Making Space for Novel Meat. A Philosophical Analysis for Reconfiguring Meatscapes

Meat and Space: these are the objects of inquiry of this dissertation. Meat, whose identity is challenged by the rise of novel foods that claim its name, and the space where meat inhabits, whose configurations are sculpted by this food and is now on the verge of being unsettled as novel ones enter its fabric. Novel meats (plant-based and cultivated) indeed promise to reconfigure both meat and its spaces for the better, addressing the environmental, ethical, and social crises born from their entanglement. But what conceptual commitments and normative stakes are implicated when novel food technologies redesign, relocate, or erase the spatial conditions that sustain meatscapes — and how might deliberate interventions facilitate transitions toward desirable futures for meatscapes? This philosophical analysis aims to craft concepts, models, and frameworks for academics, professionals, and other stakeholders involved in or affected by novel meats. To achieve this objective, the dissertation is composed of two interrelated parts. Part I draws on conceptual engineering to address the “what” of meat by identifying the basic elements of the existing concept and refining them in light of novel food technologies. Part II adapts the approach of Gastrospaces (Bonotti et al. 2025) to address the “where” of meat, providing the theoretical machinery to make explicit the basic kinds of entities and relations that compose meatscapes. Taken together, these parallel and intertwined strands share the general aim of positioning the spatial dimension of novel meat as a central concern. Most importantly, both aim to represent meat and its spaces, thereby making it easier to map the changes introduced by novel foods; to evaluate those changes, red-flag potential problems and identify corrective directions; and, lastly, to orient collective decisions over the reconfiguration of meat and its spaces in line with the goals novel food technologies purport to achieve.