Abstract
This article aims to understand the stages of adopting veganism in young people. To achieve this objective, we analyze 30 biographical interviews with young vegans in Santiago, Chile. The participant’s stories allow us to identify that the transition to this new lifestyle implies acquiring a secondary habitus, that is, a gradual shift in understanding and acting in the world, which entails progressive identity changes until becoming vegan. This transition consists of five steps: personal questioning, vegetarianism attempt, vegetarianism, veganism, and activism. This path constitutes a career process but presents nuances according to the young people’s social class of origin and individual characteristics. The main contribution of this article is to delve into the career stages that lead to the consolidation of a vegan identity, based on two classical sociological concepts (career and habitus).
Introduction
Veganism is a lifestyle that rejects the consumption of products of animal origin, in food, clothing or hygiene products, and cosmetics (Stephens-Griffin, 2017). In contemporary societies, veganism has increased, mainly among young people, although it is still practiced by a minority group in Western countries.
Literature indicates that the adoption of veganism could be associated with different elements. Some investigations relate it to the development of animal movements and anti-speciesism (Bertuzzi, 2017; Cherry, 2006). Some authors see veganism as a product of growing environmental concerns linked to the meat industry (Austgulen et al., 2018; Mylan, 2018), criticism of the capitalist system and patriarchy (Adams, 2010), while others consider that the increase in this type of diet is the result of individualistic behaviors (Arppe et al., 2011; Fischler, 2013). Other authors link veganism with worries about the health consequences of eating animal products (Dyetta et al., 2013; Fox and Ward, 2008; Morelli and Vitale, 2020).
In this framework, this article aims to understand the adoption of veganism in young people from Santiago, Chile. We focus on young people since this lifestyle tends to be adopted in youth (Cherry, 2015) and because veganism seems to be a relevant practice in the generational identity of millennials (Gvion, 2020).
To achieve this objective, we have developed an analysis of 30 biographical interviews, deep describing young vegan’s conversion path. This analysis associates two classic and relevant sociological concepts: deviant career and habitus. We propose that both are powerful conceptual tools to understand how people adopt a new identity, due to a gradual change in understanding and acting in the world.
Our results show that adopting this lifestyle follows a deviant career pattern from a ‘carnist’ culture (Joy, 2011), in other words, where eating meat is valued. This career is characterized by three phases along with five steps, acquiring a new vegan habitus and identity. This career will present nuances according to the dispositions of the young people’s social class of origin, especially visible when contrasting the trajectories of upper-class young people with those who belong to other social classes.
On this point, several social sciences works have analyzed veganism’s adoption (Beardsworth and Keil, 1992; McDonald, 2000; Twine, 2017), but they have not detailed a transition path. Thus, our main contribution to the current literature about veganism is to delve into the career stages that lead to the consolidation of a vegan identity.
The transition path to veganism that we propose contributes to the sociological discipline from at least two angles. On the one hand, we present the adoption of veganism as a process where people progressively abandon animal consumption. On the other, we clarify the turning points where worldview and everyday practices are questioned and modified. Both elements are crucial to promoting behavioral changes, specifically towards consumption patterns without animal suffering and sustainability.
Furthermore, rare previous works studied the influence of habitus in veganism (Ossipow, 1997). That concept is absent even in research focused on vegan practice (Twine, 2018). In this paper, we develop the application of habitus to understand the vegan lifestyle insofar as this new identity implies learning a new system of classification and practices for the individual.
We consider that Chile is an appropriate field to study this phenomenon. On the one hand, although we found a high cultural value of meat consumption (Orellana et al., 2013), surveys estimated that 14% of the adult population is vegetarian, and 4% is vegan (CADEM, 2018). This percentage is low but slightly higher than it is in countries like the United States (Cramer et al., 2017) or Italy (Bertuzzi, 2017), where about 2% of the population or less follow this type of lifestyle. Unfortunately, data in Chile are rare on this matter, and it is not possible to identify whether there has been an increase over time in these percentages.
On the other hand, in Chile there are important economic and cultural differences between the lifestyles of the different social classes. Several studies show that Chilean society is highly segmented (López and Miller, 2008), especially in its capital Santiago, and these differences can even be seen in the food and commensality practices (Rivera and Giacoman, 2019).
Career and habitus in the adoption of veganism
Various works have analyzed the adoption of veganism. It has been characterized mainly as a process of countercultural identity building (Beardsworth and Keil, 1992; Larsson et al., 2003; Stephens-Griffin, 2017), in which the following elements are present: a) experiences that lead to question the consumption of animals, b) learning about the practices and codes of veganism (McDonald, 2000), and c) a social network which facilitates or hinders the acquisition of that new identity (Cherry, 2003, 2006). Although people can make the transition to veganism at different stages of their life cycle, conversion tends to occur mainly during their youth (Cherry, 2015), key age in the formation of individual identity (Best, 2011).
Various theoretical perspectives study this process. In social psychology, the most relevant contribution was McDonald (2000), who, using Mezirow’s transformation theory as a reference, analyzes veganism’s learning process. In other social sciences disciplines, we found a diversity of approaches: authors who have observed the construction of the self of vegans appealing to symbolic interactionism (Greenebaum, 2012a, 2012b; Romo and Donovan-Kicken, 2012); those who have looked at veganism supported by the queer theory (Stephens-Griffin, 2017); phenomenology (Edwards, 2013); or practice theory (Twine, 2017, 2018).
Despite the rich literature on this topic, we did not find any detailed analysis and description of the transition path stages. Additionally, we consider that the vegan’s social origin was almost lost in research, notwithstanding that veganism is labeled as a privileged group’s practice (white and educated women), even if its followers have diverse backgrounds (Greenebaum, 2018).
In this framework, we propose to analyze the conversion to veganism using two classic concepts in sociology, career and habitus, because we consider both are powerful notions to the understanding of individual biographical changes anchored in their social context.
The concept of career has a long tradition in the sociological discipline (Darmon, 2008b; Dubar and Nicourd, 2017). Faupel defines this term as a ‘series of meaningfully related statuses, roles, and activities around which an individual organizes some aspects of his or her life’ (2011: 196). In its development, temporality is essential, and individuals interpret the events of their life as a sequential pattern to build social identity.
This notion has overcome the opposition agency/structure because in defining their own identity and their roles, the subjects negotiate with the norms that socially establish the expected behaviors and the path to follow (Barley, 1989). There may be rites of passage from one status to another in this career and milestones that mark progression. The subjects’ trajectories are the result of individual decisions; however, these occur in a collective framework.
To understand veganism, we consider that the idea of a deviant career from a carnist culture is particularly fruitful. One of the first sociologist who used this concept was Howard Becker (2009), in his researches to understand why and how some people assume outsiders identities, studying the cases of jazz players and marijuana consumers. Since then, research has frequently used this concept to analyze criminal behaviors, and less frequently in the study of non-conventional groups like strippers or nudists (Forsyth and Deshotels, 1998; Weinberg, 2016). The essential element of this group is to be outside of the social norms.
As a career, the deviant path follows a pattern with three general stages (Faupel, 2011): career choice and entry (usually incentive by a close relation); career mobility (activities, decisions, opportunities, and obstacles during the track); and exit (including returns). Nevertheless, the details of these general stages change according to the type of group.
Veganism is a deviant lifestyle because its followers have non-conventional attitudes and perform activities that differentiate them from the rest (Forsyth and Bryant, 2011). In fact, as Joe Boyle (2011a) shows, a vegetarian diet is negatively labeled in cultures where meat is valuable, although sometimes this lifestyle is labeled as healthy. In this article, we also propose that the adoption of veganism is a deviant career because it is a type of trajectory that turns away from social norms regulating eating practices (Fischler, 2013) within the framework of a society characterized by carnism and speciesism (Joy, 2011).
Previous researches already demonstrated the relevance of understanding veganism adoption as a process, however they did not use Becker’s concept of deviant career. Beardsworth and Keil (1992) see the decision to stop consuming animals as a deliberate conversion of eating habits. The adoption of this new diet is the result of a critical analysis of omnivorism. In their broader research about vegetarianism in the United Kingdom, these authors identify two career conversion types. The first type is characterized by a relative gradual progression, in which an initial objection becomes more and more present. The second corresponds to an abrupt conversion, generally associated with a strong experience, which provokes an intense rejection towards meat consumption, such as watching a television report on the livestock industry. According to Beardsworth and Keil (1992), in this process, the key moment happens when it is recognized – emotionally and rationally – that meat used to be part of a living being. This phenomenon is associated with the difference between flesh and meat. Elimination of meat from the diet also increases the restrictions regarding other products of animal origin. These authors use the notion of career, without developing it the way Becker did.
Stephens-Griffin (2017) describes a similar process of adopting veganism, but from his perspective, the adoption of veganism is similar to the LGBT process of ‘coming out of the closet’, vegans form their identity outside what the system normalizes as the dominant diet.
What is it that leads individuals to forge an identity outside the established norm? Becker (2009) highlights that pursuing a deviation career is associated with motivations out of the ordinary, influenced by peers who socialize in such ideas and practices. Thus, pursuing a career in deviance would also be social learning. In that sense, social networks, groups, and associative practices of veganism become relevant, contributing to strengthening the adoption and permanence in this lifestyle, as previous studies have confirmed (Cherry, 2003; Greenebaum, 2012b; Jabs et al., 2000). In turn, a family context opposed to a vegan diet would be one of the most important obstacles (Asher and Cherry, 2016).
Acquiring a new vegan identity entails a change in the worldview and new consumption practices. For this reason, in addition to the notion of career, in this research we use the notion of habitus to analyze the vegan lifestyle, as was previously done by the Swiss researcher Laurence Ossipow (1997) in her study on vegetarianism.
Bourdieu defines habitus as ‘both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgments and the system of classification (principium divisions) of these practices’ (Bourdieu, 2010: 230). Thus, this is the mechanism operating in our categorization and action on social life. It is possible to distinguish two habitus types, the primary, socialized in the first childhood within the family, and the secondary acquired throughout the life cycle in social institutions, including political parties or religious sects, or even gyms (Wacquant, 2016). The habitus is linked to the individuals’ positions in a particular field and their capital, and is not a self-sufficient mechanism (Wacquant, 2016). In this research we analyze the new practices and values acquired in the veganism as a secondary habitus.
In veganism studies, the habitus concept has rarely been used. Only one previous work used this concept regarding veganism: the ethnography of Laurence Ossipow about vegetarian and macrobiotics in Switzerland (1997). In her work, she suggests that vegetarianism is a lifestyle that involves practices and representations, and therefore, its adoption requires a new habitus. This is a secondary habitus and it implies developing distinctive classifications and practices regarding the origin’s dispositions, collectively learned. Ossipow shows how the new habitus dialogs with the first habitus. She found that the vegetarian lifestyle is more frequent in individuals from intermediate and high socio-professional categories, especially those with more cultural capital than economic capital. In our research, we propose to interpret the adoption of veganism similarly to Ossipow.
Combining habitus and career to understanding veganism implies that vegan practices and classifications will result from dispositions acquired on a path. New habitus will be anchored to those acquired in early socialization according to the subject’s position in the social field. Therefore, if we consider the distinction between primary and secondary habitus as done by Bourdieu (1992), the first, a class habitus would dispose to the acquisition of the second, in veganism. In a highly stratified society such as Chile’s (López and Miller, 2008), we expect that differences in economic, cultural, and social capital among the social backgrounds of young vegans will generate nuances in their paths to adopting veganism. In this country, there is evidence of socially differentiated food practices among social classes (Montecino Aguirre, 2006).
Previous research has used career and habitus concepts to study deviant identities and their food and body practices. That is the case of Muriel Darmon’s investigation about anorexia. Like Becker, Darmon (2008a, 2009) analyzes anorexia as case of deviant career, but her argument expands previous career studies by introducing habitus. She maintains that the set of practices and orientations, which anorexics acquire during their career, are based on dispositions typical of the upper and middle-classes, social groups women who suffer from this pathology frequently belong to.
Methodology
In this article we worked with a biographical approach (Bertaux, 2011), using life stories where the subjects narrate their life, or part of it (Cornejo, 2006). We focus on the story of their conversion to veganism, from which we can draw the careers that forge this social identity (Becker, 1986).
These life stories were obtained from 30 in-depth interviews with young people between 18 and 31 years of age living in Santiago, Chile, who consider themselves vegan. The topics covered in the interviews were family and childhood, the process of adopting veganism, vegan eating practices and other vegan consumptions, barriers, and facilitators to veganism. In addition, the interview guide was left open to allow the participants to expand their history and current practices freely.
Participants were contacted through a public call on social networks. We created Instagram and Facebook accounts where we did post an open call for participants. We also posted this publication in groups for vegans along with tags linked to veganism. According to information provided by Facebook, this post was shared 177 times, and 27,426 users saw it. On Instagram, the post got 255 likes.
To participate in our study, people sent us an email showing their interest in the research. Then, they had to answer three questions regarding their age, time spent in veganism, and their parents’ occupation. Providing they agreed to give us these information, they could be selected.
Interviewees were selected based on two criteria: time spent in veganism (more than a year or less); and social class. For this last variable, we used the categorization proposed by Erikson et al. (1979), based on the parents’ occupations. Interviewees’ social classes were labelled as high, middle, or low. Activism was not criteria, but the sample showed diversity in these aspects. Regarding gender, we achieved more women than men. Table 1 shows participants’ information.
Participants’ information.
Due to the health crisis caused by COVID-19, the interviews were conducted online through the Zoom platform between July and September 2020, and lasted about one hour each. The participants signed an informed consent before their participation, and an ethics committee approved the research.
To analyze the life stories narrated in the interviews, we used two methods. First, we performed an open coding (Gibbs, 2007; Strauss and Corbin, 1997), using the qualitative analysis program MAXQDA, to achieve a dense description of the participants’ experiences. Second, we elaborated timelines manually for each story to rebuild the careers of adoption of veganism, using as a base the information obtained from the open coding. These analysis techniques allowed us to take charge of three key elements: their content, sequence, and interpretation (Bernasconi Ramírez, 2011).
Results
Despite the diversity of paths and awareness about the illusion of a biographical continuity in participants’ stories (Bourdieu, 1986), the fieldwork allows us to build a general way to become vegan in Chile. Analytically, this common path works as an ideal type (Weber, 1996) to present the chronological narrative used by vegans in interviews to interpret their own experiences. We represent this path linearly in Figure 1, although veganism’s transition goes through advances, setbacks, and dropouts (McDonald, 2000). The phases and steps of this career are based on fieldwork and are not the product of previous theoretical categories.
Phases and steps of the vegan career.
The stories of adopting veganism allow us to identify that the transition to this new lifestyle implies a gradual change in understanding and acting in the world (to acquire a new habitus), which entails progressive identity changes until becoming vegan. This path will present nuances according to the dispositions of the young people’s social class of origin, and personal characteristics. Figure 1 represents the changes in cognitive schemas and practices as phases and the identity changes as steps.
The acquisition of this habitus unfolds in three major phases. During the first phase values and food practices are reconfigured. Then, during the next phase, takes place a reaffirmation of values and practices in front of others. Finally, the third phase, will see vegans seeking to spread those values and practices. The acquisition of this new habitus dialogs with the dispositions of the social class of origin.
During these phases, individual advance gradually in steps that lead them to adopting a new identity. These steps are (i) personal questioning, (ii) vegetarianism attempt, (iii) vegetarianism, (iv) veganism, and (v) activism. As opposed to that found by Beardsworth and Keil (1992), no abrupt transitions to veganism were identified. On the other hand, in line with Ruby (2012), it was observed how external factors specific to the social context, and internal factors associated with individual characteristics, affect this journey.
As we develop in the previous pages, we consider that deviant career and habitus are two crucial concepts to improve the understanding of adopting veganism, and our fieldwork confirms this idea. On the one hand, our results show that people adopting a vegan lifestyle follow a path where they learn a collection of know-hows (Twine, 2018), about being vegan. We interpret this path as a deviant career because individuals turn gradually away from social norms: being vegan means becoming an outsider in a carnist culture (Becker, 2009). On the other hand, fieldwork show that this process implies the internalization of a new cognitive scheme from which the social reality is organized and interpreted generally from an anti-speciesism position. In our analysis, we are dealing with a secondary habitus acquisition (Bourdieu, 1992).
Personal questioning
The first steps in the vegan career are individual’s questioning regarding their practices and the system that encourages them. Two elements emerged from the interviews: first, those questioning their practices are primarily mainly individuals with a sensitivity towards animals, but also the environment or health; second, the questions arise from those who have been exposed to situations or materials that trigger a first break in the vision of the world. Both elements are in the literature (McDonald, 2000).
Regarding the first point, in several of the interviews carried out, we found that the informants had a close relationship with the animals from an early age, whether they lived in the city or the country. Closeness to animals appeared especially evident in those who had pets. In these cases, a close affective bond is perceived, and during the interviews evoking them visibly moved some participants.
In other cases, the concerns about eating practices’ environmental impact were a prelude to their transition to veganism. To a lesser extent, interviewees indicated health concerns, especially from a nutritional point of view. Both apprehensions show a negative view of meat consumption. In the first, a critical opinion about the impacts of the livestock industry on nature (Austgulen et al., 2018; Mylan, 2018). In the second, a judgment of meat as harmful to health (Fox and Ward, 2008; Morelli and Vitale, 2020). Both ideas have empirical support and have even been disseminated by international organizations in recent years (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2019; WHO. International Agency for Research on Cancer, 2018).
According to the interviewees, sensibility towards animals, the environment, and health are underlying elements that can motivate them to adopt this lifestyle, as confirmed by other studies (Radnitz et al., 2015). In this context, some experiences trigger a critical awareness of their ideas and practices. These catalytic experiences (McDonald, 2000) correspond to a disruptive situation that leads to self-questioning, starting with meat consumption to the use of other products of animal origin. In different parts of the vegan career, interviewees talk about experiences that ‘make them click’ and generally lead them to move to the next step. These ‘clicks’ are key because they refer to breaks in the reality’s classification schemes, which constitute the origin habitus: the person whose consumption used to be adequate, no longer is. These experiences are the catalysts for a reconfiguration of values and practices.
Among the catalytic experiences, we can distinguish those regarding animal exploitation, either experienced in person by the interviewees or through access to audiovisual or written material (Beardsworth and Keil, 1992). Abuse and animal slaughter often being mentioned as the most determining ones. Sofia (lower-class, 2 years vegan), and who has a stepfather who comes from a rural southern area of the country, tells us a story to exemplify these situations: We went to visit the south on holidays, and I think it was then that a change occurred in my mind, or at least I became aware about how people and customs in the rural parts of the country can be quite ‘savage’ in terms of food habits. I remember that we arrived on the weekend and there was a cute goat, I still have photos with that goat. The next morning, we woke up and heard like a child’s painful scream, and when I looked closer, I could see that the goat was being slaughtered. I was impacted by the scene. Definitely, there was a big difference between rural and city life. There, they kill an animal, and they leave it hanging outside, so anyone can see this. This was a tremendous impact for me. I remember that I was unable to eat anything. I must have been 8 or 9 years old then and found this to be so cruel [. . .]. At least in the city you get to see the product already packed, so no direct association to an animal is made.
Sofia’s citation reveals that some experiences, extreme ones, initiate a paradigm change regarding the world vision even at an early age.
Seeing a goat being slaughtered and crying just like a child (like an equal), made her aware that eating meat was not just consumption, it was eating a living being, an animal. The meat, therefore, is seen as an ‘absent referent’ for a living being (Adams, 2010). Here an ontological distinction emerges, which the subject was not able to make previously.
In her story, Sofía also reveals a moral distinction, which indicates that she considered it cruel to kill an animal, even at that early age, which led her not to eat meat on this occasion. This type of distinction appears to be the seed of the ethical turn, that will lead the person to veganism at a later stage.
It should be noted that Sofia classifies the behaviors of the rural south as ‘savage’. This classification also shows that she considers herself to be in a superior position to the rural world regarding non-human animals’ treatment.
Sofia’s narrative allows to infer the first breaks in various classifications of the origin habitus: moral/immoral; edible/inedible food; meat/flesh; animals/humans.
Experiences like that of Sofia are found mainly among interviewed who have ties with rural areas, either through relatives or having grown up there.
Also, documentaries or social media videos about the livestock industry can work as a trigger for questioning. These videos show explicit images of animal exploitation to account for the unworthy and cruel treatment to which animals are subjected in the meat or dairy industry. Other documentaries, like Cowspiracy (Andersen and Kuhn, 2014), also show the environmental impacts of livestock breeding. Elias (upper-class, 1,5 years vegan) tells us a story that gives us an idea of the role of audiovisual material on raising awareness about the effects of animal consumption.
There are many reasons for being vegans, but what raised my awareness was animal abuse. I saw some documentaries about it and one of my friends continuously brought up the subject, but until then I had not taken it too seriously. Later, I learned how ecologically expensive it is for the world to breed livestock, besides, the most important part to me is that there is no empathy towards the animals at all in this industry, and when you see what they do to them it is like getting a kick in the stomach. Besides, at the university that I go to, there are a lot of vegans and many people participate in these conversations about the subject. I soon realized that I could not continue eating meat, it is too cruel and besides in my family there is a history of heart attacks, so it is best to take care. So, these were the main reasons to become a vegan, but mainly for the animal abuse.
Elias’s words put in light three usual motivations to initiate the transition to veganism, and their order of priority. First come animal ethics, since there is ‘empathy’ with animals that generates deep discomfort. The second motivation is the environment, given the high ecological costs of the livestock industry for the planet. Moreover, health, as he links meat with a higher cardiovascular risk.
