Understanding Veganism: Biography and Identity

136 Pages·2017·1.885 MB·English

by  Nathan Stephens Griffin (auth.)

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ANIMALS
AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS
Series Editor: Leslie Irvine
UNDERSTANDING
VEGANISM
Biography
and Identity
Nathan Stephens Griffin
Palgrave Studies in Animals and Social Problems
Series editor
Leslie Irvine
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado Boulder
Boulder, CO, USA
This series focuses on how animals matter in social problems. Because
animals are incorporated into the economic, sociological, emotional, and
moral fabric of society, their roles in social problems have wide-r anging
implications. Cruelty to animals, animal fighting, pet prohibitions in
rental housing, animal hoarding, wildlife crimes, the illegal traffic in
endangered species, and zoonotic disease transmission represent just a
few examples of social problems that this series might address.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/15441
Nathan Stephens Griffin
Understanding
Veganism
Biography and Identity
Nathan Stephens Griffin
School of Applied Social Sciences
Durham University
Durham, UK
Palgrave Studies in Animals and Social Problems
ISBN 978-3-319-52101-5 ISBN 978-3-319-52102-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52102-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937124
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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A
cknowledgements
I owe special thanks to my Ph.D. supervisors Maggie O’Neill and Nicole
Westmarland, whose wisdom and guidance carried me through the
research upon which this book is based. Thanks also to the ESRC, and
to Durham University School of Applied Social Sciences, for funding and
awarding the aforementioned Ph.D. Thanks to Philip Whitehead who
helped me in the early stages of thinking about how to develop a Ph.D.
thesis into a book.
I am eternally grateful to Laura da Costa, who has supported and
advised me throughout the research and the book writing process.
Thanks to Naomi, Jc, Daniel and all of the vegan punx of Durham, most
of whom will never read this, but all of whom have supported me in
writing it, one way or the other.
Special thanks to my mother, Michaela Stephens Griffin, who read
drafts and offered useful feedback, and to my father, Neil Stephens
Griffin, without whom she might not have been able to work with the
printer.
Finally, thanks to the research participants, who generously shared
their stories with me, and now with you.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Theory and Methods 19
3 Understanding Veganism 39
4 Queering Veganism 59
5 Demonstrating Veganism 81
6 Criminalising Veganism 99
7 Conclusion 117
Bibliography 129
Index 131
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and
practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food,
clothing or any other purpose. Vegan Society (2016)
A vegan is someone who tries to avoid animal products. Whilst such a
definition may seem straightforward enough, it fails to account for the
complex biographical and social dynamics through which veganism is put
into practice. People who choose to adhere to veganism do so within a
specific personal, social, political and cultural context. Using data from
a number of biographical interviews with vegans I conducted as part of
a doctoral research project, this book attempts to untangle the complex
topic of veganism and to understand vegan identity from a critical and
biographical perspective.
In this chapter I open up a discussion around veganism and animal
advocacy and in doing so outline the scope and character of the book.
I look at the way veganism has been defined in terms of practice, iden-
tity, culture and social movements and thus attempt to situate the project
within the field of Critical Animal Studies, and the broader critical pro-
ject of Intersectionality. However, first I address some important founda-
tional questions: Why study veganism in the first place? Why should I be
the one to study it?
© The Author(s) 2017 1
N. Stephens Griffin, Understanding Veganism, Palgrave Studies in
Animals and Social Problems, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-52102-2_1
2 N. STEPHENS GRIFFIN
why study VegAnism todAy?
Veganism as a form of animal advocacy is notable not least because of the
scale and power of the system it rejects (Joy 2008). Every year globally,
animals are exploited and killed on an enormous scale. In British slaugh-
terhouses alone, more than 1 billion animals are killed yearly, amount-
ing to around 22 million deaths every day, or 15,000 every minute, or
255 every second (Viva! 2013). We accept this scale of exploitation as
