Veganism: Politics, Practice, and Theory
Abstract
What exactly do vegans believe? Why has veganism become such a critical and criticized social movement, and how does veganism correspond to wider debates about sustainability, animal studies, and the media? Eva Haifa Giraud offers an accessible route into the debates that surround vegan politics, which feed into broader issues surrounding food activism and social justice.
Giraud engages with arguments in favor of veganism, as well as the criticisms levelled at vegan politics. She interrogates debates and topics that are central to conversations around veganism, including identity, intersectional politics, and activism, with research drawn from literary animal studies, animal geographies, ecofeminism, posthumanism, critical race theory, and new materialism.
Giraud makes an original theoretical intervention into these often fraught debates, and argues that veganism holds radical political potential to act as “more than a diet” by disrupting commonplace norms and assumptions about how humans relate to animals. Drawing on a range of examples, from recipe books with punk aesthetics to social media campaigns, Giraud shows how veganism's radical potential is being complicated by its commercialization, and elucidates new conceptual frameworks for reclaiming veganism as a radical social movement.
... Veganism has witnessed significant changes historically, but over the last ten years, it has been subject to considerable flux and fluidity. While growth from 2014 onwards led some to claim that vegan food practices (VFPs) 1 had 'mainstreamed' (Oliver 2022, among others), the rise of a depoliticised plant-based consumption has threatened more radical understandings of veganism, while the growth in vegan food businesses and products through increasing corporatisation (Giraud 2021) has recently stalled (Ungoed-Thomas 2023). In 2024, 4.7% of the UK population (approx. ...
... The growth of people consuming plant-based products but not becoming fully vegan is a key area of contestation, generating challenges to historically dominant animal-and activistinterpretations of veganism. Nonetheless, veganism has never been monolithic (Oliver 2022;Williams 2023) with varied motivations for becoming vegan, although typically focusing on animal welfare/ rights, health and the environment (Green, Costello and Dare 2010;Giraud 2021;Oliver 2022). For some, this is through 'flexitarian' practices to reduce meat consumption; for others, being 'social omnivores' (eating animal products in social circumstances); or embarking on a full 'vegan transition'. ...
... Challenging globalised, corporatised mainstreaming: the placeless foodscapes of depoliticised plant-based diets Contemporary veganism is commonly positioned as a consumption practice (Hirth 2020) typically focused on food, although many vegan organisations extend this to 'a way of living which seeks to exclude … all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose' (The Vegan Society 2020a, emphasis added). As White (2018) stated, such an activist conceptualisation of veganism offers a radical praxis grounded in trans-species justice and demands wider (food) systems change (Giraud 2021;White 2021). The increasingly popularised and corporatised 'plantbased' diet, in contrast, obscures such radical politics and can reverse vegan activists' success in drawing attention to the animal condition in neoliberal, capitalist and patriarchal systems of exploitation (White 2018;Giraud 2021;Sexton, Garnett and Lorimer 2022). ...
The increasing visibility of veganism and plant-based eating makes it timely for environmental geographers to critically engage with these unfolding debates. In this review, we unpack the complex socio-environmental entanglements of contemporary vegan food practices (VFPs), drawing on food geography literature to reflect on the extent to which veganism can, and does, challenge and transform the hegemonic industrial globalised food system. We consider the productive conversations to be had with sustainability, food sovereignty , food justice and vegetal geographies in promoting the collective potential of VFPs beyond the indi-vidualisation of mainstreamed, 'plant-based' business-as-usual; re-centring production, hitherto relatively invisible in the hegemonic consideration of veganism as just consumption praxis; and engaging with 'multi-elemental' plant ethics. This offers a cross-pollination of ideas through a focus on the geographies of veganism, which promotes the development of relational, placed and scaled analyses of vegan identities, experiences and practices while also bridging the intradisciplinary silos within environmental geography. Engaging with the geographies of veganism offers a timely and grounded lens to critically interrogate key contemporary debates around diverse knowledges, sustainability and justice. As such, the alternative ways of doing, being and relating offered by VFPs show real potential for hopeful, responsive and constructive research.
... Kalte (2021) has categorized the political motives as avoiding animal suffering, environmental protection, reduction of world hunger, and demonstration of ethical attitude while non-political motives are individual health, taste, quality, religious belief, and weight loss. Giraud (2021) has dealt with arguments in favor of veganism and the criticisms leveled at vegan politics and interrogated debates and topics that are central to conversations around veganism, including identity, intersectional politics, and activism, with research drawn from literary animal studies, animal geographies, ecofeminism, posthumanism, critical race theory, and new materialism. According to Giraud (2021), veganism has the radical political potential to be "more than a diet" by upending ingrained beliefs about how people should treat animals. ...
... Giraud (2021) has dealt with arguments in favor of veganism and the criticisms leveled at vegan politics and interrogated debates and topics that are central to conversations around veganism, including identity, intersectional politics, and activism, with research drawn from literary animal studies, animal geographies, ecofeminism, posthumanism, critical race theory, and new materialism. According to Giraud (2021), veganism has the radical political potential to be "more than a diet" by upending ingrained beliefs about how people should treat animals. Additionally, Giraud (2021) has clarified new conceptual frameworks for recovering veganism as a radical social movement and highlighted how the commercialization of the movement is complicating its radical potential. ...
... According to Giraud (2021), veganism has the radical political potential to be "more than a diet" by upending ingrained beliefs about how people should treat animals. Additionally, Giraud (2021) has clarified new conceptual frameworks for recovering veganism as a radical social movement and highlighted how the commercialization of the movement is complicating its radical potential. Kley et al. (2022) have explored whether today's news media consumption and in particular consuming and sharing information about food on social media are associated with following a vegetarian or vegan diet and revealed that vegetarians likely consume more personalized information tailored to their interests. ...
Veganism is commonly described as the attempt to avoid, as far as possible, the exploitation and consumption of animals and animal products. It is acknowledged as a collective action aimed at political transformation, not an individual quest for a pure ethical diet. Many times, veganism is misinterpreted as a diet or style of eating. It's a movement against the needless suffering and exploitation of non-human animals. As a result, veganism rejects human consumption habits that harm animals, such as those found in our clothes, food, makeup, and entertainment (Cochrane and Cojocaru, 2023a, 2023b; Linton, 2022). Hence, this study aims to explore how veganism was framed on X (formerly Twitter) and associated with political activism. It claims that veganism is beyond a personal lifestyle, a form of activism providing insight into political change. This paper, which examined the posts of the Vegan Association of Turkey and also 4 news websites, Hurriyet, Haberturk, BirGün, and Bianet, has revealed that the Vegan Association of Turkey dealt with mostly vegan activism patterns but did not refer to the elements of political activism. It also displayed that although the left-wing and alternative news media covered the activist practices of veganism, the sampling news websites mostly framed veganism within nutrition and lifestyle patterns. In particular, the mainstream news media excluded the political and activist roles of veganism from vegan representations. In conclusion, under-representing political constituents of veganism on X means that the hegemonic consumerism culture is reproduced and new perspectives on consumerism, capitalism, gender, and the environment have not been sufficiently debated in the public sphere.
... I have not however changed the word "animal" in terms like "critical animal studies", "animal-industrial complex", and other more established terms. (Taylor & Twine, 2014;Nocella et al., 2014), vegan studies 2 (Wright, 2015(Wright, , 2021Giraud, 2021), vegan sociology (Cherry, 2021), gender and feminist studies, including ecofeminism (Adams, 1990;Adams & Gruen, 2014;Donovan, 1990Donovan, , 2006Gaard, 2002;Polish, 2016;Harper, 2010), and critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM) (Hearn, 2013;Hearn & Howson, 2019), including feminist new materialist and posthumanist approaches to men and masculinities (Mellström & Pease, 2023;Garlick, 2019). ...
... Thus, I understand veganism as more than a food practice-as a political and ethical intervention that fundamentally contests current unethical human-animal relations. I also consider veganism as a social justice issue enmeshed with various hierarchies in human societies (see also Giraud, 2021). This way of conceptualising veganism aligns with how it tends to be defined by CAS, vegan studies, and vegan ecofeminist scholars, including those writing from critical race perspectives (see, e.g., Polish, 2016;Harper, 2010;Giraud, 2021;Polish, 2016;Ko & Ko, 2017;Wrenn, 2019;Hodge et al., 2022;Wright, 2015). ...
... I also consider veganism as a social justice issue enmeshed with various hierarchies in human societies (see also Giraud, 2021). This way of conceptualising veganism aligns with how it tends to be defined by CAS, vegan studies, and vegan ecofeminist scholars, including those writing from critical race perspectives (see, e.g., Polish, 2016;Harper, 2010;Giraud, 2021;Polish, 2016;Ko & Ko, 2017;Wrenn, 2019;Hodge et al., 2022;Wright, 2015). Veganism and vegan advocacy are closely linked to the animal advocacy movement 8 with significant overlaps between the two. ...
This chapter lays out the conceptual basis for the book, drawing on theoretical and empirical work primarily in critical animal studies, vegan studies, gender and feminist studies, including ecofeminism, and critical studies on men and masculinities. The chapter outlines the ethical, social, and ecological implications of consuming nonhuman animals and argues that intersectional veganism helps to move towards social and ecological justice. Connections between men, masculinities, and veganism are discussed. The chapter provides an overview of the empirical research that this book is based on and introduces the methodology of the study. Finally, the contents of the chapters are presented.
... It reimagines human-animal relations and envisions alternative ways of relating to nonhuman animals. As Giraud (2021) puts it, veganism "has historically not just focused on rejecting particular animal products but has also posed a series of more fundamental questions about the way particular humans relate to other beings" (p. 4). ...
... However, these narratives carry some problematic implicit assumptions. First, behind this focus on the end consumer is the idea that it is entirely possible to remove oneself from systems and structures that exploit all beings (see Giraud, 2021;Fazzino II, 2022). 2 Within global capitalism of which the animal-industrial complex is an integral part, this seems hardly possible. Further, this attempt suggests the pursuit of some kind of purity and innocence. ...
There are significant debates and conflicting views on how to define veganism. Existing definitions highlight different aspects of veganism, such as identity, diet, lifestyle, or ethical practice. The chapter provides an overview of the major definitions of veganism found in popular and academic discourses. It proceeds to examine how vegan men conceptualise veganism and the implications of these definitions. The findings suggest that while meanings related to avoiding causing nonhuman animal suffering prevailed amongst vegan men, veganism was understood in somewhat diverse ways, shaped by the men’s paths to and experiences of veganism, as well as by their other values and practices. The plurality of ways veganism is understood and practised by vegan men is explored through ecofeminist approaches to care.
... That is, while veganism can be expressed as an abstention of consuming animal products, it also entails abstaining from consuming products that exploit human animals (Pedersen and Stanescu, 2014). Thus veganism, as used in this paper, implies more than a diet, but a political movement and broader cultural critique of injustice (Giraud, 2021). ...
... This sentiment may behind Simonsen (2015, p. 20,21) bleak dictum that: "[c]ruelty-free meat may simply be another element of the fantasy that humanity will ever be able to dwell with and among other species equitably." To a significant extent, plant-based meat products and veganism have been co-opted by mainstream approaches involving capitalism and animal exploitation industries (Giraud, 2021;Howard et al., 2021). I see no reason why IVM would be different. ...
This review essay documents continuities between (industrial) animal agriculture and cellular agriculture and raises key questions about whether or not the technology might be able to deliver on its promise of food system transformation. It traces how industrial history, connections to the livestock industry, and disavowal are extended through the innovation of cellular agriculture. In particular, it is shown that cellular agriculture has had connections to (industrial) animal agriculture since its very beginning and at nearly every step since then. I argue that cellular agriculture can be positioned as the epitome of (industrial) animal agriculture in terms of history, material practices, and ideology. Such a critique of cellular agriculture has become somewhat commonplace but while a number of papers have raised similar concerns individually, there exists no sustained focus on such similarities to make this point holistically. Such connections are important in framing the future of cellular agriculture and the fate of farmed animals and the environment. Carefully considering the continuities between cellular agriculture and animal agriculture is crucial when considering whether promoting cellular agricultural is a prudent approach to addressing problems associated with animal agriculture. The cumulative number and extent of connections covered in this essay leads to questions of who will benefit with the advent of cellular agriculture.
