Corey Wrenn

• PhD Sociology
• Lecturer at University of Kent

With there being so many compromises necessary to mainstream veganism in a deeply speciesist society, how has the scholar-activist community negotiated its commitment social justice for Nonhuman Animals? Giraud’s Veganism: Politics, Practice and Theory examines these emerging conflicts at a historical point in which the cultural and political expan...

It remains the case that in vitro meat completely overlooks the billions of other non-humans raised in the food system who are not directly slaughtered for their flesh.

Most societies are deeply dependent upon the systematic exploitation of other animals Veganism disrupts this narrative For precarious newly developed nation-states Economic reliance on other animals is often presumed mandatory for global participation and legitimacy Citizens of these new nations are frequently overcoming the legacy of coloniali...

Sociological research has uncovered a general derogation of vegans in all levels of society including the personal (MacInnis and Hodson 2017), the institutional (Greenebaum 2016), and the cultural (Cole and Morgan 2011). This negativity has been identified as a key barrier to vegan transition (Markowski and Roxburgh 2019). It is a particular nuisan...

The centuries-old campaign to liberate other animals has been buoyed by the ingenuity of several generations of dedicated women, often with explicit recognition that women and other animals share many interlocking injustices. With nonhuman animals used and abused in a variety of completely legal institutions and nonhumans themselves rendered legal...

Foie gras (which translates to “fat liver” in French) consists of liver taken from force-fed and force-fattened ducks and, to a lesser extent, gooses1 (gooses being more expensive and time intensive to exploit). While foie gras has been in production for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, its industrialization in the 1960s dramatically increased...

Juliana Adelman’s Civilised by Beasts presents a case study on urbanization in the modernizing West with an examination of human/nonhuman relations in the Irish city of Dublin. As Dublin contended with changing economies, a rising population, and numerous public health concerns in the 19th century, city planners and officials responded by increasin...

We are proud to announce the soft launch of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists Research Lab. This lab is a virtual space for collaboration and exchange. Its aim is to generate timely research with the input of scholars from universities across the world in partnership with professional sociological associations. The IAVS research...

-Explore vegan feminist theory and queer Black feminist theory to understand gender diversity in animal rights -Critically understand multispecies oppression and liberation -Begin a dialogue about shared experiences between gender nonconforming people and the other animals they advocate for -Consider how a multispecies consciousness informs their p...

The first volume in green criminology devoted to gender, this book investigates gendered patterns to offending, victimisation and environmental harms. The collection advances debate on green crimes and climate change and will inspire students and researchers to foreground gender in reducing the challenges affecting our planet's future.

Animalization is both a symbolic and structural process that renders some bodies cognitively, physically, biologically, and even evolutionarily "Other" to the effect of normalizing and rationalizing unequal modes of production and structural violence. This article argues that Appalachians, like the peoples of other colonized regions, have historica...

Sociologists James Jasper and Jane Poulsen have argued that activists’ deployment of emotionally triggering ‘moral shocks’ can stimulate recruitment for movements, particularly for those which are less successful in recruiting through social networks. Others have suggested that, more than a recruitment tool, these moral shocks are useful for sustai...

On Friday 15 November 2022, I participated in a debate on how to achieve a vegan world with my good colleague and philosopher, Josh Milburn. Milburn makes the case that, in order to reduce animal suffering, some concessions should be made from the vegan abolitionist position. This includes the perpetuation of animal-based foodways that include oyst...

In the vegan feminist discourse, women’s unique relationship to other anifmals, women’s contributions, and women’s disadvantages are increasingly documented and discussed. But, as this field is an emerging one, little attention has been paid to the larger arc of protest in the West and the influence of political and economic structure on campaignin...

RAC member, Dr Corey Wrenn, highlights the extraordinary life of Jack McClelland, The Long-Distance Swimmer from Belfast who Flexed his Plant Power in 1960s Ireland

Veganism is predominantly presented positively, especially with regard to consumerism Follows preexisting momentum of veganism, not COVIDCOVID-19 acknowledged mostly in relation to the space created for new products or services Importance of veganism could have been emphasized but was not“Veganphobia” seems to have been cured, and the antidote...

