Ethical Veganism for More Critical Geographies

Progress in Environmental Geography, 2025

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 individualisation 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.

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...

Social & Cultural Geography, 2023

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.

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.

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.

In recent years, various issues related to non-human animals emerged as elements of interest among public opinion, also involving debates in various academic fields. If philosophy, law, economics and cultural studies can already boast relevant works also at an Italian level, it's not the same for political sociology and social movement studies. In order to analyse the variegated archipelago of national animal advocacy, we stratified the phenomenon into three movement areas (animal care, protectionism, antispeciesism) with the goal to test some hypothetical differences and verify eventual convergences. Our data come from two main sources: an online survey and 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with leaders and/or 'relevant' activists of groups and associations. In this article we specifically focus on those questions related to dietary consumption, veganism as a philosophy/lifestyle and the use of non-human animals for human interest. An increasing number of perspectives are focusing more and more on individual lifestyles and members'/activists' modes of consumption, shifting the action from the streets to the shops. This change of paradigm often blurs more radical and political approaches characterized by structural anti-capitalist frames and actions and that involve(d) forms of popular collective protests aimed at proposing alternatives ideas of future and societies.

Food and Foodways, 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 movements negotiate difference and conflict. Specifically, this article highlights the challenges of identity, professionalization, and factionalism across the 20th and 21st centuries. This research also puts into perspective the cultural impact that veganism has had on Western society, namely the dramatic increase in vegan consumers, vegan products, and the normalcy of vegan nutrition.

The article compares two distinctly modern dietary movements of the 20th century: the living food diet and veganism. It shows that, although food is one of the principal areas where nature and culture converge, in modern society eating is no longer a mere problem of classification (edible/non-edible); it has also become the object of strong emotional and moral investments. Both living foodism and veganism emphasize the importance of ‘natural’ foods, yet both are very much products of modern individualistic culture. Moreover, both diets involve rather extreme forms of denial that can make everyday life difficult (rejecting cooked produce, rejecting all animal products), even though the two stem from rather different motives. The data on living foodism is based on face-to-face interviews and a postal questionnaire, both conducted in Finland in 2006, whereas the data on veganism is based on existing Finnish theses, interviews from which are used selectively in this paper. The differences and the similarities between the two diets are analysed in light of the motives for following the diet, the assumptions concerning the purity and the impurity of the food, and the attitudes towards prohibitions and rules. The article shows that the stronger the role of community in the dietary movement, the more pronounced is the moral aspect of the diet and the stricter the rules defining the boundaries of the forbidden.