Vegan world-making in meat-centric society: the embodied geographies of veganism

Abstract

The question of the human body–whose matters, where, when, and how much–has long been of concern in geographical thinking. Vegan geographies pose a challenge to this ‘body,’ bringing in critical concerns for and about animal bodies. In this paper, interviews with vegans based in Britain are used to discuss the role of the body and embodiment in veganism, a social, cultural and political movement that has been relatively under-studied in geography. Drawing on feminist and embodied geographical theory, this paper discusses the role of the body in three spaces of veganism: (1) in establishing vegan cultures through building shared ‘truth narratives’; (2) in shifting veganism beyond individualism in meat-centric society; and (3) veganism as a world-making project, stretching beyond the body into social and cultural space. I conclude by discussing the wider implications of this empirical work understanding the social and cultural geographies of veganism, and how these further embodied geographical thinking.