Elias also reveals a key element: a peer group critical of animal consumption. In the case of Elias, this is a group he met at the university. This finding coincides with deviant career literature, which identifies social networks as fundamental in the career entry phase (Faupel, 2011).
Additionally, reading books or scientific articles also raise questions about the consumption of animals. Some interviewees started a search for information after they began to wonder about the meat industry’s sustainability, or how to feed themselves. This search is common in those concerned about a healthier diet or with contributing to reducing the polluting effects of the meat industry on the environment. This type of experience was particularly identified in upper-class vegans.
Indeed, the interviews showed fewer traumatic experiences and more searching of information among those who belonged to the upper-class. This seems to lead upper-class respondents to go through longer transitions because, before deciding to switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet, they seek to support their position based on nutritional information and scientific data on the harms inflicted to animals or to the environment by the animal industry. Possibly this is due to a higher level of education and cultural capital.
In the interviews, some informants indicated that the personal questions coincided with feelings of loneliness and anger, which are also mentioned in the literature (Arppe et al., 2011; Edwards, 2013). Anger caused by their own contribution to an industry that exploits animals. Loneliness, because the rest of the society does not share the same questioning, and therefore, they feel like outsiders.
Vegetarianism attempt
The second step is to attempt changing the diet for a vegetarian one, first giving up red meat and then other types of meat. The aim, therefore, is to generate practices in line with the new vision of the world that is developing.
This step becomes more manageable when people dislike meat or other animal products such as milk or cheese. This dislike can be caused both by its organoleptic properties and by a visceral rejection. Those interviewed with such aversion have less difficulty giving up foods of animal origin than others. The case of Valentina (upper-class, 8 months vegan) illustrates this well.
Ever since I was a child, whenever I ate meat, I used to keep it in my mouth, because I was obliged to eat everything. After, I used to go to the bathroom and dispose it, as I used to feel sick eating meat [. . .]. I utterly disliked them, the taste was so strange, I felt it was like eating someone’s arm. Animals were just too important to me [. . .], I did not know any vegetarians then, until we went to do voluntary work in high school. One of the girls there was a vegetarian and told me more about it, and I thought: ‘one can eat healthy, and feel good by not eating meat.’ [. . .] So, when I went back home, I told my mother: ‘I will not continue to eat meat’, [. . .] so finally my mother understood, and I became a vegetarian.
In Valentina’s case, we observe that she rejected meat from a very early age because it evoked the consumption of animals, which she considers almost as humans. In her story, we see that she resorted to different strategies to avoid eating meat, despite the obligation imposed by her parents. This rejection explicitly led her to try vegetarianism in her adolescence.
However, Valentina’s story also reveals the role played by social networks, such as acquaintances and family (Cherry, 2003). First, social networks, when she realizes the viability of the feeding option that she wants to undertake, it is through an acquaintance. Second, the family can make it challenging to follow a vegetarian diet. It is important to note that parents insist on consuming meat because it is considered necessary for the body (Joy, 2011), which causes a conflict with the new classification schemes that the children are developing.
In some upper-class participants, the family does not obstruct the first attempts at vegetarianism. We found three reasons. First, they have more possibilities to buy food substitutes because they have money (economic capital) and vegetarian stores close to the area of residence. Second, among the upper-class interviewees, there are more cases of vegetarian or vegan relatives (social capital). Third, their families accept their individual choices, especially if they justify their decision using a rational motivation such as health. The quotation from Josefa’s interview (upper-class, 6 months vegan), exemplifies this last point: ‘I told them I had truly realized that meat consumption was the problem because when I stopped eating meat my stomach problems stopped as well. Luckily, they understood and backed my decision.’
The interesting part about Josefa’s quotation is that her family legitimized using health to justify not consuming meat. This is possibly due to the role health plays in the upper-class habitus as a criterion to guide eating behavior over others (Bourdieu, 2010), associated as well to a higher level of education and cultural capital of this social class.
As we proposed early, here we found that differences in capital (economic, cultural, and social) led to nuances in young people’s path to veganism.
The role of the family is important also because the first attempts at vegetarianism occur in many cases at an early age or during adolescence, when the interviewees were not yet autonomous in the kitchen. It should also be noted that we find cases of brothers or sisters who influence initiation or even make these attempts together. In these cases, the family is a facilitator.
This attempt to move towards a vegetarian diet may only last for a limited time. Sometimes people give up on their first attempt, either because they do not have enough nutritional information to support their attempt or because they do not have access to a dietary guideline to replace the foods they stop consuming, especially meat and its B12 vitamin intake. In this regard, the social context, hostile to this type of practice also favors abandonment. This is the case of Simone (lower-class, 2 years vegan), who indicates that she returned (on her first try) to eating meat due to the continuous social activities she attended, mostly barbecues. In her words: ‘In the end I gave it up a little for what is called social acceptance’. In our opinion, this finding shows the problems associated with acquiring an outsider identity, where practice opposes to group’s norms (Becker, 2009).
Vegetarianism
The next step in the career is adopting vegetarianism, which is done progressively until the consumption of meat is finally stopped. Here, the new habitus associated with a lifestyle change begins to settle through eating practices that reaffirm and reproduce the new cognitive scheme according to which the edible food is classified (Douglas, 1979, 2002; Fischler, 1990).
This step requires a commitment to change eating habits and, consequently, adjust to a new categorization regarding what can be eaten and what cannot. This is not observed in the previous stage where only meat consumption is avoided, but the diet, in general, is not reconfigured, resulting in a large part of the interviewees to return to omnivorous consumption.
