The Vegan Society and social movement professionalization, 1944–2017

Wrenn, Corey Lee

doi:10.1080/07409710.2019.1646484

Cited by 18 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In recent years there has been a growth in dietary transformations, with studies estimating that people who are willing to reduce their meat consumption for environmental reasons make up between 12.8% to 25.5% of the population (Sanchez-Sabate & Sabaté, 2019). Some minority actors are already modelling a potential pathway towards this transformation, through a commitment to veganism: abstaining from meat, dairy and animal products in their diet and/or wider lifestyle (Wrenn, 2019). However, vegans are still a small minority in most countries around the world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming (vegan) burnout: Mass-gatherings can provide respite and rekindle shared identity and social action efforts in moralised minority groups

Prosser¹,

O’Neill²,

Whitmarsh³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Minority actors can play an important role in social change processes, by refuting the majority social norm and modelling alternative pathways for society. However, acting in the minority can be difficult, and minority actors may encounter several obstacles on their path to social change. These obstacles might become so great that they experience ‘activist burnout’ and social isolation from their practices and may stop acting in pursuit of social change altogether. Here, we explore an event-based intervention that may encourage and help maintain minority-driven social change in the environmental context. Through on-site field interviews at an identity-centring event, we outline how ‘The Vegan Campout’, acts to validate and empower vegans to act in pursuit of social change. Our analysis demonstrates that the Vegan Campout functioned as a space where vegan identity, food and action was centred and celebrated. It was an important space for vegans to gain strength and ‘rekindle’ their vegan and activist identities and their activism efforts. Overall, these interviews show how attending an identity-centring event is an empowering experience for moralised minority groups working towards social change, which might protect their mental health, and bolster collective efficacy and motivation to engage in activism in the future.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming (vegan) burnout: Mass-gatherings can provide respite and rekindle shared identity and social action efforts in moralised minority groups

Prosser¹,

O’Neill²,

Whitmarsh³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although veganism is not a new phenomenon as such, in recent years vegan eating has gained heightened visibility in public discussion in many Western countries. The reasons for this include the intensifying discourses on animal rights-related aspects which lie at the heart of veganism (e.g., Janssen et al 2016;Wrenn 2019), the environmental and health-related problems caused by animal production and consumption (Steinfeld, Gerber, and Wassenaar et al 2006;Willett, Rockström, and Loken et al 2019), and a new interest in vegan eating as part of sustainable lifestyle political movements (Jallinoja, Vinnari, and Niva 2019;Micheletti and Stolle 2006). Despite such apparent change in eating-related discourses, meat and dairy continue to form a routinized part of daily patterns of eating in Western societies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconfiguring everyday eating: Vegan Challenge discussions in social media

Laakso

Niva

Eranti

et al. 2021

Food, Culture & Society

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The shift of society toward sustainable food culture requires collectively challenging meat and dairy-based diets and their role in current practices of eating. This study focuses on how discussions in social media can facilitate reconfiguration in eating. Three practice-theoretical perspectives -practices constituting of elements, eating as a compound practice, and communities of practice -afford us with analytical tools to investigate eating and how the constituting elements are negotiated and recrafted in social media discussions across the compound practice. As empirical data, we use altogether 14,250 social media messages on the Finnish Vegan Challenge campaign. By combining qualitative content analysis with topic modeling, we capture the various themes occurring in these discussions and their relation to changes in eating practices. The results show that within these discussions, social learning among peers covered the whole sphere of eating-related practices from production and distribution to purchasing and cooking vegan food, and to sharing stories and experiences of veganism. Our findings illustrate how these discussions can be seen as forming a reconfigurative community of practice, which can potentially support and facilitate social change of eating toward sustainability also outside the Vegan Challenge community.

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“…Scholars typically tend to see the rise of the citizen-consumer as a product of three interest groups: the consumers themselves, the state, and the industry. The first direction of historical research tends to focus on grassroot consumer groups such as the National Consumers’ League in the United States (Cohen, 2003: 22–23), the British Women’s Patriotic League in the United Kingdom (Trentmann, 2008: 229–232), Fair Traders (Van Dam, 2017) or vegans (Wrenn, 2019). The second direction of research tends to focus on the state as the main actor in the creation of consumers and how consumption was used by nation-states as an element of nation-building such as the Food Administration, created by the US Agricultural Department in 1917 (Levenstein, 1988: 137) or the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), created in 1926 by the British Colonial Office (Kothari, 2014: 45).…”

Section: Introduction: the Citizen-consumermentioning

confidence: 99%

If it ain’t Dutch, it ain’t much: Vereeniging Nederlandsch Fabrikaat, the citizen-consumer and Dutch nationalist consumption in the interwar Netherlands

Onstenk

2021

Journal of Consumer Culture

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Recent scholarship has paid considerable attention to the emergence of the citizen-consumer in the interwar era. Drawing on the literature from the fields of ethical consumption and consumer history, this paper opts for a broader perspective on the emergence of the citizen-consumer in historical analysis. It combines the polysemic nature of the hybrid citizen-consumer from food studies and ethical consumption, and the socio-historic analysis concerning political and cultural citizenship, by showing how consumption practices have been used to shape Dutch national citizenship. In the Netherlands, the private association Vereeniging Nederlandsch Fabrikaat (VNF) was one of the earliest and most vocal organisations that linked consumerism with an ideal of citizenship. Scholars typically tend to see the rise of the citizen-consumer as a product of three interest groups: the consumers, the state, or the industry. The VNF did not just appeal to consumers themselves, but also the government, and the business community to play their part in the development of the ideal Dutch citizen-consumer. By studying the practices of this association this paper thus offers a new perspective on the emergence of the citizen-consumer within a transnational perspective.

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The Vegan Society and social movement professionalization, 1944–2017

Cited by 18 publications

References 27 publications

Overcoming (vegan) burnout: Mass-gatherings can provide respite and rekindle shared identity and social action efforts in moralised minority groups

Overcoming (vegan) burnout: Mass-gatherings can provide respite and rekindle shared identity and social action efforts in moralised minority groups

Reconfiguring everyday eating: Vegan Challenge discussions in social media

If it ain’t Dutch, it ain’t much: Vereeniging Nederlandsch Fabrikaat, the citizen-consumer and Dutch nationalist consumption in the interwar Netherlands

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