piers Beirne, Murdering Animals, →ISBN, page 143:

     Francophobia and anti-popery were coupled with and then merged into this ideology of carnism. As Hogarth historian Jenny Uglow writes: '[t]he oozing red meat, the feasts and freedoms— like the wearing of leather shoes instead of wooden clogs—set the English against the feeble, starving peasants of the Continent'.

2. The practice of eating animal meat or using animal products (leather, etc).

   Antonyms: vegetarianism, veganism

   • 2013, Will Anderson, This Is Hope: Green Vegans and the New Human Ecology:

     Now we need a universal consensus about standards of decency toward ecosystems, individuals from other species, and Earth. We cannot do this unless we end carnism.

   • 2014, Julieanna Hever, The Vegiterranean Diet: The New and Improved Mediterranean Diet:

     So violent systems such as carnism need to use a set of psychological and social defense mechanisms so that humane people participate in inhumane practices without fully realizing what they are doing. The primary defense of carnism is […]

Usage notes

Rare outside of vegan circles or academia.

Anagrams

• Crisman, arcmins, miscRNA, miscrna, narcism