Docent lecture: Porkopolis and Slave Society: Cincinnati, Pigs and the Making of Racial Capitalism

In the decades before the American Civil War, Cincinnati was one of the largest commercial meat packing cities in the world, processing hundreds of millions of pounds of animals, primarily pigs, every year, for shipment around the world. The success of this industry earned the city the clever sobriquet “Porkopolis,” but pigs were more than just a source of porcine puns. They made the city the lynchpin in a national and international system of racialized production and consumption. This lecture will trace the journey of the pig, from feral frontiersman to salt packed ration, to understand Cincinnati as a metabolic node that tied together the “free” North and the “slave” South and helped create the material realities of racial capitalism in blood, flesh and fat.

Robert Gioielli associate professor gioielli@kth.se 087908517 Profile

DIVISION OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT