Corey Lee Wrenn's Blog, page 6

Review: Racism as Zoological Witchcraft

Can we realize a liberatory world for humans and other animals without veganism as a baseline? In her second monograph, Racism as Zoological Witchcraft, Aph Ko imagines we might. There is, sadly, a considerable lack of communication between anti-racism and anti-speciesism movements, and Ko posits that this disconnect reflects the limitations of theoretical frameworks. For one, veganism is frequently depoliticized into a dietary lifestyle, largely due to corporate interests and the (perhaps intentional) mischaracterization from nonvegans.

Anti-racism activists, Ko conjectures, are not likely to find as much value in veganism as a tactic as such: “When we treat veganism as only a matter of what food one eats, it can feel as if we’re holding the key to racial liberation in our hands but only conceive of it as a spoon” (p. 8). More than this, however, she also suggests that veganism, even in its unadulterated political form, has its limitations. Veganism is not necessarily useful for conceptualizing all intersections between oppressed humans and other animals, and, furthermore, it may not speak equally to all audiences. Ko explains:

Rather than trying to smuggle all of these complex conversations about animals under the vegan label, we should get to a point in our activism where we recognize that conversations about race and animality often exceed the boundaries of vegan discourse, and that this should be celebrated rather than appropriated. (p. 30)

Veganism, in other words, may be a logic of anti-oppression, but its core emphasis relates to the rendering of nonhuman animals into products of consumption, and this framework does not always function for other oppression narratives.

Read the full review here.



Readers can learn more about the social movement politics of Nonhuman Animal rights and veganism in my 2019 publication, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits . The beautiful cover art for this text was created by vegan artist Lynda Bell and prints are available on her website, artbylyndabell.com.

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

What Sociology Can Tell Us about Empathy for Animals

Empathy for Animals is a Core Human Value
Humans across the globe share their homes with dogs, cats, rodents, and other animals. We call them companions, pets, or even family members. Thousands of pounds are invested in these animals with regard to food, treats, toys, clothing, kennels, healthcare, and even birthdays and funeral services. Clearly humans deeply care about other animals. At our core, we have empathy for animals other than ourselves.

Exploitative Economies Distort Our Empathy for Animals
So why do so many humans stop short of extending this compassion to animals categorized as food, clothing, or labour? Sociology offers a variety of explanations according to theoretical perspectives. Many sociologists, however, point to the economic structure of a society and the commodification of nonhuman animals. David Nibert has argued that our switch to a hunting economy not only created a society newly structured around the oppression of animals (speciesism) but it also created a society divided by gender. The transition to agriculture entrenched speciesism further with the advent of domestication. This also introduced class division since agriculture allowed for surplus goods (and unequal distribution).

By the late 1500s, early capitalism and colonial expansion spread and deepened speciesism across the globe (and, in doing so, introduced racial division as well). Today, in late-stage capitalism, speciesism (animal agriculture in particular) is more intensive than ever. It is rapidly normalizing in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other previously colonized spaces as a result of Western coercion. These are regions where plant-based consumption was once normative. The loss of traditional foodways is not only harmful for nonhuman animals identified as “food,” but the global poor identified as their consumers. Social stratification, in other words, is rooted in the adoption of speciesism as a primary economy both past and present.

Distorted Empathy for Animals Includes Humans, Too
Notice how human oppression codeveloped with animal oppression. This intersectionality is key to the sociological understanding of speciesism. Species, race, class, gender, and other social categories are economically functional. They ensure that unpleasant jobs will be filled and that labour may be exploited for low cost (or for none at all). These categories also represent social difference and tend to facilitate conflict and discourage cooperation. For sociologists, this tendency is politically relevant. A divided society, after all, is more easily manipulated by the dominant class in support of its own interests.

The most fundamental social division is that between humans and other animals. It is this animalization which separates those who are marginalized from those who are centered in society with regard to social recognition and allocation of resources. Women are animalized, people of color are animalized, humans with disabilities are animalized, homosexual people are animalized, ethnic minorities are animalized, and non-binary and trans humans are animalized. Even nonhuman animals themselves are animalized.

