Veganism Contra Speciesism: Beyond Debate

Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 2011

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 modern non-human animal rights movement in regards to utopian and pragmatic approaches to alleviating growing speciesism.

This article examines and analyzes the credibility and utility of the critique of veganism as a privileged lifestyle, both by those inside and by those outside the vegan community. Using the theory of intersectionality, I explain that the concept of vegan privilege is vague and lacks contextualization. I propose that veganism itself is not a privilege, but rather the ability to make food choices is ultimately the privilege. In addition, I argue that allegations of ''vegan privilege'' conceal and reinforce the cultural invisibility of speciesism and carnism. Although the ultimate mission of veganism is to eradicate animal exploitation, vegans must understand the animals are not the only ones that suffer. The structural and interactional process of ''mindless eating'' exploits both consumers and workers. I conclude by encouraging vegans and carnists alike to expand the circle of compassion and to understand the human costs of the capitalist industrial food complex.

Critical Perspectives on Veganism, eds. Jodey Castricano & Rasmus R. Simonsen, 2016

The paper proposes an anthropocentric argument for veganism based on a speciesistic premise that most carnists likely affirm: human flourishing should be promoted. I highlight four areas of human suffering promoted by a carnistic diet: (1) health dangers to workers (both physical and psychological), (2) economic dangers to workers, (3) physical dangers to communities around slaughterhouses, and (4) environmental dangers to communities-at-large. Consequently, one could ignore the well-being of non-human animals and nevertheless recognize significant moral failings in the current standard system of meat production.

Society & Animals Journal, 2024

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 expansion of veganism allows for (and necessitates) philosophical reflection. Veganism is at a crossroads, and careful thought must be exercised to determine the most effective and inclusive strategies moving forward. How can veganism be promoted in such a way that highlights its accessibility while also remaining sensitive to pervasive food insecurity? How can veganism celebrate the diversity of traditional plant-based foods without appropriating or obscuring their cultural linkages? How can Nonhuman Animals be included in vegan advocacy without demeaning them or repelling the public with particularly violent imagery? What roles do social media, sanctuaries, and anthropocentrism play in advancing the interests of Nonhuman Animals? These conundrums, and many more, challenge the reader as they traverse the pages.

The British Journal of Sociology, 2011

This paper critically examines discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers in 2007. In setting parameters for what can and cannot easily be discussed, dominant discourses also help frame understanding. Discourses relating to veganism are therefore presented as contravening commonsense, because they fall outside readily understood meat-eating discourses. Newspapers tend to discredit veganism through ridicule, or as being difficult or impossible to maintain in practice. Vegans are variously stereotyped as ascetics, faddists, sentimentalists, or in some cases, hostile extremists. The overall effect is of a derogatory portrayal of vegans and veganism that we interpret as 'vegaphobia'. We interpret derogatory discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers as evidence of the cultural reproduction of speciesism, through which veganism is dissociated from its connection with debates concerning nonhuman animals' rights or liberation. This is problematic in three, interrelated, respects. First, it empirically misrepresents the experience of veganism, and thereby marginalizes vegans. Second, it perpetuates a moral injury to omnivorous readers who are not presented with the opportunity to understand veganism and the challenge to speciesism that it contains. Third, and most seriously, it obscures and thereby reproduces exploitative and violent relations between human and nonhuman animals.

This paper draws upon the principles of critical discourse analysis in order to examine the production of capitalist and consumerist discourses within contemporary nonhuman animal rights activism. The analysis presents evidence to suggest that the discourses being produced via the websites of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Vegan Society are consistently being constructed through market-centric ideologies that treat activists mainly as middle-class consumers. This paper argues that the consistent presence of neoliberal discourse signals an instructive entanglement with broader sociopolitical issues. Specifically, there are concerns as to how this discourse relates to what is thought to constitute and qualify as nonhuman animal rights activism. As shown in the analysis, activism portrayed primarily as an economic activity suggests only those who are capable of contributing financially to the movement’s efforts can participate in advocating nonhuman animal rights. I argue that this model of advocacy is indicative of a mediating role both organizations are putting forth that suggests their supporters need only buy “cruelty-free” products and not worry about exercising any sort of meaningful political commitment. Overall, this paper shows how the reproduction of consumerist discourses reproduces gender and social inequalities, and reinforces a capitalist system that contributes to and profits off of nonhuman animal and human exploitation. I argue that drawing attention to the discourse practices through which ideologies within mainstream nonhuman animal rights groups are constructed can be helpful in evaluating normative perceptions of and ideological hegemony within contemporary social justice activism.

Journal of Political Ecology

Many political ecologists and geographers study ethical diets but most are curiously silent on the topic of death in the food system, specifically what or who is allowed to live and what is let die in the "doing of good." This article aims to show how the practice of eating produces the socio-ecological harm most ethical consumers set out to avoid with their dietary choices. I examine the food systems that produce ethical products for 1) the hierarchical ordering of consumer health in the Global North over the health and well-being of workers in the Global South and 2) how vegetarianism involves the implicit privileging of some animals over others. The article takes take a genealogical approach to the political ecology of food ethics using Black and Indigenous studies in conversation with animal geographies. I draw on Mbembe's (2016) necropolitics, Weheliye's (2014) "not quite human" and Lowe's (2015) critique of humanism to develop a conceptual frame...

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2022

Veganism is commonly described as the attempt to avoid, as far as possible, the exploitation and consumption of animals and animal products. While some people choose the plant-based diet associated with veganism for health or other self-interested reasons, the majority of philosophical work on the topic has been devoted to discussion of the ethical justification of veganism (i.e., to 'ethical veganism'). Some argue that it is a moral imperative if we take the rights or interests of animals seriously (e.g., Francione & Charlton, 2013; Mason & Singer, 1980). Others regard it as a necessity if we are to live up to our duties to live as sustainably as possible (Fox, 2000), or to minimize public health risks (Melina et al., 2016; Vyas, 2019; Walker et al., 2005). Still others hold that it is supported by religious and spiritual reasons (Kemmerer, 2012). These justifications are, of course, not mutually exclusive. And yet, others have questioned whether moral concern for animals really does entail a vegan diet (Davis, 2003 (on field deaths), but cf.

Advocates of veganism frequently present their case holistically, outlining its benefits for nonhuman and human animals and for our shared environment. However, a consistent feature of ‘mainstream’ public discourse on veganism is the tendency to fracture that holistic case. In particular, the case for nonhuman animal liberation tends to be set aside, so as to clear the path for a reassertion of anthropocentric values that, despite otherwise radical appearances, work to re-entrench speciesist privilege. In this paper, I present a detailed case study of one high-profile example of this process. In October 2008, the prestigious UK periodical, The Ecologist, published an issue that focused on the issue of ‘meat’-eating. The contributing authors to the issue stressed the anthropocentric benefits of a particular form of ‘meat’-eating, while simultaneously failing to confront the holistic case for veganism.