This chapter examines the early publications of The Vegan Society as it struggled to define the vegan philosophy, its own organization, and the movement writ large. The society’s founders recognized the historical (and linguistic) importance of their efforts and invested considerable resources in the production of The Vegan which served as a herald...

Although most animal rights activists identify as atheist or agnostic, the atheist/humanist community has traditionally been unwilling to apply reasoned thought to speciesism and expand its circle of concern to other animals. This talk outlines some of the humanist/atheist traditions in the animal rights movement and highlights some of the core rea...

Your first choice is Animal Rights, Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation by David Nibert – why did you choose that? David Nibert is arguably the ‘father’ of vegan sociology and this book has had the greatest influence on my writing and thinking. I had been introduced to David Nibert and his work in graduate school in the early 2...

The animal rights movement is fundamentally based on love for other animals and a radical recognition of human-nonhuman relationships as valid and important. In a world that has normalized wholescale violence against other animals, recognizing nonhuman animal personhood and expressing compassion for all kinds is a vital act of social justice. This...

In The Oxford Group and the Emergence of Animal Rights, longtime Nonhuman Animal rights theorist Robert Garner and scholar-activist Yewande Okuleye bring substance to the hazy mythology surrounding the mid-20th century incarnation of Western Nonhuman Animal rights. Admirably, they do so before the knowledges and memories are lost to the ages, as th...

Jasper and Poulsen (1995) have argued that activists’ deployment of “moral shocks” (usually in the form of graphic and violent media) can stimulate recruitment for movements, particularly for those which are less successful in recruiting through networks. Others have suggested that, more than a recruitment tool, these moral shocks are useful for su...

After much ridicule and resistance, veganism seems to be reaching a tipping point in popularity, cultural assimilation, and institutional accommodation in the West. Indeed, the 2021 Veganuary event pulled a record 600,000 registrants, while hundreds of stores and restaurants eagerly provided new products and specials to facilitate the trend. A year...

The second wave of the animal rights movement began in the 1960s, riding the wave of youth counterculture and social justice protest and inspired by publications such as Ruth Harrison’s 1964 Animal Machines, Brigid Brophy’s 1965 “The Rights of Animals,” and Peter Singer’s 1975 Animal Liberation. By the 1980s, a robust movement had taken shape with...

This presentation showcases animals and society in my lovely city of Canterbury. This is a student-oriented presentation for the University of Kent Applicant Day. Animals have been central to the economy and growth of this medieval city, yet their legacy remains largely hidden.

In the early middle ages, a community of Irish monks constructed a monastery outpost on the lonely Skellig Michael just offshore of County Kerry. These skelligs served as a mysterious boundary land where the known met the unknown, the worldly wrangled with the spiritual, and the very parameters of humanity itself were brought into question. Amid a...

The presentation would offer a history of human dominance and its relationship to our current food system. To that end, it would survey the historical development of various economies (egalitarian, hunter/gatherer, agricultural, and capitalist) and how they have collectively contributed to current food politics. This will include an analysis of the...

In this presentation, I discuss strategies for successful networking and self-promotion as a minority scholar in the field of animal studies. This is a joint project with Animal Ethics from the Margins (operated by my colleague Dr. Cheryl Abbate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas) and the Animals & Society Section of the American Sociological A...

While it would not be accurate to suggest that Ireland is a hub of veganism or vegetarianism, too often it is written off as inherently unsympathetic to the ethics of plant-based eating and anti-speciesist politics. While it is true that Irish culture is historically tied to speciesism and its economy is especially dependent upon “meat” and dairy p...

In this talk presented at the British Society of Criminology's Gendering Green Criminology virtual conference, I outline the history of the Western animal rights movement as one that has always been gendered. From the Victorian antivivisectionists to the Feminist for Animal Rights organization of the late 20th century, women have spearheaded the mo...