This is because “animal” is a social category imbrued with symbolic meaning. Just like race really has more to do with power, prestige, and access to resources than it does with one’s actual skin color, species is also not so much about one’s biological makeup (i.e. if one has hands or hooves, skin or scales). All groups, whether human or nonhuman, that are labeled “animal” are described as physically and cognitively inferior to the dominant class and can be denied rights accordingly.

Unteaching Empathy
True, nonhuman and human animals are indeed biologically different. But there are many more commonalities between the two groups. Why do we emphasize difference over sameness? I have described a society that is fundamentally in conflict. In order to maintain such a volatile system, powerful ideologies must be introduced and enforced through institutions and socialization. Psychologists point to a variety of cognitive and emotional mechanisms for managing the discomfort humans feel when faced with contradictions in their empathy toward other animals. Sociologists, however, are interested in how our empathy for some animals and our lack of empathy for others is learned (or, more accurately, is taught).

We are taught by our parents that some animals are for petting, some animals are for admiring, some are pests we should kill, and others are food we should eat. Doctors (who generally lack nutritional training) teach us that eating animals and drinking nonhuman breastmilk is good for us. We are taught by our teachers, museums, and zoos that nonhuman animals are ours to exploit. Mainstream media (which long since converged in the 1990s under the ownership of a handful of powerful billionaires) programs us that animals are objects and our using them is good for the economy. We’re being taught these lessons from childhood throughout our life course.

Reclaiming Empathy
Fortunately, if speciesism is something that is learned, that means it is something which can be unlearned. Sociologists are also interested in how social change happens and how social justice can be achieved in a society that is fundamentally unequal. Although the system may be rigged against us (and nonhuman animals), individuals can resist the erosion of our empathy by choosing food, clothing, and entertainment which does not harm other animals. Individuals can also work to create a more inclusive, peaceful world by getting active in our communities and putting pressure on policy-makers. It is possible to reclaim our empathy for animals.





Readers can learn more about the sociology of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights .

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Veganism and Alternative Facts

The Role of Scientific Claimsmaking in a Rationalized Movementscape
One of the defining features of the 21st-century Nonhuman Animal rights movement is its move to increase rationalization. This is a process that prioritizes efficacy, control, and calculability of operations (Wrenn 2016). It is also especially concerned with fundraising and bureaucratic growth.

The social movement arena is a crowded one, however, and taking this predictable path makes it difficult for organizations to stand out in their effort to attract large grants and donations. One increasingly utilized strategy to get an edge on the competition is to demonstrate the efficacy of that organization's chosen tactic.

With the lives of so many Nonhuman Animals on the line, investing more resources into learning what tactics are more or less effective is vital. However, social movement organizations often evoke scientific research to support their preexisting strategies and ideologies. Research that demonstrates contrary results may be ignored; research that provides weak results may be overly hyped.

As we know to be true of political debates transpiring in mainstream media, "alternative facts" and "fake news" can easily dominate in the social movement discourse as well. Few activists will be bothered to investigate the truthfulness of the claims being made. Even fewer have the skills necessary to determine the validity or reliability of scientific results. This essay is designed to highlight some issues for activists to consider when determining the usefulness of tactical research.

The Importance of Significance


A widely circulated and celebrated Faunalytics study, “Reduce” Or “Go Veg”? Effects On Meal Choice, exposed diners at a university cafe to two videos. One promoted a flexitarian solution, the other vegetarianism. Afterward, researchers tracked participant meal choices to ascertain if exposure to either film was influential. The findings?

After a reduction advocacy video, 25.8% of participants ordered a meatless meal, versus 18.9% after a vegetarian advocacy video (a marginally significant difference). (p.4)

Significance is key. It is the difference between a measurable correlation between variables (x influencing y) and random occurance (x just happens to actify when y does). The more significant the statistical result, the more confidence we can have in a correlational relationship existing between two variables. In this case, we are interested in the relationship between exposure to a particular message (x) and subsequent meal choice (y).

