Becoming activist: the mediation of consumers in Animals Australia’s Make it Possible campaign

Introduction

In 2008, the Australian Law Reform Commission journal, Reform, called out animal welfare as Australia’s ‘next great social justice movement’ (Weisbrot, 2007: 2); in 2018, however, public mobilisation around animal welfare is still a contested issue in Australia. Although animal welfare issues are increasingly visible in the public sphere due to activists combining traditional public media advocacy with digital media campaigning, and many consumers are demanding better welfare conditions for animals (Mummery et al., 2016), animal activism is also presented in the public sphere as dampening the economic livelihood of Australia, with some animal activism described as ‘akin to terrorism’ (cited in Greer, 2013; also see ABC News, 2013). The questions, then, are as follows: how to mobilise everyday mainstream consumers into supporting animal activist ideals? How to frame and communicate animal activist ideals so that they can come to inform and change the behaviour and self-understandings of mainstream consumers?

Given these questions, this article is an investigation into the possible production and mobilisation of animal activists from mainstream consumers through the communicative practices of one digital campaign, Make it Possible, by the peak Australian animal advocacy organisation Animals Australia. ¹ More specifically, our interest is to engage a new materialist lens to draw out how this campaign operates to transform consumers into veg*ns (an abbreviation encompassing the terms ‘vegans’ and ‘vegetarians’), animal activists and ethical consumers who materially commit to and live revised beliefs regarding human–animal relations. This article begins with an examination of new materialism as a critical approach, followed by an outline of the Make it Possible campaign, before sketching a new materialist analysis of this campaign and its effectiveness for public mobilisation towards social change and the production of animal activists. We conclude with a brief discussion of the significance of this approach for the transformation of both individuals and the social.

New materialism, materials and methods

Rejecting the need for any distinct separation of the (natural) material from the (human) cultural world, new materialism also challenges the long-standing idea that only humans have agentic and performative capacities (Van der Tuin and Dolphijn, 2010). Agency and action are rather deemed emergent products. That is to say, they are the temporary result of forces and entities that, always entangled and relational, simultaneously do something to each other. In consequently putting the focus on ‘phenomena in their ongoing materialisation’ (Barad, 2007: 151), new materialism is thus interested to examine how things other than humans and other than individual entities – such as tools, practices, technologies, non-human entities or forces – can also be effective, making things happen (Fox et al., 2016). More specifically, it foregrounds entanglements or assemblages over individual entities, where an assemblage, under a new materialist framework, means a ‘multiplicity of heterogeneous objects’ – for instance, events, bodies, objects, practices, ideas and memories – ‘whose unity comes solely from the fact that these items function together, that they “work” together as a functional entity’ (Patton as cited in Haggerty and Ericson, 2000: 608). In addition, new materialists stress that every assemblage also comprises a territory that is always being both produced and contested by a variety of affective connections (Alldred and Fox, 2017; also see Deleuze and Guattari, 1988). ² As a critical approach, then, new materialism strives (a) to reveal the territorialising connections constituting (and disrupting) assemblages; (b) to trace the capacities (and constraints) they produce in bodies, collectivities and social formations and (c) to examine the various effects of these capacities and constraints (Fox and Alldred, 2016).

In this article, our aim is to put new materialism to work on the Make it Possible campaign. This entails revealing (a) the breadth and work of the material relations and affective connections that surround public attunement to and uptake of an animal welfare and ethical consumerism campaign and (b) how such relations and connections may work for the production of activists from mainstream consumers. Methodologically, as noted above, new materialism attends to the material effects of the interconnections of bodies, things, social formations, practices, ideas, memories and emotions. Any data collection method capable of producing such data may be applied (Fox and Alldred, 2015). In this case, the various digital sites of the Make it Possible campaign – particularly those enabled for comments – provide rich seams of data on relations, affects and capacities and mark the site of data collection and subsequent content and thematic analysis. These methods complement new materialism insofar as content analysis is a coding and categorising approach used for determining trends and patterns of words used, their frequency, their relationships and the structures and discourses of communication (Asa Berger, 2000; Grbich, 2007; Weerakkody, 2009), and thematic analysis is mainly described as ‘a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data’ (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 79). As is typical of both of these methods, patterns are identified through a process of data familiarisation, data coding and finally theme development and revision (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Materials – website content, comments, testimonials and other digital interactions – were thus collected and analysed to detect such patterns. These were in turn traced to identify the affective connections which, for respondents, potentially territorialised the Make it Possible assemblage and themselves. These affective connections were found to be informed by a variety of perceived relations: animal and human capacities and experiences, organisations and institutions oriented to animal welfare, beliefs regarding factory farming and consumerism, abstract ideals, the social relations informing the public sphere, government, family and friends. These connections and relations in turn led to our identification of three main territorialisings of bodies towards veg*nism, animal activism and ethical consumerism.

Analysing the Make it Possible campaign this way thus means examination of the relations that specify – territorialise – body capacities and subjectivities for becoming-veg*n, becoming-activist and becoming-ethical-consumer, along with tracing the de-territorialising forces that would fracture such becomings. To illustrate these movements, extracts from the collected comments and testimonials are reported. These should be treated, however, not as descriptions of particular experiences of one respondent or another, ³ but as a documentation of the relations and (often very powerful) affects informing an assemblage and the circulations of bodies, desires, norms, experiences and events that these make possible or constrain. As will be shown, collected materials revealed a range of affective relations surrounding factory farming, attunement to animal welfare and ethical consumerism. These connect humans and animals (mother, baby, hero-pig, sow, chicken, pet, advocate, veg*n, consumer, politician); bodily capacities (suffering, intelligence, choice, sickness, health, action); emotions (greed, horror, sadness, outrage, disgust, guilt, anger, empathy, compassion, determination); practices (eating, shopping, consciousness raising, advocacy, animal cruelty, ethical consumerism, care); organisations and institutions (Animals Australia, GetUp, factory farms, supermarkets, the meat industry); abstract concepts (sentience, rights, veganism); and other entities (walls, cages, bars, natural surroundings, animal products, meat, websites, blogs). Following a brief outline of the Make it Possible campaign, the following sections explore some of the affects pertaining to various relations and the consequent territorialisations of becoming-veg*n, becoming-activist and becoming-ethical-consumer bodies and capacities.

Animals Australia and the Make it Possible assemblage

As noted above, the Make it Possible assemblage comprises a range of human, animal and even technological elements, experiences, entities and events, with all of these further articulating with the social domains of belief, emotion, memory and ideas. Many of the campaign’s affective connections are generated by the campaign video made by LOUD advertising agency which was uploaded into social media by Animals Australia on 21 October 2012. The video also screened for periods as a cinema and television advertisement, airing on commercial stations during peak time and reaching nearly 12 million viewers across the country, and associated print advertisements featured in major Australian magazines and newspapers (Niche Media, 2015; Rodan and Mummery, 2014b). The campaign message remains simple and at the same time is strongly affectively focused: factory farming is a major cause of animal cruelty; all factory-farmed animals experience a life of intolerable and unnecessary suffering; each of us can and should work to end the factory farming of animals (cited in ABC Landline, 2013).

Combining Babe (1995)-style animation effects with real footage from Australian factory farms, the Make it Possible campaign video presents animals as being fundamentally like the viewers, possessing a similar interest in living a life of wellbeing. The campaign reminds viewers that the animals kept in these barren and constrictive conditions are ‘no different to our pets at home’; that they are ‘highly intelligent creatures who feel pain, and who will respond to kindness and affection – if given the chance’; and that they are ‘someone, not something’ (see Animals Australia, 2012). Further driving this message home, animals are anthropomorphised, given human voices, expression and desires; they are individuated, with recurring close-ups of real animal faces and eyes, directly challenging any tendency to see these animals as nothing more than a resource to be used, as livestock. With its final scene of a winged pig escaping confinement, the video also engages a powerful social narrative of exile, alienation and hope. As Anthony Ritchie, one of Animals Australia’s campaigners, has stressed regarding the development of the video, this deliberate construction of and focus on likeness and facilitation of empathy was integral:

