(Extra)ordinary activism: veganism and the shaping of hemeratopias

Abstract

Purpose Literature on social movements increasingly identifies everyday life as significant to understand political practices and activism. However, scholars have retained a major bias towards movement mobilisation and collective action, often relegating the everyday at the margins of social movements. While there have been notable exceptions, with studies of prefigurative activism and everyday practices of social change, they have usually focussed on alternative community spaces such as autonomous social centres and protest camps, and paid less attention to “ordinary” practices and spaces of activism. The purpose of this paper is to address these problems by suggesting that everyday life may be central to the production of activist spaces and the action of social movements. Design/methodology/approach Drawing upon ethnography methods, interviews with vegan activists, an on-line survey of supporters of vegan movements and an examination of on-line vegan forums, it seeks to analyse the practices of the vegan movement in France. Findings This paper attempts to demonstrate that prefigurative activism and seemingly banal practices may be central to strategies for social change. Drawing on an anarchist perspective on activism, it further suggests that activism and everyday life should not be studied in isolation from each other but as mutually constitutive in the creation of everyday alternative spaces – hemeratopias. Originality/value This paper adds to the literature on activism and social movements by offering a more complex picture of the spatial politics at work in social movements and a better understanding of individual action and mobilisation.

Political consumerism and food activism

“…It also covers community-supported agriculture, where citizens buy in advance a certain amount of vegetables, fruit, cereals, or other goods produced by local farmers (Forno et al, 2015;Hassanein, 2008). Lastly, lifestyle politics includes forms of action that require important changes in citizens' everyday lives -for instance veganism (Ophélie, 2016), voluntary simplicity (Lorenzen, 2012), or freeganism (Barnard, 2011). In these cases, citizens commit to a lifestyle that sets them apart from prevailing modes of consumption and require that they adapt their everyday life -not only refusing to buy some goods (e.g., meat, non-essential goods) but also changing their lives in terms of work, sociability, and political activism.…”

Collective Social Identity: Synthesizing Identity Theory and Social Identity Theory Using Digital Data

“…Data come from two viral YouTube videos about veganism 1 . Veganism is both an individual lifestyle and a collective identity category tied to social movements about food and consumption practices (Cherry 2015; Greenebaum 2012; Haenfler, Johnson, and Jones 2012; Ophélie 2016). One video portrays content that diverges from standard vegan identity meanings, and the second video is a response by a prominent vegan activist.…”

“Eles querem nos converter” : representações sociais sobre a minoria ativa vegan

“…A origem da crença no consumo de proteínas e produtos derivados de animais como base nutricional da dieta humana é, portanto, recente (Maxey, 1999;Melucci, 1985;Scott, 2000;Véron, 2016). Assim, identifica-se uma tendência à abolição da figura do "militante dedicado à mudança revolucionária e distante da mundanidade da vida cotidiana" (Chatterton & Pickerill, 2010).…”

“…Os dias atuais presenciam grande segmentação de grupos de minoria, centrados em características identitárias que permitem aos indivíduos buscar, mais diretamente, soluções para as questões concernentes a sua vivência pessoal. Exemplos disso podem ser observados na segmentação articulada de movimentos sociais já consolidados em subclasses que carregam consigo características mais detalhadas do pertencimento, como na segmentação do feminismo em feminismos negro, popular, radical, liberal, entre diversos outros (Costa, 2005;Dunn & Rowbotham, 1989) (Maxey, 1999;Melucci, 1985;Scott, 2000;Véron, 2016). Assim, identifica-se uma tendência à abolição da figura do "militante dedicado à mudança revolucionária e distante da mundanidade da vida cotidiana" (Chatterton & Pickerill, 2010).…”

“…Nela, o discurso se divide entre considerar o veganismo como uma ideologia, ou um estilo de vida, com termos como "ideologia", "escolha", "postura" e "vida". A discussão sobre o veganismo ser um estilo de vida ou um movimento social já existe, apesar de não haver consenso (Véron, 2016). Há uma tendência ao desuso da figura do "militante dedicado à mudança revolucionária e distante da mundanidade da vida cotidiana" (Chatterton & Pickerill, 2010) (Esteves & Galinkin, 2017).…”