If the difference between the two messages is "marginally significant," why not go with the morally consistent one? I believe the findings were misinterpreted in an effort to lend scientific support to outreach behaviors already engaged by nonprofits. These behaviors tend to be individualistic, one-off, and, given their avoidance of animal liberation and vegan language, more appealing to potential funders.

The professionalized movement has a propensity for aggravating vegan stigma, a persistent trend I have uncovered in an extensive content analysis of movement publications. Other researchers have noted blatant underreporting on existing vegan numbers as well.

The Faunalytics study also found that more people reported that they would be willing to reduce their consumption of "meat" than those who indicated they would be willing to eliminate it altogether. But what does this flexitarian claim really mean? The professionalized Nonhuman Animal rights movement has for many years now adopted the "meet people where they are" approach which does little, if anything, to push people past their existing dietary habits. Although vegan and vegetarian consumption is stigmatized behavior, it is also recognized as a social good (a paradox explained by do-gooder derogation). In other words, folks are more likely to report in such a way that puts them in a positive light, even if it is not an accurate representation of their behavior.

What about the actual "marginally significant" behavior change? Having folks immediately order a single meatless meal is not necessarily any better than successfully recruiting fewer vegetarians. Vegetarians and vegans (who, by the way, are more likely to commit when it their consumption is not viewed as a diet but instead becomes part of their identity) will order infinite meatless meals over their lifetime. Theoretically, they will far surpass their flexitarian counterparts in their capacity to reduce harm to other animals.

Spuriousness
It is also important to consider other things that might be influencing behavior (y). Crime rates tend to go up in the summer at the same time ice cream sales rise. Does this mean that ice cream consumption (x) causes crime (y)? No, of course not. There is a spurious relationship between the two which can be pinned on the warm weather which makes ice cream more palatable and crime more enticing (stealing cars, for instance, is less appealing when it is freezing outside). Social science researchers shy away from causation language for this reason (ie. "x causes y").

There are so many confounding variables in social science research, it can be difficult to assign weight to the results. With regard to the study in question, we might first consider social psychological barriers. Asking people to go vegetarian on the spot is unrealistic; many people need time to process and consider (McDonald 2000). Caught off guard on the way to eat a meal already planned in their head, how many more would change their choice if given more time to contemplate?

For most of us, when we go to a local restaurant for lunch, we are taking time out of the busiest part of our day to visit a place (and a menu) already well known to us. That is, we have made our meal choice before we even arrived. Many folks (myself included) go out to eat with a general idea of what they will be ordering when they arrive to the restaurant. Perhaps you can recall the feeling of arriving a favorite restaurant and your preferred meal choice is sold out, or, you visit a new restaurant for the first time and cannot decide. It can be flustering! Indeed, having to make a choice can sometimes be taxing or anxiety-inducing. This is one reason why people are creatures of habit. It is less cognitively taxing.

Furthermore, a coffee shop is a strange place to conduct a study of this kind, as this is not a typical sort of place one might go for a regular meal. Many of the veg options (such as those offered by the experiment location: eggplant, tofu, etc.) are likely to be unfamiliar to the average pizza, burger, and taco eating university student. Here, the confounding variable might be consumer familiarity with non-flesh foods.

The percieved  accusatory approach may also be problematic. Social psychologist Hank Rothgerber finds, for instance, that participants may double down in their commitment to speciesism when they suspect that they are being expected to abstain. These folks brazenly reported that they planned to eat more Nonhuman Animals.

Sociology would further suggest that group dynamics are relevant here. The Faunalytics study focuses on individual patrons, but the presence of others (or lack thereof) influences how individuals process information and behave. The presentation of veganism as something that is trendy and socially normative is also important for recruitment. This study, in utilizing an experimental design, attempts to isolate action and reaction, but the social world is not so simplistic. 


The Problem of Generalizability
Another recent study on vegan motivation by Trent Grassian ( A New Way of Eating: Creating Meat Reducers, Vegetarians and Vegans ) is a bit more realistic in capturing real-world behaviors. It did not demonstrate very positive result for the flexitarian approach. The main finding?

Those with the strictest goals (i.e. vegans) were the most likely to be meeting their reduction goals (78%), while meat reducers were the least likely (39%).

While meat reducers were more likely to reduce than not in the first month, the reverse was true afterward, with 54% being temporary reducers at six months, 36% long-term reducers and 10% no longer consuming meat.

Flexitarians also reported that they planned on eating more animal products (such as fish flesh or birds' eggs) to compensate.

Grassian's study surveyed participants in various veg pledges hosted by Nonhuman Animal advocacy and veg organizations. He also employed focus groups to allow participants to share  more in-depth explanations.

Triangulation is important in order to account for inevitable shortcomings in various approaches. Interviewees may  not be entirely clear when engaging with a researcher for instance, but additional surveys may improve the study's validity. Triangulating in this way also improves generalizability, that is, how applicable the results from a study's sample will be to the general population.

A random sample is also important for achieving generalizability, but this was not accomplished with the Grassian study which studied people who had already signed up for a veg pledge. His respondents were disproportionately white, female, and middle-class, a demographic that is consistent with the larger Nonhuman Animal rights movement, but not very representative of the population.

The Faunalytics study was stronger in this regard as it targeted random cafe customers, but this cafe is located on a Canadian university campus. University students are over-represented in vegan motivational research. They are easily accessible to academics for obvious reasons, but also to activist researchers since university campuses are open to the public, have heavy footfall, and are populated with young people who are more willing to respond to requests for interviews and experimental participation for little or no cost. However, the average university student in the West is not representative of the general population. University students are disproportionately white, middle- and upper-class, urban, and well educated.

Because many vegan organizations actively target university students as their primary audience, this may not be a serious issue. If, however, they wish to reach out to underserved demographics (such as older persons, communities of color, lower income communities, and so on), they will want to be wary. What motivates a white middle-class university student is not necessarily what will motivate the average person.

Given these issues, researchers have an ethical obligation to refrain from making sweeping claims about what works based on one precarious study. This research (and their claims) will influence countless organizations, activists, and Nonhuman Animals.
What to Believe?
Science is notoriously politial. Everyone has an agenda, and funding (or lack thereof) can influence the types of questions asked, the findings, and the interpretation of the findings. In the Trump era, the malleability of science is repeatedly bombasted in an effort to confuse the population and erode its trust in social institutions. We should resist the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to vegan science.

Instead, activists should be mindful and practice critical thinking. Know where the research is coming from, who conducted it, and what motivates them. Certainly, before any research is put into practical action, social movement actors should investigate the research for themselves.

Works Cited
Anderson, J. 2020. "'Reduce' or 'Go Veg'? Effects on Meal Choice." Faunalytics.

Grassian, T. 2019. A New Way of Eating: Creating Meat Reducers, Vegetarians
and Vegans . University of Kent.

McDonald, B. 2000. “‘Once You Know Something, You Can’t Not Know It.’ An Empirical Look at Becoming Vegan.” Society & Animals 8 (1): 1-23.

Wrenn, C. 2016. A Rational Approach to Animal Rights. London: Palgrave.

Wrenn, C. 2018. Free-Riders in the Nonprofit Industrial Complex: The Problem of Flexitarianism. Society & Animals 26 (4). Online first. DOI: 10.1163/15685306-12341544.



Readers can learn more about the social movement politics of Nonhuman Animal rights and veganism in my 2019 publication, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits . The beautiful cover art for this text was created by vegan artist Lynda Bell and prints are available on her website, artbylyndabell.com.



Readers can learn more about the politics of vegan research in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights .

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Age, Gender, and Veganism

In a publication authored with my colleague Alexus Lizardi, Older, Greener, and Wiser: Charting the Experiences of Older Women in the American Vegan Movement, we offer the first exploratory research on an underserved demographic: older vegan women. Minimal data is available on this group--most of it is relegated to subscriber feedback reported by The Vegan Society. 

Interestingly, our sample had not put much thought into what it means to be older and vegan. Some noted that they were aware of how older vegans are objectified in the movement if they were seen to "age well." In other words, age is leveraged to promote veganism as a means to beat aging. For the average person who ages normally, they may find themselves invisibilized. Indeed, the vegan and vegetarian movement has actively dismissed key leaders thought to sully the movement with their prolonged illness and premature death (like founder of the American Vegan Society Sylvester Graham and founder of the British Vegetarian Society William Cowherd). 

Otherwise, our respondents noted that being older granted them a degree of confidence in their political choices. This is an important finding given the movement's focus on young people and its concern with recidivism (many young people will revert to nonveganism should they lack social supports). Older people are more resolved in their decisions and are less swayed by social pressures. 

This could sometimes backfire. A few of our respondents felt they were rather isolated given their hesitancy to associate with non-vegans who they felt were hostile to their lifestyle. Older folks in general risk isolation as they age, leading us to consider whether older vegans were doubly burdened in this respect.

Some respondents also expressed concern with accessing medical professionals who took veganism seriously. As many of our participants were middle-class and living in the New York area, they were relatively privileged in this respect, but it was clear that more marginalized older vegans could find difficulty in this regard.

Lastly, many of our respondents noted that their gender definitely informed their veganism. They reported being compelled by the horrors of dairy production, something they could empathize with given their own reproductive journeys as female-bodied persons. We consider whether this awareness is due to the popularity of Carol Adams' vegan feminist work in the movement. It is likely that greater acknowledgement of aging issues in the vegan community might increase activist consciousness to the unique challenges facing older folks in a relatively ageist society.

Readers can learn more about the politics of vegan feminism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights. Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Zoos as Colonial Legacies of Injustice

Photo Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur, Captive.

Although framed as educational family-friendly spaces, “zoos” entail the non-consensual control of vulnerable beings for the pleasure and convenience of humans. Having emerged in modern British society as an extension of the colonial project of dividing, categorising, and rationalising controlled groups, “zoos” are functional in their ability to maintain social inequality.

Consider the work of sociologist Erving Goffman, who theorised what he termed “total institutions” as spaces where marginalised groups are fully controlled under a central authority. “Zoos” can be said to constitute total institutions as they control and confine nonhuman inmates under human authority. There is, furthermore, a logic in “zoos” similar to that of prisons. Both sites regulate behaviours, instil discipline, and psychologically traumatise to the point at which the physical and emotional experiences of human and nonhuman inmates are comparable in their perceived social disposability.

As colonial legacies, these institutions ritualistically maintain cultural hierarchies. This is accomplished by neatly containing nonhuman animals in sterile, restricted spaces where humans can safely and neatly “interact” with them. “Zoo” confinement physically restrains nonhuman animals with bars, cages, and leashes, but it also psychologically restrains them through domestication and psychological numbing.

Just what sort of lessons are being learned in “zoos” is questionable. Nonhuman animals trapped in the confines of even the most modern and conscientious “zoos” cannot by any reasonable stretch of the imagination be said to lead natural lives. Their movements are severely confined, their interactions with other animals are restricted, and their eating and sexual behaviours are entirely dependent upon the whims of human authority. Rather than challenging speciesism, “zoos” reinforce it by encouraging visitors to take on the role of privileged observers who may access inmates at their leisure and convenience for the purposes of entertainment. The clear, physical segregation built into “zoo” displays encourages further discrimination.

Unfortunately, the mythmaking of “zoo” proprietors detours considerably from the reality of inmates undergoing daily trauma behind “zoo” bars. Indeed, human visitors are shielded from the stress that nonhuman animals experience from regular and often international transfers between facilities, as well as the industry standard of “culling” individuals who impede on the facility’s carrying capacity in the constant endeavour to facilitate newborns to delight visitors. Surely, we can imagine other ways of interacting with other animals that are better able to respect nonhuman personhood and autonomy while also educating the public and supporting conservation efforts.