unproblematic, ‘normal’ and ‘necessary’, because animals are regarded
as fundamentally inferior to humans in the natural order. At the same
time, we also accept animals are not inanimate objects; they are sentient
‘subjects-of-a-life’ (Best and Nocella 2004; Nocella et al. 2014). Animals
do feel pain and do suffer, as well as exhibiting other ‘human-like’ traits
and emotions, such as happiness, fear and even empathy (Bartal et al.
2011; Irvine 2008; Singer 1975). The 2006 UK Animal Welfare Act
has enshrined an acknowledgement of the sentience of animals in British
law (Nurse and Ryland 2014). Veganism, which is increasingly popular,
poses a challenge to the assumption that animals are inferior and to the
unproblematized nature of animal exploitation.
The number of vegans in the UK has risen by 350% in the past
10 years, amounting to about half a million adherents to veganism
(Vegan Society 2016). This phenomenon appears to be largely driven
by young people. In the UK, 42% of vegans are aged 15–34, suggest-
ing a drastic generational change in attitudes and behaviours, and one
that could be linked to significant shifts in the consumer relations of
supply and demand (Vegan Society 2016). Perhaps concomitant with
these trends, veganism has increased in prominence from a consumer-
ist perspective. Labelled vegan food is becoming more widely avail-
able, with major supermarket chains like Sainsbury and Tesco offering
a larger and more diverse selection of vegan options (Bowman 2016;
Powell 2016). On the high street, chains such as Pret A Manger, Zizzi,
Leon and even pub chain J.D. Wetherspoons all now boast a variety of
vegan options (Love 2016; Martin 2016; Washtell 2016). The expand-
ing profile of veganism is also evidenced in growing numbers of people
attempting a vegan diet through successful campaigns to promote animal
advocacy more broadly such as ‘Veganuary’ (Dilworth and McGregor
2015). Awareness and popularity of veganism is, arguably, at an all-time
high (Wright 2015). However, the rising popularity and prominence of
veganism has been met with resistance and hostility.
1 INTRODUCTION 3
In some cases hostility towards veganism has expanded into physical
and tangible. In Tbilisi, Georgia, in May 2016 a vegan restaurant was
attacked by a group of far-right activists who reportedly entered the
premises carrying slabs of meat on skewers and threw meat onto the
plates of customers (Synovitz 2016). The incident occurred 3 days after
a large-scale protest by Georgian ultra-nationalists, and many believe
the attackers to have been neo-nazis, targeting the café not only for its
commitment to veganism, but also for its popularity with tourists and
members of the LGBT community. Often however, hostility is enacted
discursively.
Empirical research reveals a tendency for mainstream media sources
to ridicule, misrepresent and discredit veganism and vegans themselves
(MacInnis and Hodson 2015; Cole and Morgan 2011). For instance, a
media trope has emerged around the ‘safety’ of veganism. A number of
cases of infants suffering malnutrition or even dying have been widely
reported as relating directly to veganism (Philipson 2015; Thompson
2011; Willshire 2011). Cole and Morgan (2011) highlight one such
case as being indicative of media hostility to vegans. The veganism of the
child’s parents was stressed in reporting, despite the prosecutor stating
‘[t]he child died because he was not fed. The vegan diet is fine’ (Glaister
2007: 17 cited in Cole and Morgan 2011: 146). There are of course
innumerable cases of infant malnutrition and mistreatment in non-vegan
families each year, but rarely do these receive mainstream press attention
and when they do, seldom are the diets of the parents highlighted.
Similarly reported cases in Italy prompted Member of Italian
Parliament Elvira Savino to propose new legislation, which would see
parents who raise their children on a vegan diet criminalized, facing up to
6 years in prison (Hunt 2016). The proposal aims to counteract the ‘ide-
ological excesses’ of veganism and to ‘stigmatise the reckless and danger-
ous eating behaviour imposed by parents… to the detriment of minors’
(Hunt 2016: n.p.). This view sees veganism as a dangerous ideology that
must be punished. The Italian Society of Food Science disputed Savino’s
claims on a scientific basis, arguing that children with excessively fatty,
sugary diets should be of greater concern than vegans (Hunt 2016).
Elsewhere, scientific research has suggested considerable health benefits
relating to balanced meat-free diets (Appleby and Key 2016; Le and
Sabatè 2014; Orlich and Fraser 2014; Katz and Meller 2014).
Song et al. (2016) conducted a large-scale prospective cohort study
examining medical data from more than 130,000 patients over the