Vegetarianism and Veganism: Conflicts in Everyday Life

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.

Employing a qualitative method adapted from phenomenological psychology, the paper presents a socio-psychological portrait of a vegetarian. Descriptives are a product of the author’s reflection on (dialogue with) empirical findings and published personal accounts, interviews, and case studies. The paper provides evidence for the hypothesis that vegetarianism is a way of being. This way of experiencing and living in the world is associated with particular forms of relationship to self, to other animals and nature, and to other people. The achievement of this way of being, particularly in the interpersonal sphere, comprises an initial, a transitional, and a crystallizing phase of development. The paper frames contrasts between vegetarianism and carnism through the phenomena of the presence of an absence and the absent referent, respectively.

This phenomenological investigation aims to explore the lived experience of being vegan or vegetarian in a society and culture that is primarily non-vegetarian. As members of a unique minority group, vegans and vegetarians can sometimes be misunderstood by non-vegetarians and stereotyped as judgmental or difficult to deal with. Living with this type of misunderstanding from others can lead to feelings such as worry, loneliness, and fear. As such, the use of phenomenological inquiry is well suited to uncover the lived experience this phenomenon in such a way that no other method of inquiry could. The author brings forward themes that emerged from in depth conversations with two vegan/vegetarian participants, and draws from her own personal experiences as a vegetarian to supplement the data and further uncover the phenomenon. Themes are brought forward through the use of, among other works, and descriptions of "inside vs. outside" and van notion of secrecy.

This article reports upon research on vegan transition, which I bring into dialogue with Sara Ahmed’s figure of the killjoy. Ahmed’s work on affect and the feminist killjoy is found to be apt for considering contemporary vegans and their transgression of normative scripts of happiness and commensality in a dominant meat and dairy consuming culture. The decentring of joy and happiness is also found to be integral to the critical deconstructive work of the vegan killjoy. Ahmed’s ideas further complement the frame of practice theory that I draw upon to understand the process of transition especially in the sense of opposing the meanings of dominant practices. Although food and veganism are not commented upon by Ahmed, the vegan subject constitutes, I argue, a potent further example of what she terms an “affect alien” who must willfully struggle against a dominant affective order and community. Drawing upon interviews with 40 vegans based in the UK, I illustrate examples of contestation and negotiation by vegans and those close to them. The article finds in the figure of the killjoy not only a frame by which to partly understand the negotiation of relationships between vegans and non-vegans but also an opportunity for further intersectional labour between veganism and feminism.

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.

Discourse & Society, 2020

Given the fact that being vegan is generally considered odd or deviant from the mainstream norms of carnism, we examine how vegans manage such social positioning in their dealings with omnivores. This article employs a discursive analysis of vegans' narratives of problematic moments with omnivores and how they manage such situations and their identity. The vegans' narratives ranged from problem stories where some troublesome event occurred, but was not resolved, to solution stories of the best ways of dealing with meat eaters. In each case, being vegan is a social positioning that is problematized in various ways and a positioning that needs to be accounted for. The narrators give voice to themselves or others through the discursive practices of metadiscourse and reported speech in constructing the problem story. Vegans face the ideological dilemma in how to speak about their veganism as choice of diet, for environmental reasons or ethical considerations.

Social movement scholars have long studied actors' mobilization into and continued involvement in social movement organizations. A more recent trend in social movement literature concerns cultural activism that takes place primarily outside of social movement organizations. Here I use the vegan movement to explore modes of participation in such diffuse cultural movements. As with many cultural movements, there are more practicing vegans than there are members of vegan movement organizations. Using data from ethnographic interviews with vegans, this article focuses on vegans who are unaffiliated with a vegan movement organization. The sample contains two distinctive groups of vegans -those in the punk subculture and those who were not -and investigates how they defined and practiced veganism differently. Taking a relational approach to the data, I analyze the social networks of these punk and non-punk vegans. Focusing on discourse, support, and network embeddedness, I argue that maintaining participation in the vegan movement depends more upon having supportive social networks than having willpower, motivation, or a collective vegan identity. This study demonstrates how culture and social networks function to provide support for cultural movement participation.

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.

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