Readers can learn more about the social movement politics of Nonhuman Animal rights and veganism in my 2019 publication, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits . The beautiful cover art for this text was created by vegan artist Lynda Bell and prints are available on her website, artbylyndabell.com.

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

A History of the Vegan Society

World Vegan Day was launched in 1994 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Vegan Society. Since then, veganism has become a cultural triumph making November 1st a day for celebration not only for veganism but for the society's organizational success. Its radical vision and democratic structure make it an unlikely hero--I undertook a content analysis of all issues of The Vegan Society's publication, The Vegan, to chart its rocky road to the 21st century.

The Vegan Society emerged in England in November of 1944 following a friendly but drawn-out schism within the British Vegetarian Society. While the fledgling organization was small, radical, and almost completely unfunded, it would manage to survive into the 21st century, influencing global food culture and challenging humanity’s relationship with food and other animals. What I uncovered was an organization that struggled to maintain its radical agenda in a social movement environment that had largely professionalized.

Throughout the early-to-mid 20th century, The Vegan Society prioritized Nonhuman Animal liberation, but with the neoliberalization of nonprofits in the 1980s, the organization opted to incorporate, turning a volunteer organization into a corporate competitor. A number of changes occurred as a result. The bureaucratic structural style allowed it to accommodate spikes in public interest associated with popular documentaries (such as The Animal Film ), but it also necessitated a heavy reliance on fundraising to support its ambitions for growth. As a consequence, the radical claimsmaking of years prior tempered to emphasize vegan lifestyles and nutrition.

Today, The Vegan Society rarely engages the cutting-edge animal rights discourse it once did, but instead plays to less abrasive climate change themes which are not in any way animal-centric. This is a story common to organizational veterans of the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. Few organizations are able to maintain a radical agenda while also pursuing mainstream politics and economic growth. What this means for Nonhuman Animal liberation in the long term is questionable.

Read the full article here.
 



Readers can learn more about the social movement politics of Nonhuman Animal rights and veganism in my 2019 publication, Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits . The beautiful cover art for this text was created by vegan artist Lynda Bell and prints are available on her website, artbylyndabell.com.
 
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Black Veganism and the Animality Politic

Why Animality Matters
In Ko & Ko's 2017 publication Aphro-ism, the sisters critique popular applications of intersectionality theory, identifying that what has traditionally been defined as “human” has always been categorized as white, male, and European, while racial and ethnic minorities, women, and other marginalized groups have been dualistically constructed as “animal.” Thus, “animal” is not so much a catch-all category meant to refer to nonhuman species, but to all manner of disenfranchised groups, humans included.

Animality is, they insist, endemic to the colonialist project, providing justification for social control and suppression. The Kos argue that anti-racism activists, feminists, and vegans all have a stake in challenging the false divide between human and animal, and, more specifically, challenging the category of “animal” itself.

Without challenging this basic mechanism of oppression, activists are bound to fail in their efforts for liberation. In fact, they merely embrace the same oppressive logic by either ignoring (or rejecting) the relevance of animality or insisting that intersectionality praxis stop short of species solidarity. Doing so dangerously preserves hierarchies. As Aph warns: “What hasn’t occurred to many of us is that this model of compartmentalizing oppressions tracks the problematic Eurocentric compartmentalization of the world and its members in general” (71).

Why Race Matters
From the same reasoning, vegans who do not incorporate a critical racial lens are missing the entire point of speciesism: marking particular bodies as distinct from the dominant group based on perceived physical, cognitive, and cultural differences, and then employing this distinction to rationalize oppressive treatment. Racism and speciesism are inherently entangled. Explains Syl: “[ . . . ] the organizing principle for racial logic lies in the human-animal divide, wherein the human and the animal are understood to be moral opposites” (66).