The interviewees report a gradual process, starting with the avoidance of red meat consumption, other meats, and then dairy and pastry. Adjusting to perceive meat as a prohibited product is the simplest given the direct reference to the animal; while other products such as caramel and cakes appear more difficult due to the lack of an explicit reference to the animal, so they enter in the category of temptations (Arppe et al., 2011). These temptations are more common at this stage of learning and incorporating new norms. However, they can persist later and lead to transgressions, even in some vegans who are at their initial stage. The quote of Guillermo (middle-class, 6 months vegan) shows this idea.
Look, to me the most difficult part is to walk past a cake shop and having to resist the cakes [. . .] But some days I do not get tempted. I sometimes walk by the shop and see an alfajor (pastry with milk caramel) in the window and think, ‘oh how tempting’ and then ‘what the heck! I will not be a worse person if I eat this.’ [. . .] So, I try not to judge myself too severely.
Guillermo’s account shows how difficult it is to renounce the consumption of foods that are part of the usual diet, and the allowed transgression, especially at the vegetarian stage or when veganism has been chosen for reasons that do not include animal ethics (in Guillermo for instance does it for environmental and health reasons). Thus, it appears remarkable that this participant mentions not judging himself ‘too severely’ for this transgression. It is different with those who are driven by the animal issue, in those cases, the transgression has a moral and emotional burden: the consumption of animals generates suffering in others, and therefore it is a painful ethical fault.
Some participants indicated that when they transgress and eat meat again, they do not like it or do not find it tasty. Here we found a redefinition of the taste present in the origin habitus.
The interviews also show the role information and learning play in developing these practices (McDonald, 2000; Twine, 2018). At this stage of the career, an active search begins for information on the ingredients and nutritional aspects of foods. Although this is seen more often in those who change their diet for health reasons, the other interviewees also carried it out to ensure their permanence in this type of diet.
In this line, having the possibility of nutritional support is of vital importance. This support can be the supervision of a nutritionist or the search for nutritional information. It emerges from the interviews that both lower and upper-class vegans seek support from nutritionists; however, due to the difference in the economic capital, for the former, access to these professionals is more difficult for financial reasons. Such is the case of Nicolás (lower-class, 8 years vegan). He has not been able to consult a professional because he did not have health insurance and was saving up for an appointment at the time of the interview Interviewees in all social classes had not visited a professional yet.
Likewise, the internet and social networks are factors that facilitate the transition to a vegetarian diet at this stage, since they provide information about food and ingredients, and because social networks are a virtual support for the interviewees, they help alleviate the feeling of loneliness produced by feeling like an outsider. This factor is maintained during the vegan stage.
Additionally, here begins the phase during which the interviewees reaffirm their new values in social contexts, but for this same reason, it marks the beginning of conflicts with the family, friends, and colleagues. Viviana (middle-class, 6 months vegan), recounts the lack of family support, how difficult it was initially, and how her motivations were questioned.
I think the most difficult part has been the lack of family support. For a long time, they made it very hard for me, and this did not help my confidence, it made me question myself whether what I was doing was good, and if it really was worth the effort. That was my biggest challenge [. . .]. They told me many times that I was just following a fashion that was not going to have a world impact at all.
In the extended family and work, the conflict is more evident. To avoid confrontation, interviewees generally choose to be indifferent and ‘just not bother’. Nevertheless, this is more complex at home because the constant interaction makes it more difficult to avoid the confrontation between different positions and practices.
To avoid conflicts, in some situations, the interviewees will opt to present themselves as people who eat what they want to eat, shunning labels, as other authors point (Greenebaum, 2012a). This occurs at the beginning of the veganism career, while the interviewees find their way and consolidate their new consumption practices and values until they feel that veganism is part of their identity.
It is worth mentioning that, despite conflicts in the family, a large part of the interviewees indicates that throughout the career of veganism, parents end up understanding, accepting, and adapting the home culinary practices. Some say that relatives made special dishes for them, prepared salads, or took away the meat from some preparations.
Finally, at this stage, the first support networks around vegetarianism or veganism begin to be sought and generated, where their behavior and ideas are seen as normal (Boyle, 2011b; Greenebaum, 2012b; Stephens-Griffin, 2017). Fundamental support in this phase is searching information on the Internet and social networks and participation in groups within the same networks. Likewise, virtual social networks, such as Instagram, provide culinary recipes, advice to face paradigm shifts, and directions to participate in foundations and animal or vegetarian/vegan groups. Support networks are essential since they offer the interviewees the possibility to reduce their feeling of loneliness, there they feel they are not the only ones who make this change in diet and lifestyle. Other studies have also mentioned the relevance of these virtual networks in young people who follow veganism (Gvion, 2020; López et al., 2017; Neuman, 2020).
Veganism
Veganism begins with the decision to eliminate all products of animal origin from daily consumption. This is the culminating point of the career initiated when the young person chooses to publicly assume a new identity, which in this case, is an outsider lifestyle (Becker, 2009). As Juan (upper-class, 8 years vegan) points out, the reaffirmation of veganism is similar to the process faced by sexual minorities when ‘coming out of the closet’, an element also highlighted in the literature (Stephens-Griffin, 2017). Juan, who is gay, sees a closeness between heteronormativity and the consumption of meat in society, insofar as they are dominant norms. Here, declaring yourself vegan implies pointing out that you are outside the norm. In his opinion, this implies ‘that you have to start declaring it continuously, you have to take actions that make sense in the eyes of others for this new category that is defining you’. Thus, choosing to be vegan is a public recognition, which was not present in the other career stages.
As Juan shows, being vegan demands a public and personal coherence between values and practices. As indicated by Arppe et al. (2011), in veganism, the demand for purity is absolute, so some foods are prohibited. Any consumption of animal origin is eliminated, including clothing or cosmetics. Possibly due to this coherence requirement, the interviewed vegans who had motivations related to health or the environment also began to incorporate the animal cause among their foundations to lead this lifestyle.
The fieldwork was realized during the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the factors mentioned by the interviewees as facilitators to maintain a vegan lifestyle was the lockdown. This was important to those who had started veganism in the last year, but it also helped others control their eating. On this subject, Elisa (upper-class, 8 months vegan) says ‘well, with the pandemic, it has been easier to feed me because we are locked down at home. I can cook for myself, eat my things, I have also learned a lot about cooking and I have time [to do it]’.
Entering university is one of the most relevant factors in the interviewees’ life paths, for several reasons. Pilar’s quote (upper-class, 9 months vegan) exposes a large part of her career, where we see the importance of social networks created at university and how this was an essential incentive for her adoption of this lifestyle.
In the faculty there is a very large group of vegetarian and vegan people who are very interested in animal rights. There, I got involved in a foundation, dedicated to animal law and animal rights. In my mind I was quite happy thinking that I loved animals, but I ate meat, so one day some of my friends there asked me: ‘Hey Pilar, why do you eat meat?’ [. . .] I then decided to take a workshop on animal law, and also read a lot about it [. . .]. Obviously, after learning more on the subject I decided to become a vegetarian, mainly because I felt in my mind that it was the right thing to do. Besides, I had attempted to be a vegetarian previously whilst at school, but then I had dropped it. When I began to learn more, I realized that the point is that you have to end the exploitation of animals, not little by little, you have to commit yourself to the cause. When I became vegan, it was due to a close friend who had been a vegan for seven years, he taught me how easy it was to cook the food he prepared. This finally made me realize that it was not difficult at all and that it was just a matter of compromising.
As Pilar’s words reveal, entering college is relevant to the adoption of veganism because it is there that interviewees meet vegan networks. Peers play a central role because they socialize in the concepts and practices of this lifestyle.
More specifically, Pilar’s explanations are of great value to understand the career of veganism, social networks’ role in this, the information, and the moral postulate that it implies. First, although she had an early concern for animals and had done prior attempts to be a vegetarian, she was in close contact with peers who followed this lifestyle upon entering college. These networks questioned her about the lack of coherence in her practices and taught her about veganism. Peer networks play an important role in socializing the new habitus to adopt. These networks, present at university, introduce the interviewees to a space where veganism is seen as normal and no longer an outsider lifestyle. In turn, establishing a close circle composed with people who share this lifestyle’s values helps them persist in the practice and not abandon it. These findings are aligned with the literature, as various works consider peers to be a crucial element in adopting veganism and remaining in it (Cherry, 2003, 2006; Greenebaum, 2012b).
Pilar also notes that a turning point in the adoption of veganism happens when people become aware that consuming animals is unsustainable if they want to eliminate their exploitation. This cognitive break goes beyond what was analyzed at the first stage. What is questioned here is the current system and goes beyond a change in the categories of food. For most of those interviewed, veganism is a lifestyle that has an ethical and political stance that permeates all the classifications of the world and the practices that it entails. As Pilar indicates, social networks and access to information about the vegan cause are central elements that support this change.
Although the process to reach veganism can begin in childhood, following a strict vegetarian diet is more related to the beginning of adulthood and greater independence to make decisions. As in the previous phase, the questions and maintenance obligations imposed by families must be faced. The autonomy that comes with age or leaving the parents’ house gives interviewees the possibility of making more decisions independently. Such is the case of Claudio (middle-class, 2 years vegan), who says: ‘One of the things that obviously motivated me to move towards veganism was to live alone, and starting to cook, and doing things by myself’. Beardsworth and Keil (1992) also pointed this idea.
As Claudio’s account also shows, the development of skills in the kitchen to maintain a vegan diet is especially relevant. This requires a process of information and experimentation with new ingredients, incorporating foods such as soy, tofu, or other meat substitute products. Several interviewees learned to cook in veganism or w re-educated in cooking to make their diet compatible with the new classification scheme that weighs on it. Interviewees such as Katherine (lower-class, 7 months vegan) even speak of ‘veganizing certain dishes’, that is, transforming non-vegan recipes into ones without products of animal origin. Cooking is a critical know-how to become a vegan practitioner (Twine, 2018).
Activism
Following the public adoption of this lifestyle, several interviewees went one step further, seeking to expand veganism and convert others. The moral awareness of the impact of animals’ consumption, animal suffering, and the environment consequences of eating meat, mobilize them to an active search to cause a breakdown of the system on a small, medium, or large scale. In this task, recruiting other people is essential. Catalina (middle-class, 3 years vegan) talks about ‘evangelizing’, evidencing the similarity with religious proselytism.
The activism presented by the interviewees is multiple and takes place in various spheres (Bertuzzi, 2017). There are forms of traditional activism carried out mainly by those who demonstrate an animalistic motivation. This category includes attendance at marches for animals, interventions against animal exploitation, and information fairs on veganism, among others. Another type of activism consists in the diffusion of information about animal exploitation or vegan food on virtual social networks.
However, a form of vegan proselytism occurs in a private sphere, with family and friends. This consists of preparing vegan meals, with the purpose of demonstrating that a vegan diet can be healthy and tasty. The kitchen becomes a space for spreading the vegan lifestyle (Twine, 2018). If there are conflicts over diet at home at first, later, vegans use their knowledge in cooking to take over the family diet (partially or totally). Thus, even when part of the family does not share the ethical, health, or environmental foundations that motivated the interviewees to change their diet, relatives are incited to consume foods that do not have an animal origin. This is how an opening of the close circle is generated towards a new diet, achieving greater integration of the interviewees. This also occurs with groups of friends or the rest of the closest circle of those interviewed, since socialization instances are often used as an opportunity to publicize dishes that replace the traditional foods offered at these types of meetings.
We also observe a difference between upper-class activism and the other social classes. The interviewees from the upper-class carry out activism favoring institutionalized forms, either by forming non-governmental organizations, creating or participating in foundations or professional groups whose objective is to generate changes from the institutional framework. Such was the case of Pilar, for example, in the previous section. Likewise, their work is linked to an academic and legislative sphere, which offers them a greater possibility to interfere in the public debate. This group’s participation in organizations that carry out street demonstrations – mainly interventions or marches – is lower compared to the other social groups analyzed.
Conclusion
Becoming vegan implies a profound change in classifying the world and acting in it. This research shows this conversion is a gradual process, at the end of which young people appropriate a new identity, whose practices and values are opposed to the dominant ones. In our interpretation, this progressive change is an example of a deviant career (Becker, 2009) because individuals follow a path that turns them into outsiders from the social normativity of a carnist culture.
Although the results dialogue closely with the previous literature, this research’s contribution resides in tracing and differentiating the stages of the vegan career. We also contribute by including habitus in the interpretation of this career.
We identify a career entry phase and a career mobility, pointed out by others (Faupel, 2011). However, we do not use these terms here, because we present the path founded in the fieldwork. This choice allows us to highlight the particularities of the vegan career concerning other trajectories. One of these particularities is the importance of the catalytic experience that makes individuals aware that they are eating animals.
Additionally, we identified that the vegan career had nuances according to social class. For upper-class participants, the role played by technical knowledge and social capital is different from others. Vegans from upper-class families had particularities in the catalyzing experiences of veganism (reading being the most common), had greater family acceptance and developed a more formal type of activism for NGOs and through their professional practice. Also, we found differences due to the economic capital, as upper-class vegans have more facilities to access special products and nutritional support.
If food plays a crucial role in forming individual and collective identity (Fischler, 1988), this is particularly evident in veganism because food practices require modifications in order to follow anti-speciesism values (Twine, 2018). This research shows that vegans change the definitions of edible/inedible food (Douglas, 1979; Fischler, 1990) triggered by an experience (traumatic or not) that breaks the initial cognitive scheme. The new food classifications imply that they learn a collection of know-hows about eating, buying, and cooking. We interpret these changes as the earning of a secondary habitus (Bourdieu, 1992; Ossipow, 1997).
Our results allow us to draw an ideal type of deviant career followed by vegans, where the habitus progressively changes (with their classifications and practices), producing the adoption of transitory identities (critical, vegetarian) until they become vegan, or even more, vegan activists. These transitional stages contradict the idea that promoting anything less than strict veganism will produce ‘free riders’ rather than vegans (Wrenn, 2020). Here we show that these diets could lead some individuals to a vegan lifestyle and to embrace the animalistic cause, and in fact, they are frequent stages before becoming vegan.
This deviant career from a carnist culture implies a continuous negotiation of the individual agency with structural factors, represented by the dominant norms. From an ethical turn, it is the subject that questions what is considered normal and builds a new cognitive scheme to guide his life. Peers are key in this process. The ethical turn that veganism implies leads its followers to a proselytizing impulse, carried out even during daily practices, such as cooking and commensality.
From the Chilean context in which this study is carried out, it seems that there are two peculiarities of the observed careers. On the one hand, the country-city opposition appears as a contextual factor that mediates the relationship with animals and the appearance of traumatic experiences. On the other, young people’s late independence from the family nucleus in Chile (Barrera-Herrera and Vinet, 2017) leads to greater negotiation with the family and complete autonomy in the difficult or slow diet. Finally, the university’s relevance as a space for meeting and socializing with other young people, in a context such as Chile where access to higher education has become widespread, despite its high economic costs (Gambi and González, 2013).
One limitation of this research was that the narrative focuses on the stories rather than actual practices did not allow to delve into this dimension of the habitus. Future studies should carry out a more in-depth analysis of consumer practices, as these provide elements to strengthen the interpretations of this study. In addition, the study asked few sociodemographic questions to better characterize the sample, yet this could have allowed us to find other differences between participants, beyond social class or gender. Another limitation of this study is that we made an open call on social networks and we might gave attracted more proactive individuals to the vegan cause. Nevertheless, the sample contains almost the same number of activist and non-activist participants mitigating this potential problem.
Our main contribution to the current literature about veganism is to delve into the career stages that lead to the consolidation of a vegan identity. More precisely, we contribute to the sociological discipline because we show the adoption of veganism as a process, where people progressively abandon animal consumption, and because we clarify the turning points where worldview and everyday practices are questioned and modified. These elements are relevant to promoting behavioral changes, specifically towards consumption patterns without animal suffering and sustainability.
Finally, another significant contribution of this work is to use two classical sociological concepts that usually do not match to understand the complex biographical conversion to a countercultural identity. Using the deviant career concept allows us to detail a transition path, absent in previous works on this topic. The habitus notion explains the worldview changes and the practice involved in the vegan lifestyle and their class disposition background.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by ANID FONDECYT [grant n°1201629].