... In particular, sociologists around the world are looking at the possibilities of creating holistic and sustainable food systems (Thakur, 2024), the historical and cultural aspects of food consumption (Wurgaft, & White, 2023;Giannetti 2022), the transformation of food practices and culture in the information age (Xaq, 2023 with food and the food sector in general (Furstenau et al. 2023), on the media aspects of food consumption (Hollows, 2022), on the interaction of scientific, commercial, and everyday aspects in food practices and culture (Haushofer, 2022), and even on such a (post)Foucauldian idea as the constitution of the phenomenon of food politics (Nestle, 2022). Such seemingly peripheral topics as specific niche eating practices, i.e. veganism (Giraud, 2021), festive food (Elmes, & Bovaird-Abbo, 2021), globalizing food transformations (Jayasanker, 2020), identity dimensions of food (Burton et al., 2020), food safety (Nestle, 2020), and even the issue of predicting future food consumption, in particular, artificial food and artificial meat (Wurgaft, 2019). In general, food studies form a coherent and very extensive area of interdisciplinary knowledge in modern Western science, which once again emphasises the importance and relevance of these developments. ...
The article analyses the results of a sociological study of Kharkiv schoolchildren's food habits, conducted by the staff of the School of Sociology of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University as part of the FUSILLI project in March-April 2024. The study involved more than 300 high school students studying offline in Kharkiv metro school. The article describes the research methodology and presents the regulatory documents of state and local authorities on schoolchildren's nutrition. Particular attention is paid to how their food practices are reproduced and changed in the context of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. The article provides data on the attitudes of Kharkiv schoolchildren towards their own health, healthy eating (including awareness of it), the influence of family and school on this; consumption of junk food and alcohol by high school students; attitudes towards collective food practices with friends, classmates, etc.; their skills and abilities to prepare food, to observe hygiene rules when eating it; and the perception of changes in nutrition (diet, regularity, cost, etc.) during a full-scale war at home and at school. The article analyses the life, including educational, plans of schoolchildren for the near future. Prospects for further research on the selected issues are determined.
... In so doing, I evoke the broader shift away from the security of Fordism and toward the greater uncertainty and vulnerability that permeates contemporary social relations (Millar 2017;Muehlebach 2011;Standing 2011, see also the introduction to this special issue). Food grows increasingly fraught for consumers as people navigate an overabundance of information and societal pressures to eat ethical food that reflects their status as responsible consumers (Abbots and Coles 2013, Guthman 2011, Jackson et al. 2007). The strains of precarious food are especially pronounced for mothers, who bear the brunt of expectations that they should prepare and serve good food for their children (Cairns, Johnston, andMackendrick 2013, MacKendrick andPristavec 2019). ...
... In other words, gastronomy can easily be entangled in the politics associated with the governance of a community. The political nature of food in general, and of gastronomy in particular, explains why culinary practices and traditions can be easily turned into ideological weapons to determine who belongs to a community and who does not, regardless of how the community is defined [14][15][16][17][18]. ...
Research and initiatives in the emerging field of gastronomy require collaboration among scholars and experts from diverse backgrounds. Transdisciplinarity has been indicated as an effective approach allowing stakeholders from a variety of disciplines and professional practices to better understand and plan interventions in complex gastronomy-related issues and challenges. However, the actors collaborating in such transdisciplinary processes often represent different priorities, values, and needs, as well as varying levels of power and access to financial means. This is particularly evident when it comes to gastronomic heritage. Its identification, support, and promotion require cultural, social, and political negotiations among a great number of stakeholders. Using a pilot workshop organized in March 2023 in Madrid as a case study, this articles suggests that participatory design methods can offer instruments to ensure the effective transdisciplinarity required in gastronomy and to address the political tensions that underlie many of its aspects.
... When Cara notes the precarious situation of the slaughterhouse workers, she is signalling a space where a larger, multispecies justice approach could usefully be deployed. There is a well-documented tendency to assign humans who are constructed as marginalised and disposable to work in 6 "You've Got to Know How to Speak Animalese": Literary Explorations of Engagements with the Animal Other factories where animals are slaughtered (see, for instance, Giraud, 2021 andStruthers Montford andWotherspoon, 2021). The animals, in turn, are subjected to "editorializing that removes [them] from the epistemic, legal, and emotional frameworks that would make their lives matter" and this is an ontologically strategic manoeuvre that "ensures that violence continues and animals go ungrieved" (Pick, 2018: 415). ...
As the harmful impact of anthropogenic activity on the environment becomes increasingly glaring, it has become more urgent than ever to find more ethical and sustainable ways of engaging with the other animals with whom we share space. From extreme weather events to food supply disruptions and species extinctions, it is no longer possible to cling to the hubristic myth of an independent human who exercises dominion over nature. Our actions and choices have very real, immediate, and often unintended environmental consequences and our own species survival depends on accepting this inter-dependent reality in a spirit of respectful responsibility. While climate change is now widely considered to be an issue that demands serious attention, this article will argue that any attempt to foster greater environmental care will be compromised if we fail to listen to the voices of the animal other. I will explore the ways in which other animals try to speak and the challenges that inevitably arise when attempting to hear those voices by anchoring my argument in a literary analysis of selected contemporary novels. I will demonstrate that, even when authors represent characters who care deeply about the environment, animals tend to fall through the cracks of their activist commitments, and they repeatedly turn away from opportunities to listen respectfully to the voices of animals.
... Collective action to advocate for nonhuman animals, as manifested in vegan and animal advocacy activism, is crucial for rethinking human-animal relations. These social movements have been studied by a number of scholars from various perspectives (see, e.g., Cherry, 2006;Giraud, 2021;Harper, 2010;Ko & Ko, 2017;Polish, 2016;Wrenn, 2016Wrenn, , 2019. ...
The concluding chapter summarises and discusses the main findings of the previous chapters and highlights the key elements of privileged men’s veganism, based on the lived experiences of vegan men analysed in this book. Drawing on the findings of this empirical study and theoretical insights mainly from critical studies on men and masculinities, the chapter explores the potential of men’s veganism to contribute towards challenging anthropocentric masculinities, as well as support more egalitarian ways of doing gender and fostering ideals of social justice. It does so by introducing and examining the notion of vegan masculinity, as a post-anthropocentric masculinity. Finally, acknowledging the limitations of this study, ideas are offered for future research directions on veganism, men, and masculinities.
... There is increasing scholarly attention to plant-based or vegan food practicesdiets (or just meals) that avoid all animal-based protein (meat and dairy)shown to have a lower carbon footprint (Poore and Nemecek, 2018). Writers on the increasing availability of plant protein-based foodstuffs, as an alternative to animal protein-based foodstuffs, have raised how the shift in accompanying dietary practice carries gendered and racialised components (Giraud, 2021;Greenebaum and Dexter, 2018;Lockwood, 2021;Oliver, 2021. The participatory research methodology we discuss here supports exploring the concept of 'interspecies intersectionalities' (Weaver, 2019) to understand how personal relationships of edibility between a person and food animals 'don't just reflect, but actively shape experiences of race, gender, sexuality, nation, species and breed ' (p.177), in the broad context of humanenvironmental relations. ...
Whilst there is research around men and masculinities as they relate to practices of caring in the ecological crisis, less is written about methodologies that can address intersectional challenges, and ways of engagement that can support behaviour change. A process-based workshop methodology is discussed for researching the male-gendered and material performances of environmental caring related to personal food protein consumption practices. It works creatively to address relational inequalities in status both between different masculine positionalities and different food proteins. It contributes to more-than-human participatory methodologies by exploring male-gender – food protein relations, via positioning and inviting practical-engagement with foodstuff as a process for destabilising social and cultural hierarchies attached to thinking about, as well as preparing, cooking and eating, different food proteins. We argue that novel research findings can emerge around individual, collective and community responses to the ecological crisis through the careful methodological attention to masculine inequalities.
... A second proposition is found in growing calls to 'de-animalise' the food system (Morris et al., 2019) by dramatically reducing the global population of cattle and shifting to 'plant-based' or 'lab grown' meat and dairy alternatives. While arguments for plant-based futures are long-standing and come in diverse forms (Giraud, 2021), prominent advocates offer a new Big Veganism (Sexton et al., 2022) involving minimal consumer inconvenience due to the growing sophistication of meat and dairy substitution (Clay et al., 2020): burgers will still bleed and milk will still froth, but without the guilt. Wow! ...
Anxieties around the relationship between livestock agriculture and the environmental crisis are driving sustained discussions about the place of beef and dairy farming in a sustainable food system. Proposed solutions range from ‘clean‐cow’ sustainable intensification to ‘no‐cow’, animal free futures, both of which encourage a disruptive break with past practice. This paper reviews the alternative proposition of regenerative agriculture that naturalises beef and dairy production by invoking the past to justify future, nature‐based solutions. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK, it first introduces two of the most prominent strands to this green rebranding of cattle: the naturalisation of ruminant methane emissions and the optimisation of soil carbon sequestration via the use of ruminant grazing animals. Subsequent thematic analysis outlines the three political strategies of post‐pastoral storytelling, political ecological baselining, and a probiotic model of bovine biopolitics that perform this naturalisation. The conclusion assesses the potential and the risks of this approach to grounding the geographies and the temporalities of agricultural transition in the Anthropocene: an epoch in which time is out of joint and natures are multiple and non‐analogue, such that they provide slippery and contested grounds for political solutions.
Esta investigación tuvo el objetivo de identificar la propuesta política de re�sistencia de la Eskuela Cooperativa de Permacultura, una comunidad ubica�da en el barrio Matta Sur, en la comuna de Santiago, que se reconoce como
vegana y anarquista, y se define como un espacio de resistencia y organiza�ción comunitaria para autosustentar la vida, desde el trabajo comunitario y
el apoyo mutuo.
Desde una metodología de investigación-acción participativa, la cual permite
reflexionar sobre las necesidades de la organización junto a sus socies, cono�cimos sus prácticas organizativas y productivas, su vínculo con el territorio,
y sus perspectivas ideológicas con respecto a la Eskuela.
Los resultados encontrados fueron que la Eskuela se propone ser un espa�cio de resistencia al capitalismo desde la práctica organizativa y productiva
constante, abierta, horizontal, cooperativa y vegana, aportando a la sobera�nía alimentaria desde un planteamiento de Economía Social Solidaria y dan�do particular importancia a habitar el territorio desde la empatía, solidaridad
y el respeto a todas las especies. Por otro lado, el motor de la Eskuela es su
constante práctica transformadora, de aprendizaje y crecimiento, la posibili�dad de practicar los mundos imaginados hoy y hacer comunidad, la reflexión
teórica es un flanco débil que se proyecta profundizar.
Se concluye, por lo tanto, que la propuesta de resistencia de la Eskuela Coo�perativa de Permacultura presenta una alternativa a las lógicas capitalistas
centrada en la construcción comunitaria y cooperativa desde el veganismo
y el ecofeminismo, construyendo una economía social solidaria centrada en
la soberanía alimentaria, el respeto a todas las especies y el colectivo como
entidad prioritaria. Lo anterior, permite que el espacio esté en constante mo�vimiento y vivo, gracias a la participación de sus cooperativistas y siguiendo
los principios de la Eskuela.
Este libro, denominado Geografías veganas: espacios no-violentos y mundos
posibles desde el Sur Global, reúne perspectivas críticas que iluminan las
conexiones entre el veganismo, la justicia socioterritorial y los desafíos socioecológicos, de la mano con nuestrxs compañerxs de existencia, desde un
enfoque del Sur Global, con énfasis en América Latina y Chile.