Pigs and chickens aren’t animals that people instantly connect with or have empathy for so our first task was simply getting people to like them – to think about them in a different way and to understand that these animals share the same capacity to suffer and to feel love as our dogs and cats at home. The success of movies like Charlotte’s Web and Babe gave us a great formula to work with and that’s what we had in mind when we created our ‘hero pig’. The rest of the TVC [television commercial] uses real footage from factory farms in Australia – it was critical that what we were showing reflected the current situation for most animals raised for food in Australia today. Finding the song ‘Somewhere’ and obtaining the rights to use it brought the vision together. We always knew that if animals could plead their own case for a kinder world then factory farming would have ended long ago and the words to ‘Somewhere’ so beautifully encapsulate our core message – that at the very least animals raised for food should be provided with a life worth living. (cited in Van Gurp, 2012)

Given that new materialism focuses on how bodies affect each other, rather than what they are – human or animal, real or represented – the same focus as in the campaign, it is an approach that should offer insight into the organisation’s efforts at increasing public mobilisation regarding animal welfare. For both this approach and the campaign, after all, attention should thus turn to the ‘relations between bodies, their configurations within specific assemblages and the dynamic of the interrelations of their intensive capacities’ (Gatens, 1996: 170). As noted earlier, assemblages connect physical, biological, cultural and abstract realms, while it is the flows of affect informing these connections that produce desires, capacities and becomings. On this basis, the campaign itself is not only an assemblage producing innumerable affective connections between animal and human bodies, things, events, beliefs, ideas and social institutions, it is a striving to produce – territorialise – specific capacities and becomings.

Make it Possible: affective flows and becomings

The first step in this analysis is to identify the major territorialising affective connections constructed through the assemblage of the campaign message – itself an assemblage of animal and human bodies and stories, media technologies and a variety of social beliefs – with viewers, their envisioned experiences of animals caught within factory farming contexts, their personal and cultural contexts, memories and experiences, social norms regarding animal welfare and so forth. The campaign video of animal bodies is particularly significant here, with these images of confined, crowded and suffering bodies denied engagement with the natural environment or species natural behaviours, connecting with broader social beliefs about what makes a life worth living. These animal bodies connect with social beliefs about welfare standards considered appropriate for non-human animals of various species and in various contexts (those for our pets being significantly higher than those for livestock or pest/feral animals, for example; see Bagaric and Akers, 2012), as well as policies and social beliefs about what comprises animal cruelty. These animal bodies also connect with personal and social memories of activist exposés, associated news reports, other campaigns and other connected materials. The campaign’s animal bodies, in other words, are highly relational and, as such, highly affective.

These connections strive to produce and stabilise specific responses and capacities. For instance, the campaign video produces the viewer element as being essentially compassionate and caring even if regrettably ignorant of the real situation of animals in factory farming. Campaign content produces the relation of viewers not knowing of the ‘terrible price’ paid by animals in the consumer demand for cheap animal products, as not knowing that this demand has culminated in an ‘animal welfare disaster of a magnitude this planet has never known’ (Animals Australia, 2012). Further relations produced revolve around the viewer’s recognition of the likenesses between animal and human bodies and interests. Where this flow links to additional elements and assemblages, such as ethical consumerism and consumer activism, further actions and assemblages may of course be produced. This involves the production of awareness that consumer choice can ‘create a kinder world for these animals’ and that by ‘refusing to buy factory farmed products, and making kinder choices’, consumers can end this cruelty (Animals Australia, 2012). These connections thus revolve around two dichotomies, between (a) knowledge and ignorance and (b) compassion and cruelty, which produce the idea that awareness of the cruelty inherent in factory farming should lead to calling for it to end. This is further enhanced by the campaign website explicitly calling viewers to shift to a cruelty-free lifestyle by acting so as to boycott factory-farmed animal produce, reduce consumption of animal products or to become meat-free.

