Claiming veganism and vegan geographies

Abstract

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.