The Kos are careful not to prescribe a “we are all animals” perspective to solve this boundary-maintenance, as this is poised to deprecate rather than accommodate difference. There is little need to push for sameness, and such a push usually maintains the dominant group as the standard to which others should aspire.

Read more of my review of Aprho-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters in Society & Animals here.

Readers can learn more about the racial politics of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights . Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

How Dawn Saves Wildlife While Killing Other Animals En Masse

Soap and Species Solidarity
Under the banner, "Dawn Saves Wildlife," Dawn dish soap has for decades been advertised as the weapon of choice for those working to assist free-living animals who have harmed by oil spills.  Commercials which promote this project frequently depict precious little ducklings and squat penguins wiggling clean and free out of a foamy Dawn bath back into nature.

The scheme has become foundational to Dawn's brand image over the decades.  For instance, these nonhuman survivors are often featured on dish soap bottles, and Dawn also hosts a website specifically designed to promote its work with free-living animals.  In the past, it has donated at least a million dollars toward wildlife rescue efforts.

Dawn soap saves animals in removing deadly oil and chemicals from industrial accidents, the Dawn company saves animals by funding conservation, and the warm-hearted customer saves animals in purchasing Dawn products.

But a critical vegan analysis unravels this corporate greenwashing for what it is: a scheme to increase sales which is based on the systematic oppression of many species, both domesticated and free-living.

What's in a Bottle?
Most mainstream detergents are based in slaughterhouse renderings. Commercial soaps, Dawn included, are produced from the fat of pigs, cows, chickens, or other species who meet gruesome ends in abattoirs.

Dawn is also a product of Procter & Gamble, a corporation which has maintained its commitment to outdated and violent Nonhuman Animal testing in the face of decades of protest from the Nonhuman Animal rights movement.

Furthermore, commercial detergents like Dawn which are flushed down millions of drains across the United States pose a direct risk to free-living species whose habitats are disrupted by algae blooms, fragrances, anti-bacterial agents, and other additives.

Veganism vs. Greenwashing
Thus, Dawn products are predicated on the torture and killing of all manner of Nonhuman Animals, while the suffering of free-living animals harmed by industrial disasters is cruelly exploited to promote the brand. Dawn's approach is typical of corporate greenwashing in its attempt to add marketable value by appealing to societal interest sustainability and species solidarity. Ultimately, however, Dawn's effort is vacuous.

Products that are not vegan and do not work harmoniously with the environment undermine the wellbeing of Nonhuman Animals. Fortunately, vegan alternatives are becoming increasingly easy to find and comparable in cost.  Some folks even make their own washing up liquid to reduce their consumption of plastic. A variety of recipes to accomplish this are freely available online.







Readers can learn more about critical veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights . Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Vegan Sausage Rolls are Resisting the Brexit

In the United Kingdom, a number of grocery chains ranging from Aldi's to Sainsbury's unveiled a new line of vegan options for the start of 2019. One such chain rolled out a rather unassuming vegan sausage roll, just one cruelty-free option amid a sea of animal products. But this one little veggie roll seemed to represent all that the conservative right had come to loathe. Right-wing news journalists are lashing out on social media, and an off-shoot of France's yellow vest movement materialized in Manchester to protest the roll as a threat to the nation itself. "We Want Our Country Back" the vest slogans read.

In her 2015 publication The Vegan Studies Project, Laura Wright forwards the idea of anti-vegan animal nationalism, a concept positing that veganism upsets notions of national identity. Veganism is frequently associated with liberalism gone wild, a marker of snowflake privilege. More insidiously, however, since many vegan dishes hail from non-Western countries (especially mock-meats), it is also disparagingly associated with the "other," the "east," and uncivilized, unevolved barbary. In that respect, the resistance to veganism is often highly racialized.

The United Kingdom makes for an especially interesting case study in anti-vegan animal nationalism. Across the many centuries of British colonialism, Britain's "beefeater" culture was heralded as factual evidence as to the superiority of Great Britain. It became a marker of civilization itself. Furthermore, it became a justification for the violent oppression of the potato-eating Irish, rice-eating Indians, and other colonial conquests in Africa, Asia, and the Carribean where plant-based eating was the norm. Political discourse of the era pointed to vegan eating as a marker of weakness and a veritable plea for Britain's paternalistic, merciful rule.

In the era of Brexit, the Greggs protest demonstrates that these same food-based cultural tropes about the "other" persist as the slight majority of the country's voters chose to remove themselves from the European Union to "protect their borders" and clamp down on immigration from regions deemed undesirable. Food politics, it would seem, feed ethnocentrism.

But Britain is today a very multicultural and diverse country, with, for the purposes of our discussion, restaurants and food shops serving the culinary needs and nostalgias of its former colonies as well as those regions never colonized by Britain at all but woven into the culture through processes of globalization. Food is so integral to culture and belonging, it is no wonder that these shifts on the high street are causing discomfort for some. For a population of conservatives harkening to an age of imperialism in which whites predominated in the "home country" and freely enjoyed the wealth extracted from colonized peoples of color (who were kept at a distance across oceans and continents), this modern multiculturalism disrupts this legacy of guiltless privilege and effortless oppression.

And so, when Greggs launched its simple vegan sausage roll, literally inserting the otherized, liberalized, orientalized plant-based fodder into the most cherished of all British meaty fare, conservatives were forced into a reckoning. For me, a vegan of nearly two decades, Greggs vegan sausage rolls offer me a chance to explore British cuisine in all its multicultural glory without imposing violence on other animals. But they also celebrate Britain's resistance to the right-wing backlash that has temporarily thrown the country asunder. Dare I say, Greggs veggie rolls represent our beautifully persistent march toward a more equitable and diverse society.

Yum.





Readers can learn more about the politics of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights . Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Cognitive Priming

Cognitive Priming for Positive Outcomes
Cognitive priming refers to the process of manipulating an audience's interpretation of information. Professors, for instance, might make subtle hints to their students about positive experiences in the classroom hoping that students will score them higher on end-of-term evaluations. Realtors may bake cookies in a home for sale for a nostalgic, lived-in atmosphere, hoping to encourage would-be buyers to imagine themselves buying and living in the home. Comedians and musicians rely on opening acts to get audiences jazzed about the main event.

With cognitive priming, agents not only allow for the manipulation of new information. Priming can also improve the recollection of memories (Rholes et al. 1987). Vegan activists can, therefore, manipulate the interpretation of campaigns by cognitively priming audiences beforehand. Facilitating good moods can assist with this. Vegans can even prime others to experience and remember vegan food more positively by priming beforehand.

Cognitive Priming for Negative Outcomes
Unfortunately, priming works both ways. People can be primed toward the negative, too. For instance, researchers in one study exposed an experimental group to aggressive media (Bushman 1998). After the exposure, researchers asked participants to come up with word associations in a seemingly unrelated lexicon task. The participants exposed to the violent media were more likely to come up with violent word associations than those in the control group.

The priming effect acts as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Persons primed to enter a mindset of positivity or negativity are more likely to experience an event or information respectively.

For vegan campaigners, then, their success may be limited should they organize protests or tablings in spaces where audiences have been primed with aggression. For instance, anti-hunt disruptions may be important for aiding wounded Nonhuman Animals and drawing attention to their oppression, but they are less likely to persuade audiences to respond positively to veganism having already been aggressively primed by the festivities.

For the Vegan Toolkit
-Prime audiences to interpret and remember vegan ideas and food positively
-Avoid campaigning in spaces where audiences have already been primed with aggression


References
Bushman, B. 1998. "Priming Effects of Media Violence on the Accessibility of Aggressive Constructs in Memory." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 24 (5): 537-545.

Rholes, W., J. Riskind, and J. Lane. 1987. "Emotional states and memory biases: Effects of cognitive priming and mood." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1): 91-99.

 





Readers can learn more about the social psychology of veganism in my 2016 publication, A Rational Approach to Animal Rights . Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.