This book, titled Vegan Geographies: Non-Violent Spaces and Possible Worlds from the Global South, brings together critical perspectives that illuminate the connections between veganism, socio-territorial justice, and socio-ecological challenges—alongside our more-than-human companions—from a Global South perspective, with a particular emphasis on Latin America and Chile.
The article explores the intersections between veganism, vegetarianism, and anarchism through the experiences of three adult individuals in Santiago, Chile. Their journeys reveal a process of connection and subjectification be- tween ethics, diet, and politics, experienced at various levels and in different forms. Based on biographical testimonies, we ask how diets and political ideals are constructed throughout their life trajectories. The study uncovers how these life paths articulate an ethics of interspecies solidarity, questioning the industrial production of food and promoting an anarchist political eco- logy. Additionally, it highlights a deep understanding of the sensitivities and political commitments characteristic of these countercultural movements.
This article explores the nested scales of veganism by investigating how vegan ethics, places, and identities are produced through everyday practices across spatial and temporal scales. Drawing on militant (auto)ethnography, it centrally engages with the role of space in the realization of vegan ethics by examining how individuals committed to veganism actualize, test, and realize their political and ethical beliefs within their everyday spaces. It shows that veganism is situated, interpreted, and intersectional, and that it cannot be understood without the place-based negotiations, contestations, and encounters that both shape and are shaped by it. By unpacking the multilayered spatial practices and narratives of vegans, the article reveals how these contribute to the formation of alternative identities, spaces, and communities, extending beyond veganism to highlight broader dynamics of social change in other places and movements.
Growing Hope takes a closer look at how such narratives can carry the promise of a better future in the face of grim realities. It brings together two kinds of narratives that are rarely considered in conjunction: stories about urban community gardening and stories about vegan food justice. It shows that there is much common ground between these movements and that the stories told by them are worth exploring as part of a larger narrative about creating a better and more equitable future. In the United States, this is especially true for the stories told by and about people of color and their historically marginalized communities. Employing an econarratological approach informed by critical food studies, environmental justice ecocriticism, and transmedia studies, Growing Hope explores a selection of narratives about people who fight against food injustice and the ideologies sustaining it: stories about defiant gardening and culinary self-empowerment.
This chapter foregrounds the fictional and factual relations that inform contemporary human-animal entanglements in manga and anime through the series One Piece. The epic journey of the ‘Straw Hat Crew’ in search for freedom and empowerment is characterised by its multispecies cast, subversive themes, and social commentary. However, by examining its depictions of gender and multispecies relations through food and fighting I note that the story is cut short from its emancipatory potential. I reflect on how popular media contains neither value-free or inert narratives, in fact, they come with real-world implications for both human and nonhuman animals.
The year 2022 marked the 10th anniversary of the course Critical Animal Studies: Animals in Society, Culture and the Media at the Department of Communication and Media at Lund University. As the first initiative of its kind in Sweden, the course explores the shifting roles and positions of non-human animals in today’s complex societies. It aims to equip students with analytical tools to critically assess norms and structures that organise human-animal relations, along with their ethical, cultural, and social consequences.
What started as a one-course offering driven by an idea has evolved into a decade-long project of education and emancipation for non-human animals. This anthology stands as a testament to the course’s impact, aiming to extend the rich discussions, debates, and insights cultivated beyond the classroom walls.
This celebratory collection assembles writings from former students, instructors, and guest lecturers, delving into themes ranging from critical media analysis over activist strategies to pedagogical reflections. The anthology’s scope not only reflects the diverse facets of the course but also unveils the myriad, often subtle intersections between human-centered society and the lives of non-human animals.
Animal advocacy is a complex phenomenon. As a social movement encompassing diverse moral stances and lifestyle choices, veganism and vegetarianism (veg*) are at its core, and animal testing raises as a notably contentious issue within its members. This paper addresses this critical topic. Employing data from an international quantitative survey conducted between June and July 2021, our research explores how ethical vegans and vegetarians responded during the COVID-19 crisis. By comparing the experiences and choices between the two groups, we aimed to understand the variances in attitudes and behaviors in the face of an ethical dilemma, highlighting the interplay between personal beliefs and social pressures in times of a health crisis. Our findings reveal stark contrasts in how vegans and vegetarians navigated the pandemic; vegans displayed less conformity yet experienced a significant compromise of their ethical values, particularly in their overwhelming acceptance of vaccination. This study enhances the field of veg* research and social movement studies by exploring how a social crisis shapes members’ behaviors and perspectives. Our findings also contribute to a better understanding of the challenges and prejudices that a minority group such as vegans may face and how they cope with the pressure to go against the mainstream at a time when society is polarized by a single discourse that goes against their moral values.
This thesis examines how animal activists in Lüneburg negotiate between idealism and pragmatism in their advocacy work. Therefore, five interviews were conducted and analyzed using Mayring’s qualitative content analysis methodology. Based on a literature review, five deductive categories have been formed and an interview guide was based on them. The content analysis allowed continuous creation of new subcategories, which were inductively based on the transcribed interview material. The material was encoded with the categories which allowed a systematic perspective on the participants’ positions.
The results show that the activists tend towards pragmatic activism strategies, such as positive exchange, and they emphasize the importance to use low-threshold rhetoric to pick up their targets where they are. Idealistic strategies such as moral shock are still relevant, yet not as frequently used as pragmatic ones. The activists all have a strong moral background for their animal activism and live by vegan ideals, meaning that they seem to remain consistent in their vegan diet and lifestyle. It is remarkable that pragmatic activism is so prevalent in the interviews even though moral values play a substantial role for all of them.
