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March 27, 2026
u:japan lectures - Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen: "Carnivorism as a Silenced Sacrifice of the Future: Japanese youths 'being political' and 'causing meiwaku' in the Capitalocene"
From: u:japan lectures : Department of East Asian Studies : University of Vienna <ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at>
Date: 2026/03/11
Dear Colleagues,
The Department of East Asian Studies - Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna would like to draw your attention to the upcoming hybrid u:japan lecture:
Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen (Soka University, Tokyo): "Carnivorism as a Silenced Sacrifice of the Future: Japanese youths 'being political' and 'causing meiwaku' in the Capitalocene"
Date and time: Thursday, March 19, 2026, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)
Location: Onsite @ Campus of the University of Vienna Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies room JAP 1 (2K-EG-21), University Campus Hof 2.4, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna, Austria
https://japanologie.univie.ac.
Online: Join the lecture via Zoom (no registration necessary):
https://univienna.zoom.us/j/
Meeting-ID: 653 8929 4572 | Passcode: 332399
Abstract: Two issues are essential to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown - keep fossil fuel in the ground and significantly reduce industrialised animal agriculture. My climate change research and youth activist project began in 2023 with a focus on meat consumption and engaged theory in the context of Japan. I argue that the question of the 'animal' is central to achieving sustainability. Carnivorism here presents an interconnected macro-micro level praxis that pivots around silencing its impact. As one of the wealthiest and most significant participants in globalised imports and world trade - in raw materials, meat and other food stuff - Japan's biophysical metrics make it a major contributor to climate change. Climate discourses, however, far outstrip climate action, resulting in less attention being paid to the central contradiction of mainstream corporate and political culture that hail increasing GDP and consumer demand while also claiming support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As climate data focus primarily on effects rather than causes, narratives of inevitability dominate and in Japan little attention is paid to overconsumption as the major driver of climate change. Here the environmental problems of animal agriculture are framed as issues to be resolved by improved technology, avoiding critique of corporate and government drives that simultaneous increase meat production and consumption for capital growth.
This project investigates the sustainability contradictions of the growth paradigm that go largely unquestioned as particular discursive and embodied social practices normalise everyday consumption. Based on reviews of political discourses, policies, climate data, and fieldwork with youth groups in Tokyo and Okinawa, and ethnographic interviews with around 50 Japanese and 40 international youth interlocutors, as well as short surveys conducted after public lectures, this talk shows 'carnivorism' to be a multifaceted macro-micro level praxis underpinned by a ubiquitous 'common sense' of silencing the interdependent issues of global injustice, climate breakdown and the almost exclusive relations of exploitation involved in industrialised meat production. This talk explores how as interlocutors un-silence [for themselves and their peers] these strategically hidden consequences and begin to "not eat like everyone else," they enter embodied social sensibilities of hitherto unquestioned Japanese identity structures that involve facing an embodied social discomfort when causing meiwaku, or trouble to others as social taboos surrounding meat are broken. The research illuminates how placing the 'animal' at the centre of critical pedagogy gives rise to a new cosmopolitan consciousness with implication for claims to global citizenship and new demands from interlocutors when they 'awaken' to how their everyday consumption creates the Capitalocene.
For more information on the speaker and future events at u:japan, please follow the link below:
https://japanologie.univie.ac.
We look forward to your participation!
Hanno Jentzsch, Lola Moreau, Anna-Maria Stabentheiner, Ralf Windhab and Julian Wollinger
PS: If you missed a lecture or want to review, head to our recorded lectures section:
https://japanologie.univie.ac.
u:japan lectures
Department of East Asian Studies / Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna
E-mail: ujapanlectures.ostasien@
Kindly sponsored by the Toshiba International Foundation:
https://www.toshibafoundation.
The Department of East Asian Studies - Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna would like to draw your attention to the upcoming hybrid u:japan lecture:
Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen (Soka University, Tokyo): "Carnivorism as a Silenced Sacrifice of the Future: Japanese youths 'being political' and 'causing meiwaku' in the Capitalocene"
Date and time: Thursday, March 19, 2026, 18:00~19:30 (CET, UTC +1h)
Location: Onsite @ Campus of the University of Vienna Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies room JAP 1 (2K-EG-21), University Campus Hof 2.4, Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Vienna, Austria
https://japanologie.univie.ac.
Online: Join the lecture via Zoom (no registration necessary):
https://univienna.zoom.us/j/
Meeting-ID: 653 8929 4572 | Passcode: 332399
Abstract: Two issues are essential to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown - keep fossil fuel in the ground and significantly reduce industrialised animal agriculture. My climate change research and youth activist project began in 2023 with a focus on meat consumption and engaged theory in the context of Japan. I argue that the question of the 'animal' is central to achieving sustainability. Carnivorism here presents an interconnected macro-micro level praxis that pivots around silencing its impact. As one of the wealthiest and most significant participants in globalised imports and world trade - in raw materials, meat and other food stuff - Japan's biophysical metrics make it a major contributor to climate change. Climate discourses, however, far outstrip climate action, resulting in less attention being paid to the central contradiction of mainstream corporate and political culture that hail increasing GDP and consumer demand while also claiming support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As climate data focus primarily on effects rather than causes, narratives of inevitability dominate and in Japan little attention is paid to overconsumption as the major driver of climate change. Here the environmental problems of animal agriculture are framed as issues to be resolved by improved technology, avoiding critique of corporate and government drives that simultaneous increase meat production and consumption for capital growth.
This project investigates the sustainability contradictions of the growth paradigm that go largely unquestioned as particular discursive and embodied social practices normalise everyday consumption. Based on reviews of political discourses, policies, climate data, and fieldwork with youth groups in Tokyo and Okinawa, and ethnographic interviews with around 50 Japanese and 40 international youth interlocutors, as well as short surveys conducted after public lectures, this talk shows 'carnivorism' to be a multifaceted macro-micro level praxis underpinned by a ubiquitous 'common sense' of silencing the interdependent issues of global injustice, climate breakdown and the almost exclusive relations of exploitation involved in industrialised meat production. This talk explores how as interlocutors un-silence [for themselves and their peers] these strategically hidden consequences and begin to "not eat like everyone else," they enter embodied social sensibilities of hitherto unquestioned Japanese identity structures that involve facing an embodied social discomfort when causing meiwaku, or trouble to others as social taboos surrounding meat are broken. The research illuminates how placing the 'animal' at the centre of critical pedagogy gives rise to a new cosmopolitan consciousness with implication for claims to global citizenship and new demands from interlocutors when they 'awaken' to how their everyday consumption creates the Capitalocene.
For more information on the speaker and future events at u:japan, please follow the link below:
https://japanologie.univie.ac.
We look forward to your participation!
Hanno Jentzsch, Lola Moreau, Anna-Maria Stabentheiner, Ralf Windhab and Julian Wollinger
PS: If you missed a lecture or want to review, head to our recorded lectures section:
https://japanologie.univie.ac.
u:japan lectures
Department of East Asian Studies / Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna
E-mail: ujapanlectures.ostasien@
Kindly sponsored by the Toshiba International Foundation:
https://www.toshibafoundation.
Approved by ssjmod at 01:01 PM