This presentation summarizes the operations, challenges, and demographic profile of members associated with the animals and society section of the ASA.

Can we realize a liberatory world for humans and other animals without veganism as a baseline? In her second monograph, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft, Aph Ko imagines we might. There is, sadly, a considerable lack of communication between anti-racism and anti-speciesism movements, and Ko posits that this disconnect reflects the limitations of the...

Vegan feminist theory argues that women and other marginalized groups frequently experience discrimination in the vegan movement given its failure to apply intersectional praxis. We interviewed a small sample of older vegan women in America, hypothesizing that they would report feeling particularly vulnerable to discrimination given the vegan movem...

This presentation is a response to Tim Strangleman’s ‘Voices of Guinness’ (Oxford 2019) presented to the School of Social Policy, Sociology, and Social Research November 14, 2019.

In a qualitative content analysis of The Vegan Society’s quarterly publication, The Vegan, spanning 73 years and nearly 300 issues, the trajectory of one of the world’s most radical and compassionate counter cuisine collectives is presented and critically assessed. The Vegan Society’s history provides a case study on the ways in which social moveme...

Previous research has alluded to the predominance of atheism in participant pools of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement (Galvin and Herzog 1992; Guither 1998), as well as the correlation between atheism and support for anti-speciesism (Gabriel et al. 2012; The Humane League 2014), but no study to date has independently examined this demographic. T...

While it would not be accurate to suggest that Ireland is a hub of veganism or vegetarianism, too often it is written off as inherently unsympathetic to the ethics of plant-based eating and anti-speciesist politics. While it is true that Irish culture is historically tied to speciesism and its economy is especially dependent upon “meat” and dairy p...

Despite its legacy of feminist leadership and a continued female majority, the Nonhuman Animal rights movement has exhibited structural sexism across its various waves of protest. This institutionalized sexism not only inhibits women’s ability to protest safely and effectively, but also permeates the activist imagination and aggravates interpersona...

Ghosts symbolically represent the social recognition of a subject's personhood as well as the legitimacy of that individual's experience with inequality since many haunting narratives center grievance. Marginalized groups may be so oppressed that they do not warrant acknowledgement, thus protecting the distinctiveness of privileged groups. Nonhuman...

I was first introduced to Aph and Syl Ko when they reached out to me in early 2013, just in the infancy of our blogging careers. It was an exciting time for digital activism, as feminist online publishing seemed to bridge the gap between the forgotten tomes of vegan feminist theory collecting dust in libraries and the vibrant, fast-paced conversati...

First paragraph: Miller’s (2017) Building Nature’s Market introduces the American natural foods movement to social movement studies, highlight­ing its challenge to the prevailing social order related to food, consumption, health, state author­ity, and individualism. This movement is concerned with more than just food; it tackles no less than socie...

Social movements have traditionally viewed free-riders as a problem for effective mobilization, but under the influence of the nonprofit industrial complex, it is possible that movements actively facilitate their presence. Free-riders become an economic resource to professionalized movements seeking to increase wealth and visibility in the crowded...

Despite the growing influence of food justice and conscious consumption in Western society, Westerners exhibit limited knowledge of non-human animal oppression in the food system. This study asked students in seven classes of Introduction to Sociology offered in a private New Jersey university to estimate how many non-human animals are killed for f...

To resolve a moral dilemma created by the rescue of carnivorous species from exploitative situations who must rely on the flesh of other vulnerable species to survive, Cheryl Abbate applies the guardianship principle in proposing hunting as a case-by-case means of reducing harm to the rescued animal as well as to those animals who must die to suppl...

The women’s march on Washington on January 21 2017 and its more than 600 sister marches across the world was characterized by its distinctly feline theme. Most notable were the pink pussy hats and a multitude of signs that played on the historical association between women and cats to resist the crude remarks made by US presidential nominee Donald...

