CARNAL: Eco-Ethical Articulations of Body, Meat, and Flesh

In a collaboration between theologians and anthropologists, the project proposes a lived ecological ethics by exploring contemporary dilemmas between human interests and nature's “own voices”. To this end, the project develops an overarching model that articulates both contrasts and connections between three ecologies: (1) Nature understood as raw, wild and potentially enchanted (ecology1). The corresponding ethical task is to withdraw and allow space to nature. (2) The care for nature through stewardship and intervention (ecology2). The ethical task would be to develop technologies that contribute to solving climate crises. (3) Nature as the encompassing reality with which human beings are intertwined in nature-cultures (ecology3); the task here is to understand humans in solidarity with the planet's other life forms. The guiding hypothesis of CARNAL is that the three aspects of Ecology-1-2-3 intersect while often operating in tension with one another. The project explores three interlaced themes: 'Body' is about the interaction between humans and animals. Specifically, we examine the ethical debates in Denmark concerning the introduction of rewilded animals and human relationships to domestic animals. From a consumer perspective, we examine ‘ Meat’ in its production-and-consumption chain from farm to forks. We focus on the relationship between red and green meat, both in the supermarket and among young people attending folk high schools. Finally, we examine the solidarity of the shared materiality of life (‘Flesh’) as a theological theme, which is simultaneously unfolded in the form of a resonance-based ethics.