Building a collective identity – case of veganism

As the title states, focus of this paper is on the theme of building collective identity. Collectivities are big sociological theme and thus it is still relevant to pay attention in their corner. We witness nowadays ongoing struggles for identities across whole world society. Old kinds of identities face a massive force of globalization. Nationalities and religious faithfuls as an oldest and most common identities have to redefine themselves and solve challenges which globalization brings to them. The fact is that the old identities don`t provide basis on which social agents can identify themselves with so there are emerging new kinds of identity which aspire to fill up the emptied space. Lets name some of these new identities – New Age, new ethnicities, converting to different religious, or veganism.

I would like to focus on identity of veganism as a new phenomena and how it is constructed. The veganism is a young ideology which provides instructions how to live a good and right life. In spite of its youth it finds its roots in the main religions and wheresoever and this is exactly what is important to me. Finding its roots and present itself as an old a nature thing is one of a building blocks in constructing belief, in this case belief in veganism as collectivity. There are several approaches how to examine collective identities. I will use an approach of Pierre Bourdieu[1992], way of social constructivism and its view of social reality. Question which I want to answer is: How was/is vegan collectivity constructed?

At first there should be said a little about theoretical approach I use. There is a essential assumption that there is nothing as natural in society. We believe that identities and social aggregates are products of human effort. According to P. Bourdieu there is a circle of collective identity – the particular group choose a representative, which re-present group by his voice in public discursus and thus create group in minds of other people, which can confirm and recognize the group as a specific and different. Representatives are crucial when is new identity being established. These spokesmen can speak as voice for some aggregate of people and thus spokesman voice reach new quality in re-presenting not just his personality but ideas and interests of some social group. It is a story of institutionalization and recognition from others. We can track back in the time this process and see the original and man-made roots of social entities like vegans. Vegan identity is well suited example because the movement is only 60 years old and its history and genesis is well documented.

Veganism is kind of complex life-manual and gives to its followers guides how to improve their well-being and how to make a better world. The fundamental thoughts are about respect to all living creatures and treatment of them. American Vegan Society describe this principle as Ahimsa [American Vegan Society 2009]. The origin of Ahimsa is in Sanskrit and the word meaning is non-killing and non-harming. In virtue of Ahimsa there are simple rules about animals treatment. Vegans see animals as the same as humans – as a living creatures which can feel happiness or pain. According to my opinion this is the main element which constitutes the veganism. Vegans inscribe human qualities into all living creatures – into dogs as well as into bees, it means that all animals are perceived as equal to human and therefore animals are considered as persons with their rights. In the human society we are no allowed to kill, eat or process any humans so vegans protest against using animals for any purposes. It doesn`t matter if we talk about meat industry with slaughter-houses, honey production via bees hard effort or sheep breeding for wool – in the most strict veganism it is all considered as a bad because all these activities exploit animals-persons. Veganism is most commonly manifested as a diet. This diet is based on exclusion of all animal products – from diary and eggs to honey- from the daily food. It is kind of stricter vegetarianism. Some vegans go more far and they exclude from their lives animal products at all, for example leather products, cosmetics tested on animals and similar are banned.

Veganism is dated from 1944 when Vegan Society in Great Britain was established by Donald Watson [Wikipedia 2009]. The word vegan was created by Donald Watson from the word vegetarian – he excluded the middle part of the word. His primary goal was to distinguish himself from vegetarians which felt free to use animal products. Until then there was no difference in naming for people which refused to use animal products, there were just vegetarians. The first vegan society in United States was founded in 1948 and since then veganism started spreading around the world. According to the poll held in 2006 in USA [The Vegetarian Resource Group 2009] there is 1.4% of adults which never ate animal products therefore we can consider them as vegans. There are estimated 250,000 vegans in Great Britain today [The Times 2005]. Lets conclude this brief history of veganism. Veganism movement has history over 60 years and became well established collectivity with its organizations [uvest priklady]. Vegans even established World Vegan Day on November 1st and held various feasts and vegan promotions [Midlands Vegan Campaigns 2009]. It is enough to examine veganism as a collective identity.

As Pierre Bourdieu stated [1992], there is human desire for a distinction. We can track this desire in the very beginnings of veganism. This desire rises from some particularity. This particularity is unpronounced and hidden, it is not publicly stated yet nor named. In the case of veganism is this particularity avoiding of animal abuse. Donald Watson felt different among vegetarians because his world view discontent with that one of the rest of the vegetarian party. His denial, and probably not only his but denial of wider aggregate of people as I show later, was named and expressed. This act of coming out we can see in establishing of Vegan Society. Through this act, act of establishing public organization, inventing, naming and thus defining the particularity he laid down headstones of veganism. He made themselves distinguished. Lets inspect more thoroughly the difference between before and after establishing Vegan Society.