Ireland is a global leader in its economic dependence on “meat” and dairy production, a direct result of four hundred years of British colonial practices. However, Ireland’s relationship with other animals from a wider historical perspective is complex and sometimes forgiving. This article illuminates the Irish vegan ethic, one that can be traced a...

As a long time vegan, I often use the Nonhuman Animal rights movement as a case study in my collective behavior research. My identity as an activist-scholar means that I am often in a position of bearing witness to the frustrations of activists who are often not aware that the barriers they face in mobilization efforts are actually rather ubiquitou...

Often stereotyped as being apathetic to the human suffering, the American vegan movement has historically failed to build alliances with other social justice movements. As intersectional feminism gains a foothold in the movement and external political crises challenge the movement’s frame of reference, the role that identity plays in movement progr...

This article discusses a dairy advertising campaign featuring skeptic Derren Brown. I explore the various health claims made in the ads as well as a report Brown featured on his website that claimed consumption of cow’s milk is linked to longevity. I discuss how dairy consumption is largely linked to race and ethnicity. It is a practice enjoyed pri...

Although the burgeoning study of ‘animals and society’ has demonstrated that Nonhuman Animals1 are heavily embedded in human societies, institutions, and systems, the sociological discipline has been overwhelmingly silent on these relationships (Nibert, 2003; Peggs, 2013; Wrenn, 2016). When other animals are mentioned, it is primarily as food stuff...

Dr. Breeze Harper’s 2014 novel Scars: A Black Lesbian Experience in Rural White New England is a fictional addition to her larger body of work in food justice and Black feminism. Harper is best known for Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society (Lantern, 2010) and is the leading activist-academic on pro-interse...

This article explores the sexual objectification of female-identified volunteers in social movements as a form of tactical prostitution, arguing that tactical prostitution constitutes a violation of the dignity of women in social movement spaces, while posing a threat to the wellbeing of women and children in the larger public. This article investi...

The author examines the consequences of stigma strategies in vegan activism as it is experienced by fat vegan activists. The fat politics of veganism in online spaces is examined in data provided by a 2016 qualitative survey of fat-identified vegan activists. Results highlight the subjective experiences of fat vegans, illuminating the meaning of he...

-Vegans of Size (VoS) are hypervisible in claimsmaking -VoS are invisible in activist spaces -Few positive representations -This study explores visibility/invisibility in cyberspace -Online survey of VoS conducted in March

The role of media in collective action repertoires has been extensively studied, but media as an agent of socialization in social movement identity is less understood. It could be that social movement media is normalizing a particular activist identity to the exclusion of other demographics. For instance, Harper has identified white-centrism in ant...

Lack of diversity in the ranks as well as a failure to resonate with disadvantaged groups and other anti-oppression movements has been cited as one important barrier to the American Nonhuman Animal rights movement’s success (Kymlicka and Donaldson in Animal rights, multiculturalism and the Left. The Mellon Sawyer Seminar at the Graduate Center, CUN...

Applying critical sociological theory, this book explores the shortcomings of popular tactics in animal liberation efforts. Building a case for a scientifically-grounded grassroots approach, it is argued that professionalized advocacy that works in the service of theistic, capitalist, patriarchal institutions will find difficulty achieving success.

Nonhuman Animal rights activists are sometimes dismissed as ‘crazy’ or irrational by countermovements seeking to protect status quo social structures. Social movements themselves often utilize disability narratives in their claims-making as well. In this article, we argue that Nonhuman Animal exploitation and Nonhuman Animal rights activism are som...

This book has argued a case for rational advocacy on behalf of Nonhuman Animals. The foundation for this approach is a basic requirement for substantiation. Advocates and organizations will benefit from grounding their theory and tactics in evidence and conducting efficacy research according to the scientific method. More than this, a rational appr...