This paper examines a high-profile debate on whether in vitro (or as referred to in the debate, cell-based) meat is good for animals. The debate is structured to present the “pro” and “con” sides to this resolve. This debate and its subsequent analysis herein illuminates tensions within the animal rights movement concerning effective tactics, and highlights main arguments for and against in vitro meat. This paper analyses both sides’ arguments, justifications given, and how both sides engage with each other. The debate is framed in terms of vegan activist tactics. Discourses concerning these tactics are drawn out in terms of how each side views their own reasoning and the other side’s. Evidence for three subsets of differences is presented: (1) a small-scale vs. large-scale perspective (2) variety of activist tactics vs. fundamentalist veganism, and (3) anger vs. naivete. Overall, two drastically differing discourses are found to be reflective of reformist versus a radical orientation towards animal rights and veganism generally. The debate over IVM has somewhat split the vegan community and this paper shows how so and along what lines, and the discourses that have emerged.
A decade ago, veganism was a fringe radical movement. It was also largely absent from the geographical discipline, despite a rich history of vegan scholarship being present in disciplines such as Sociology and Psychology. However, veganism has recently seen a surge in popularity, with more people than ever before becoming vegan for a mixture of animal welfare, environmental, and health‐based reasons. With this mainstreaming, veganism has become contentious and fiercely defended. As veganism has become a growing social and political force, geographers have started to take notice of this previously fringe movement, which is gaining economic, ecological, and cultural power as investment flows into ‘plant‐based’ products and new markets are emerging. In this commentary, we look at how veganism has recently been taken up in Geography via several distinct trends that all stake a claim in defining an emerging geographical sub‐discipline, vegan geographies. We note the importance of scholarly pluralism and attention to establishing geographical sub‐disciplines more broadly.
Recent research on visually mediated activism has focused on visual practices as forms of political expression. Conversely, this article will demonstrate that visuality is not only used for protest mobilisation, but that it also plays a significant role in solidifying movement-internal collective identity through a set of distinct visual rituals that produce a shared understanding through affect. Based on an ethnography of everyday visual practices and social experiences of visuality (online and offline) in the Save Movement's ‘Pig Save’ protest events, we identify three forms of affective visual rituals: (1) witnessing; (2) mourning; and (3) semiotic rituals. We argue that these visual rituals are not only expressions of shared values, but construct collective political identity through backstage visual emotion work (affect).
Küresel iklim değişikliği ve hayvan hakları konusundaki hassasiyetlerin bir uzantısı olarak vegan ve bitki bazlı beslenmeye olan ilginin artmaya başladığı görülmektedir. Bu araştırma, Türkiye’de veganizm konusundaki tartışma alanının Twitter’da nasıl yapılandırıldığını; veganların ve hepçillerin anlatılarını hangi temel konular üzerinde inşa ettiğini belirlemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Araştırmada 2022-2023 yılları arasında vegan, veganizm ve veganol anahtar kelimeleri ve hashtag’leriyle paylaşılan 62.742 tweet üzerinde MiniLM-L6 modeli ile öznitelik çıkarımı, UMAP ile boyut indirgeme ve HDBSCAN ile kümeleme işlemleri gerçekleştirilmiştir. Kelime ağırlıklandırma yöntemiyle kümelerde öne çıkan kelimeler ve rastgele yapılan manuel okumalarla elde edilen bilgiler kullanılarak, veganlar, hepçiller, kararsızlar ve vegan ürün reklamı yapan kullanıcılar olmak üzere dört farklı kesim tarafından 18 konunun tartışıldığı tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca #vegan hashtag ağı incelenerek, vegan beslenme eğilimindeki temel motivasyonların sırasıyla hayvan hakları konusundaki endişeler, sağlıklı beslenmeye/yaşama olan ilgi, kilo kontrolü ve son olarak ekolojik kaygılar olduğu belirlenmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: vegan, veganizm, Twitter, kümeleme, konu modelleme.
How can we cultivate an underground multispecies justice with beings whose lifeworlds are unknown and unknowable? This article examines this question through a consideration of stygofauna: miniscule deep-time creatures who make their home in the watery seams of the earth. Taking a cue from these critters—many of whom have evolved without eyes to make their way differently in the darkness of their watery subterranean homes—the article troubles the assumption that knowledge, care, and justice must be predicated on a kind of knowing that insists that humans literally bring other worlds to light. Through a specifically situated exploration of stygofaunal worlds, knowledge, and mining in Australia, the article asks, How is knowledge-as-illumination complicit with complex regimes of knowledge where knowing in the name of justice is tangled up in knowing as a further (colonial, speciesist, ableist) violence? Refusing purity politics, the article's first aim is to demonstrate our complicity with extractive knowledge regimes even in a quest to care for underground worlds. Second, the article insists that knowing otherwise is both possible and already at work. It argues that to know stygofauna otherwise, one cannot eschew science or knowledge altogether. Instead, it proposes that multispecies justice depends on two moves: first, on safeguarding a mode of unknowability that the article refers to as estrangement, and second, on recognizing and cultivating knowledge practices that can cultivate nonextractive relations with subterranean species, even if imperfectly. It concludes with a short overview of several examples of knowing otherwise that push readers to think differently about knowledge as a practice of care and justice.
Veganism is becoming more popular as the social, environmental, and ethical impacts of animal agriculture become better known. This is creating new opportunities and challenges as an array of economic actors seek to profit from and contribute to the movement. In this paper, we analyse how small plant-based food businesses are engaging with and influencing vegan politics through a case study of Sydney, Australia. Through interviews and an online audit, we analyse the motivations, goals and practices of small businesses; their geographies, inclusions and exclusions; and the benefits and tensions that arise from the merging of business with politics. We find evidence that small businesses are actively and creatively engaged in quiet, collaborative, affirmative and visceral forms of activism that prefigure the skills, ingredients, tastes and knowledge required to transition away from animal agriculture. However, we also find that plant-based businesses avoid the term vegan, are becoming whiter, and are producing more masculine and expensive foods, such as meat analogues, in response to market pressures. We conclude that small businesses are important but overlooked actors within vegan politics that are contributing to race, gender and class biases, and should be engaged with in the pursuit of less exploitative food systems.
