Niche market making in the UK sheep sector; performing the halal market in uncertain times

Lever, John ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2188-8518, Miele, Mara, Dastgir, Shabbir and Fuseini, Awal (2025) Niche market making in the UK sheep sector; performing the halal market in uncertain times. Journal of Rural Studies. ISSN 0743-0167 (In Press)

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Abstract

Focussing on the UK sheep sector, this paper explores the relational formation of niche halal meat markets, examining how performation struggles shape and relocate market controversies amid post-Brexit uncertainty and economic crisis. While the prevailing political and media-led controversy over the non-stun religious slaughter of animals has waned considerably, it has not disappeared altogether; rather, it has been relocated through processes of b/ordering and the reframing value attribution. Drawing on the geographies of marketisation literature, we examine how dual markets for stunned and non-stunned halal meat persist as interdependent trajectories, and how both remain central to the resilience of rural farming communities. Through a mixed-method approach, including livestock market observations and interviews with supply chain actors, we demonstrate how the halal market is recursively shaped by spatial, moral, and calculative logics. These ongoing performation struggles reveal that market order is achieved through ongoing and contested negotiations across economic, ethical, and religious dimensions.