During my graduate studies at Colorado State University, I enthusiastically enrolled in a Nonhuman Animal rights philosophy seminar in the hopes of broadening my sociological knowledge of Nonhuman Animal issues in preparation for my upcoming dissertation work. In this course, we explored ethical theories and the various weak justifications employed...

While ineffective tactics have beleaguered the Nonhuman Animal rights movement, the reign of sexism and pornographic exploitation is equally disastrous to liberation efforts. The Nonhuman Animal rights movement comprises primarily of women (Gaarder, 2011, p.11),1 and yet it continues to operate according to patriarchal norms. Just as industry-frien...

Professionalization brings with it many complications and compro-mises. It also works to normalize and naturalize particular tactics and goals which come to dictate the “common sense” of Nonhuman Animal advocacy. As explored in the previous chapter, the rationalization processes of large non-profits may lead to problematic irrationalities that can...

A critique of irrational social institutions and their role in upholding oppression would not be complete without a discussion of religion. The Nonhuman Animal rights movement has sustained bloated nonprofits, sexism, and racism despite the tendency for these institutions to work against liberation efforts. The same may also hold true for religious...

Nonhuman Animals are beaten, raped, torn from their homes, separated from their families, enslaved, subjected to medical experimentation, killed, and even consumed by other members of society. For the most part, this is taken for granted as normal, acceptable, and even natural. This happens day in and day out in every human society to trillions of...

In the previous chapter, the objectification of women in Nonhuman Animal rights spaces was argued to be ineffectual and theoretically counterintuitive. This chapter will extend this critique and address the perpetuation of race and ethnicity bias in social movement mobilization. A rational approach will necessitate a serious acknowledgment of racia...

This article discusses critical comparisons between the human and nonhuman abolitionist movements in the United States. The modern nonhuman abolitionist movement is, in some ways, an extension of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the ongoing human Civil Rights movement. As such, there is considerable overlap b...

This article examines a chicken cookbook that parodies a popular pornography novel “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Applying Carol J. Adams’ theory of intersecting oppression, I argue that the cookbook exemplifies the sexual objectification of women and Nonhuman Animals. The trivialization of violence against women and other animals also exemplifies rape cu...

Alternative food systems (namely the humane product movement) have arisen to address societal concerns with the treatment of Nonhuman Animals in food production. This paper presents an abolitionist Nonhuman Animal rights approach (Francione, 1996) and critiques these alternative systems as problematic in regards to goals of considering the rights o...

Adams (2004, The pornography of meat. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd), Deckha (2008, Disturbing images: PETA and the feminist ethics of animal advocacy. Ethics and the environment, 13(2), 35–76), Gaarder (2011, Women and the animal rights movement. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press), Glasser (2011, Tied oppressions:...

A popular tactic in the professional nonhuman animal rights movement is to utilize species-specific or issue-specific campaigns to increase public concern, motivate participation and extend movement support. This article challenges this traditional tactic of moderate nonhuman animal organizations in critiquing the issue-specific approaches to aboli...

Jasper and Poulsen (1995) have long argued that moral shocks are critical for recruitment in the nonhuman animal rights movement. Building on this, Decoux (2009) argues that the abolitionist faction of the nonhuman animal rights movement fails to recruit members because it does not effectively utilize descriptions of suffering. However, the effecti...

The abolitionist movement is an emergent and radical approach to nonhuman animal rights. Calling for a complete cessation in nonhuman animal use through the abolishing of property status for nonhuman animals and an adoption of veganism and nonviolence, this approach stands in stark contrast to mainstream approaches such as humane production and wel...

This paper offers an exploratory analysis of social movement theory as it relates to the nonhuman animal rights movement. Individual participant motivations and experiences, movement resource mobilization, and movement relationships with the public, the political environment, historical context, countermovements, and the media are discussed. In par...

Globalization has exacerbated speciesism both socially and economically. Veganism and its subsequent labeling schemes have arisen as an important political site of resistance to growing non-human animal inequality. This paper explores globalization's impact on non-human animals, veganism and vegan labeling, as well as important divides within the m...