The Shocking Materialities and Temporalities of Agri-capitalism

Contemporary food provision is largely dominated by agri-capitalism. Using the body of the chicken, the world's most pervasive source of meat protein, this paper tracks the interplay between materiality, spatiality, and temporality within agri-capitalism. It examines the myriad ways in which agri-capitalism distorts space, time, and materiality and deploys them as “fixes” to crises. It illustrates how these fixes reverberate back and forth between production and consumption to shape the spaces of alternative and mainstream food provision alike. It argues that the seemingly distinct spaces of consumption and production are in fact mutually construed and interdependent, and consequently, that shifts in consumptive practices, discourses, or temporalities and materialities cannot in themselves redress the implicit structural inequalities of agri-capitalism. This paper closes with thoughts on an insurgent food politics through which the spaces and possibilities of food can be reimagined.