The vegan industrial complex: the political ecology of not eating animals

Abstract

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 framework for what lives or dies as a result of ethical dietary choices. I use this framework to examine commodities for the socio-ecological harm that their production extends into the world under the guise of "doing good" or "being ethical." Taking a harm reduction and food sovereignty approach, I advocate for a new ethical framework that includes a limited case for consuming animals.

Socioecological topologies of student debt in the United States

“…The global political economy of agricultural production is driving national ag-policy trends (Hall, 2013) (e.g. an increase in soybean production Hartman et al, 2016;Trauger, 2022), which, in turn, impacts small farmers across the US, as they go into more debt to compete with industrial-scale agricultural production (Giri and Subedi, 2023;Huffstuffer and Flowers, 2022). These debts accumulate in rural households, impacting rural students.…”

“…Tuition has crept up to cover these expenses, resulting in higher debt burdens for Colorado's students. According to a report from United Campus Workers Colorado (UCW-CO, 2021: 11), “The average amount owed—before interest accrued—for CU students at all campuses who graduated with debt in 2018 was $24,865.12.” Recruitment of students has become a top priority for public institutions of higher education in Colorado. While there has been a push for out-of-state students who pay higher tuition (UCW-CO, 2021), universities have also been reaching into rural Colorado for recruitment (Finley, 2022).…”

“…According to a report from United Campus Workers Colorado (UCW-CO, 2021: 11), “The average amount owed—before interest accrued—for CU students at all campuses who graduated with debt in 2018 was $24,865.12.” Recruitment of students has become a top priority for public institutions of higher education in Colorado. While there has been a push for out-of-state students who pay higher tuition (UCW-CO, 2021), universities have also been reaching into rural Colorado for recruitment (Finley, 2022). While only 5% of students at the University of Colorado Boulder were from rural places in Spring 2022 (representative of Colorado's much smaller rural population) (Ganss, 2022), income disparities between rural and urban Coloradans are stark.…”

Claiming veganism and vegan geographies

“…Reactions dismissing academic research as ‘merely activism’ echo the dismissals of the ‘merely feminist’ and ‘merely cultural’ (Amoore, 2020) and are common for researchers studying veganism as vegans. For example, Trauger's recent paper on the so‐called ‘vegan industrial complex’ accuses vegans of assuming an identity in relation to food that ‘do[es] little beyond seeking out foods that fit the (grocery) bill’ (Trauger, 2022, p. 641), despite extremely limited engagement with texts in vegan Sociology or Geography, and little engagement with veganism and vegans. This allies with what Dhont and Stoeber (2020, p. 27) have identified as anti‐vegan motives around ‘why some people become angry and even aggressive in the face of the increasing popularity of veg*nism’.…”

“…The pressure on academic work to be agenda-setting can (both intentionally and unintentionally) reproduce hierarchies of knowledge and power with implications for the shaping of knowledge frames, in this case of vegan geographies. Agenda-setting work in vegan geographies, for example, might centre a future focus of the field (and therefore its canon) on the ethics of eating (Sexton et al, 2022); health and sustainability of diets (Trauger, 2022); or only as in relation with agri-food (e.g., Beacham & Evans, 2022). This embedding of veganism in food sits uncomfortably within Giraud's (2021) emphasis of veganism being more than a diet, and of the multiplicity of veganism(s).…”