Muslim consumers in the UK eat more meat than the national average. Individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly South Asian communities, experience poorer health outcomes, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, associated with meat consumption. According to a YouGov survey, British Pakistani and Bangladeshi consumers use television cookery programs and social media (particularly YouTube) as their main digital sources of dietary information. Against this background, this study uses a mixed-method approach to show how meat is normalized in YouTube recipe content. Using quantitative analysis of 77 recent recipe videos presented by four leading British chefs (Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Nigella Lawson and Nadiya Hussain) and halal recipe videos, we find that meat-based recipes overwhelmingly outnumber vegetarian/vegan ones, and that, whereas environmental or animal welfare concerns are hardly mentioned, health narratives feature in some videos. Using critical discourse analysis of a sample of videos, we show how meat consumption is rationalized by the “absenting” of meat’s animal origins (making it “normal”), the “defaultization” of meat (making it “natural” and “necessary”), and “positive emotional routines” (making it “nice” and “necessary”). We consider how these representations of meat serve to overcome the “meat paradox” and legitimize, and thereby normalize, meat consumption among British Muslims.
This article utilises the conceptual and theoretical tools of critical animal studies to expose and interrogate the terminological lapses and possibilities in selected contemporary climate fiction novels. These novels are My Days of Dark Green Euphoria (2022) by A. E. Copenhaver, Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers, and Stay and Fight (2019) by Madeline Ffitch. I argue that the terminological slipperiness that confronts anyone attempting to talk about and imagine other animals in respectful modes of engagement signals more than the inadequacy of our scholarly lexicons. Rather, these gaps reveal deeply problematic epistemological and ontological assumptions about other animals and our responsibilities towards them. The selected primary texts offer me an anchor in which to ground my argument that much greater levels of nuance and complexity are demanded of us when we read representations of other animals through the lens of critical animal studies. I conclude by exploring how Eva Haifa Giraud’s theorisations of entanglement and ethical exclusion move the conversation about other animals forward in richly generative ways. I argue that the selected novels allow readings that reach far beyond simplistic, anthropocentric understandings of the more-than-human world. Finally, I suggest that vegan studies opens up new spaces in interactions with cultural texts, and that this emerging framework and reading modality brings into stark relief both the challenges and the opportunities that continue to shape our ways of being part of a world where the human animal is not the only one worthy of respect and care.
This chapter highlights the challenges that vegans face in speciesist societies and the communicational effort required of them to navigate socially difficult situations around veganism. Inspired by social interactionist theoretical approaches, the social and relational dimensions of veganism are canvassed. Underscoring ways in which doing gender and doing masculinity are interlinked, the chapter explores the strategies that vegan men use to convey veganism and the communicational dilemmas they face in everyday interactions with non-vegans. As key strategies, vegan men avoided talking about veganism unprompted and practised non-confrontational styles of communication, including distancing themselves from the trope of the preachy vegan. The chapter considers the implications of the ways that vegan men negotiate veganism in everyday interactions for the spread of veganism and for the construction of masculinities.
This article teases out what a Vegan Studies theoretical framework can offer a literary analysis of a selected pandemic novel, “The Fell” (2021), by Sarah Moss. Pandemic fiction accommodates texts from a wide range of genres, and these types of literary texts have seen a resurgence in the wake of the spread of the corona virus. While literary engagements with pandemics have often been relegated to the realms of dystopian science fiction, our current realities have shifted to such an extent that they can now comfortably be read alongside more realistic fictional representations of contemporary societies. The causal relationships between anthropocentric abuse of the environment in general and of animals in particular, and pandemics have been energetically contested in the media and in scholarly disciplinary fields ranging from Virology to Critical Animal Studies. The argument that I will develop is that Vegan Studies is a theoretical rubric with unique and salient generative capacity and that it allows for the emergence of fresh and necessary insights when we start unpacking how to make sense of pandemics through fiction. I will use Moss’s novel to anchor and illustrate my argument in favour of the value of Vegan Studies in these discussions.
Social media platforms have become critical venues for a wide spectrum of influence campaigns, from activism to advertising. Sometimes these two ends overlap and it remains unknown how the latter might impact the former. Situated within contemporary scholarship on vegan activism, this work examines corporate involvement with the Veganuary 2019 campaign on Twitter, as well as the antagonistic backlash it received. We find that the activists and commercial entities engage mostly separate audiences, suggesting that commercial campaigns do little to drive interactions with Veganuary activism. We also discover strong threads of antagonism reflecting the “culture wars" surrounding discussions of veganism and climate-diet science. These findings inform our understanding of the challenges facing climate-diet discourses on social media and motivate further research into the role of commercial agents in online activism.
Acceptance speeches have long been used by celebrity activists as platforms from which to promote their personal, political or ethical agendas. The actor Joaquin Phoenix, an outspoken proponent for animal rights and veganism, dominated the Hollywood awards season in 2020 for his portrayal of Arthur Fleck in Joker and used his platform to address this cause. The reaction to Phoenix’s speech in the trade and mainstream press reveals much about the role of celebrity vegan activism in the contemporary cultural and political climate. This article analyses the critical reception of Phoenix’s Oscar speech across 37 US and UK trade press and mainstream news articles. In doing so, we highlight how gender and notions of hegemonic masculinity are managed and reproduced through the press discourse on celebrity animal rights activism. We argue that Phoenix’s star persona and celebrity advocacy complicate the gendered norms associated with vegan practice. Finally, we address the issues of authenticity by examining Phoenix’s performance of advocacy at the Oscars to argue that and the actor’s speech popularises an emergent redemptive narrative of veganism, which negotiates hegemonic masculine ideals.
Previous scholarship suggests that elite media have tended to pay little attention to the adverse environmental impacts associated with meat consumption and production. Through content analysis of 116 articles from 2019, published on eight popular online news sites consumed by a wide range of demographics in the UK, including lower-income groups (the sector most likely to eat meat), we identify common anti-meat and pro-meat environmental narratives, solutions and recommendations, and the dominant sentiment towards both meat consumption and production. We observed a significantly greater presence of anti-meat consumption and/or production narratives than pro-meat. Over half the articles showed anti-meat consumption sentiment, with only 5% predominately in favour. 10% were against unspecified or industrial production practices, 28% were against industrial-scale farming but supported sustainable methods; and none were entirely in favour of the meat industry. These findings are reflected in the dominant recommendation, present in over 60% of articles, to eat less meat. Our results add substantially to previous media research, particularly showing the increased volume of coverage of the meat-environment nexus, varying levels of contestation around meat eating, and the division of responsibility between consumers and industry.