There were no vegans before 1944. We can think at most about isolated individuals which don`t know about each other, there is no shared set of ideas nor anything else. What Donald Watson made, was a new entity, new voice, something more than just a special diet. He named veganism, he defined what veganism mean and therefore he created veganism as a new phenomena. It is important to notice that he made a new delimitation. The act of giving name and definition is act of making new delimitation, the establishing new entity. This new entity, which can lead to new social group or in other words, new collective identity, actually did not have any ancestors, it missed continuous development and tradition. But in order to construct and institute its identity it adopted some historical roots. Veganism refer to many religious resources, from Bible and Christianity through eastern philosophies to Islam and Koran [Vegan 2000 2009]. But it finds and select only references of diet which suits the vegan ideology and can not provide any support to thesis that man should avoid using animal products. It means that veganism just don`t have any religious roots1, only some limited statement which were adopted to build image of veganism. According to logic of building collective identity we can see this endeavor to connect veganism with historical roots as an attempt to show that veganism is natural and that it is inherent with human and its history and culture across nations and beliefs. But it doesn`t mean that vegan collective identity is little less than for example Muslim identity.

Institutionalization of veganism through founding vegan societies and other organizations was crucial for further development of vegan collectivity. Cherry [2006] made a research on veganism as cultural movement. She differentiated between punk and non-punk vegan to examine how is the effect of involvement in vegan social networks. Punk vegans were supposed to be more organized and participating the non-punk ones. Cherry makes clear importance of institute of vegan societies - “Meredith said of her veganism, ‘I try to follow really specifically what the Vegan Society says that veganism should entail’[Cherry 2006: 160] and “Both punk and non-punk vegans knew and referred to the Vegan Society definition of veganism, which excludes all animal products”[Cherry 2006: 161]. Punk vegans as more involved in vegan social networking than non-punk ones showed stronger infatuation for vegan life-style [Cherry 2006]. Spreading the vegan word via vegan societies is thus crucial. Vegan societies offer particular identity which is simple and understandable and gain its followers. This the way how veganism become true collective identity. At the beginnings there was just single idea and through organization and promotion veganism gets its members. Veganism then finally has its representation and spokesmen which give one single voice to former aggregate of individuals and can represent their interests.

But representation of vegan people is not only source of vegan legitimacy. The principle of avoiding use of animal products vegans elaborate on compassion with all animals and thus fighting against cruelty on animals. Some of the vegan organizations state this right next to name of the organization[Vegan Outreach 2009]. This is unique component of collective identity because vegans thus say that they represent a voice of “someone” who even doesn`t have any voice. Vegans consider themselves as people which understand to realm of animals and they don`t hesitate to manifest that. We can see this like some kind of messianism. Vegans are here to defend the most vulnerable and voiceless, vegans are like the heroes fighting in war for animals against all. Veganism perceive itself as a chosen one, as a moral law which is above the rest of humans. Inside of vegan community this is a strong component of identity, the powerful source of differentiation and delimitation in social space. Even while, and probably because of, it is the most fictional part o vegan collective identity.

The purpose of this paper was to examine veganism as a collective identity and its construction over time. The veganism is a young ideology which is known mostly for its special diet and its friendly approach to animals. Previous paragraphs shows the brief history and important moments in institution of veganism as a identity. According to constructivism paradigm is veganism analyzed and dismantled for its basic elements which are avoiding use of animal product and adoption of this rule by a vegans and representation of animal in order to fight back the cruelty to animals. In conclusion it should be stated that veganism is invented human ideology of same kind like communism or anarchy-capitalism for example.







References




American Vegan Society. 2009. “What is Ahimsa?” New Jersey: American Vegan Society. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://www.americanvegan.org/ahimsa.htm).

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cherry, Elizabeth. 2006. "Veganism as a Cultural Movement: A Relational Approach." Social Movement Studies, 5:2. Retrieved October 5, 2009. Available: Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

Midlands Vegan Campaigns. 2009.”Veggie Pride UK”. Midlands Vegan Campaigns. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://www.veganmidlands.org.uk/veggiepride/index.html).

The Times. 2005. “Donald Watson. Founder of veganism whose dietary crusade grew to attract a quarter of a million adherents in Britain today”. The Times, December 8, 2005. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article754304.ece)

The Vegetarian Resource Group. 2009. “How Many Adults Are Vegetarian?”. Baltimore: The Vegetarian Resource Group. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2006issue4/vj2006issue4poll.htm).

Vegan 2000. 2009. “Religious Reasons for Veganism“. Vegan 2000. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://library.thinkquest.org/C004833/religion_en.shtml).

Vegan Outreach. 2009. “Vegan Outreach”. Vegan Outreach. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://www.veganoutreach.org/).

Wikipedia. 2009. “Veganism.” Wikipedia. Retrieved October 12, 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism).