The focus on vegan products and dietary practices has created a depoliticized image of veganism. Critical discussions of non-human animal rights and speciesism were noticeably absent in the sample, while the capitalist encroachment on veganism was omnipresent.
Continue readingMainstreaming Veganism: Full Interview with Imagine5
Vegan culture is likely to move more and more into environmental claimsmaking, as that has proved most successful in achieving institutional changes that support a transition to plant-based foodways. I would like to see, however, more social justice claimsmaking made for nonhuman animals themselves. Sadly, in all the discourse over healthy food, capitalism, and climate change, the animals themselves remain hidden from the conversation. This is a real travesty, as they have the most to gain from a vegan world.
Continue readingWhy are Environmentalists and Animal Activists at an Empasse?
More and more, however, the science of climate change is now demonstrating that animal products are a leading cause of environmental degradation, a body of evidence that is becoming difficult to ignore. However, the ideological shift that is needed–seeing animals not as objectified climate-destroying consumables, but as a marginalized group whose oppression is actually foundational to the degradation of the earth–still lacks. Until we start to see animals as persons and reject hierarchies of domination, the two movements will never fully align.
Continue readingSociety Writings: Veganism Made Real in Print
In my chapter, “Society Writings" in The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies (Wright and Quinn 2022) published with the University of Edinburgh Press, I examine early vegan and vegetarian organizational literature, arguing its importanceContinue reading
Third-Wave Vegan Feminism and Feminist Animal Studies
In my chapter for Feminist Animal Studies (Routledge 2022) edited by Erika Cudworth, Ruth E. McKie and Di Turgoose, I argue that vegan feminist activism has entered a millennial third wave. This wave, I argue,Continue reading
Appropriating Anti-Slavery Abolitionism in Anti-Speciesism Claimsmaking
Human and nonhuman abolitionist movements, despite their similarities, remain two distinct movements, each with unique social, political, economic, and historical circumstances.
Continue readingA Critique of Open Rescues
Open rescues, although exciting and heroic, unfortunately maintain the system as it is. This tactic therefore protects the interests of conservative foundations that maintain most grant monies. Open rescues also give non-profits something to write about and fund-raise behind.
Continue readingThe Troubles (Animals in Irish Society, Episode 5)
This episode discusses the persistence of animality in Irish Republicanism in the late 19th century and the 20th-century protests under British occupation during the Troubles. While Britain applied animality to Irish rebels as a measure of control, the Irish would strategically adopt animality as an illustration of their oppression. The episode also discusses some mid-20th century vegan activists and their response to civil rights injustices of the era.
Continue readingActivism Amidst COVID-19
On December 2nd, I moderated a panel on UK/US activism in the midst of COVID-19 as co-director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements.
Continue readingReview: 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 lackContinue reading