Se describen para la parte continental de Guinea Ecuatorial dos nuevas especies de Mesoaphyosemion y una nueva especie del grupo de especies ‘Aphyosemion’ herzogi. También, se presentan los resultados de los análisis de DNAmt de casi todos los fenotipos conocidos del género Mesoaphyosemion y del grupo de especies ‘Aphyosemion’ herzogi. Ambas nuevas especies de Mesoaphyosemion tienen manchas oscuras en los flancos posteriores y se parecen a M. maculatum de Gabón, pero no están estrechamente relacionadas con esa especie. Aunque las dos nuevas especies son próximas, los resultados del ADN sugieren que no existe entre ellas una relación cercana. El grupo de especies ‘Aphyosemion’ herzogi tiene una distribución similar a la de Mesoaphyosemion, pero con su límite norte en el sur de Camerún. Basado en ADNmt, el nuevo ‘Aphyosemion’ de la cuenca del río Mitemele, en el suroeste de la parte continental de Guinea Ecuatorial, es una especie basal al resto de las especies estudiadas. Se distingue de los dos congéneres descritos, ‘A.’ bochtleri y ‘A.’ herzogi por una combinación de caracteres diagnósticos de la coloración. Las aletas impares y los flancostienen un fondo verde y el pedúnculo caudal suele ser de color amarillo a dorado con barras rojo oscuro irregulares. Los datos genéticosindicanque el grupo de especies contiene varias especies más, que están genéticamente y por patrón de coloración bien delimitadas, y que no han sido formalmente descritas.
Digital technologies that help people take care of their dogs are becoming more widespread. Yet, little research explores what the role of technology in the human-dog relationship should be. We conducted a qualitative study incorporating quantitative and thematic analysis of 155 UK dog owners reflecting on their daily routines and technology’s role in it, disentangling the what-where-why of interspecies routines and activities, technological desires, and rationales for technological support across common human-dog activities. We found that increasingly entangled daily routines lead to close multi-species households where dog owners conceptualize technology as having a role to support them in giving care to their dogs. When confronted with the role of technology across various activities, only chores like cleaning up after their dogs lead to largely positive considerations, while activities that benefit themselves like walking together lead to largely negative considerations. For other activities, whether playing, training, or feeding, attitudes remain diverse. In general, across all activities both a nightmare scenario of technology taking the human’s role and in doing so disentangling the human-dog bond, as well as a dream scenario of technology augmenting human abilities arise. We argue that the current trajectory of digital technology for pets is increasingly focused on enabling remote interactions, an example of the nightmare scenario in our thematic analysis. It is important to redirect this trajectory to one of technology predominantly supporting us in becoming better and more informed caregivers.
In this year’s overview of animal studies scholarship, I examine how authors strike a difficult balancing act between making critical interventions while preserving complexity, in relation to three (overlapping) topics that have long been central to the field: domestication, consumption, and extinction. The essay begins by engaging with three texts that interrogate the dynamics of domestication, especially in relation to animal rescue: Chris Pearson’s Dogopolis, Harlan Weaver’s Bad Dog, and Elan Abrell’s Saving Animals. Next, I move on to work that offers provocations about the politics of consumption: Catherine Oliver’s Veganism, Archives, and Animals, Emelia Quinn’s Reading Veganism, and Sushmita Chatterjee and Banu Subramaniam’s edited collection Meat! The essay closes by turning to research that discusses the fraught politics of extinction and environmental catastrophe: Nayanika Mathur’s Crooked Cats and Danielle Celermajer’s Summertime. While the content of each text explores ethical concerns in relation to nonhuman animals, as I describe below, these books also offer a range of ethical provocations about the trajectory of animal studies itself, which pertain to its norms, values, and methodologies. One thing that unites many of these texts, however, is that they illustrate how staunch critique of existing relations between humans and other beings does not have to come at the expense of situatedness, conceptual nuance, and recognition of complexity.
Veganism is the subject of an increasingly diverse body of social scientific research, yet it remains relatively understudied in geography. Meanwhile, contemporary cultural commentaries note how veganism has gone mainstream, with critics warning of veganism’s corporate nature – expressed in the rise of what we term ‘Big Veganism’. We argue that food geographers are well placed to examine these trends. We first review vegan studies work beyond geography that examines and critiques the mainstreaming of veganism. We focus on literature that explores multiple contested modes of veganism, veganism as praxis in place and the rise of corporate veganism as useful foundations for geographers to build on, particularly in light of currently unfolding developments in vegan cultures and practice. Taking this work forward, we identify four conceptual traditions from research in food geographies – following foodways, alternative food networks and the cultural and material politics of eating – to develop a ‘vegan food geographies’ programme that aims to advance critical geographic work on veganism and the emerging implications of its contemporary mainstreaming.
In August 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), which generated extensive societal debate and interest in mainstream and social media. Using computational and conceptual text analysis, we examined more than 6,000 English-language posts on Twitter to establish the relative presence of different topics. Then, we assessed their levels of toxicity and sentiment polarity as an indication of contention and controversy. We find first that meat consumption and dietary options became one of the most discussed issues on Twitter in response to the IPCC report, even though it was a relatively minor element of the report; second, this new issue of controversy (meat and diet) had similar, high levels of toxicity to strongly contentious issues in previous IPCC reports (skepticism about climate science and the credibility of the IPCC). We suggest that this is in part a reflection of increasingly polarized narratives about meat and diet found in other areas of public discussion and of a movement away from criticism of climate science towards criticism of climate solutions. Finally, we discuss the possible implications of these findings for the work of the IPCC in anticipating responses to its reports and responding to them effectively.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-021-03182-1.
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