The affects associated with the campaign video thus link elements and relations, producing and normalising capacities to think, feel and do. These capacities in turn produce further affects leading perhaps to activist or consumerist action of some kind, as well as desires to make a change with regard to current norms of animal welfare. These affective connections might extend an awareness or an action beyond a one-off, assembling viewers, beliefs, actions, cultural codes regarding activism and animal welfare and cruelty, social networks and protest events. The campaign’s affective connections might eventually assemble activist networks, in which further assemblages could be comprised from the accumulated interactions, emotions, experiences, memories, social networks and cultural norms of animal activism, potentially engaging family life as well as broader consumer and citizen activity and further territorialising the affects produced by the campaign video. Unsurprisingly, through such connections, the pre-eminent material relation expressed by viewers was around care: viewers cared about animals and animal welfare and were sickened by the levels of animal cruelty shown to be normative within the factory farming and consumerist industries: ⁴

I was absolutely heart broken when I saw those first images of Australian pigs … these large glorious animals trapped in those tiny cages!!! I had no idea! It never occurred to me that we would allow, by law, such cruelty to any animal.

After seeing the ads on tv about factory farming I decided to look more into it on the website. After watching the videos of the horrible conditions and abuse these animals are being put through I couldn’t watch anymore and decided to take action. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve always been passionate about preventing abuse from animals.

Viewers also cared about changing the views of their co-consumers, with many expressing explicit aims in increasing public awareness of these issues:

I work in Coles & I am constantly congratulating customers if they choose ‘Free Range’ Eggs or Meat. I also berate those that do not make an Animal Friendly choice. I write letters to papers, Politicians and anyone else who can help to make this a Kinder World for Animals.

Once I learned of this atrocity, I was eager to spread awareness. As the school’s environment representative, I and my partner addressed the school assembly with a presentation for all to hear. We talked about the truth as to how their food reached them, as well as the kinder options and multiple issues surrounding factory farming. We also played a video which we’d found on the Animals Australia website. I also ordered flyers and posters which were then placed around the entire school.

Indeed, these affects have been highly effective in producing a range of identifiably activist capacities in viewing bodies, enabling, in particular, three main forms of capacity: becoming-veg*n, becoming-activist and becoming-ethical-consumer. These are examined in turn below.

Becoming-veg*n

Unsurprisingly, given that the main territorialising affects of the Make it Possible campaign challenge viewers to make changes in their behaviours and lives regarding their diet, food choices mark both a major material relation and desired bodily capacity. Respondents to the campaign describe their dietary choices, their feelings of sickness and health with regard to these choices and what they see as the impact of those choices on animals. What these descriptions make clear is that while from a materialist perspective, human desires, norms and consumption practices territorialise materials – animals and animal products, as well as non-animal products – into foodstuffs, at the same time, bodies become territorialised by these foods and choices. The impact of these flows is particularly evident from content analysis of two sets of comments regarding the Make it Possible campaign assemblage: those responding to the extended campaign YouTube video and those collected under the My Make it Possible Story online forum. ⁵ Content analysis of the first 780 comments that responded to the Make it Possible extended YouTube campaign video has, for instance, shown viewer commitment to the advocacy aim of either at least stopping eating factory farm–produced animal products or going vegan. Over 90% of comments expressed that Australia’s factory-farmed animals were deserving of much better treatment. More specifically, a fifth of these comments explicitly tied this common recognition to a subsequent commitment of desiring to change their eating patterns to vegan. Another broader cohort of close to 40% of viewers – some of whom self-identified as already being vegan – commented more generally about the need for people to eat more ethically, to become veg*n (Mummery et al., 2016; Rodan and Mummery, 2014b).

Similarly, analyses of the 1065 stories uploaded in the My Make it Possible Story on 21 October 2013 also showed a strong commitment to veg*nism (Rodan and Mummery, 2014a, 2016). Here, although only 13% of comments included an explicit commitment by the viewer to change to a veg*n diet, the other two cohorts identified via their commitments to consumer action (presented in over a third of the comments) and broad-scale animal advocacy (in over half), also stressing the importance of more people committing to veg*nism (Rodan and Mummery, 2014b). As expressed by one respondent, the campaign materials strongly promoted this commitment: ‘Makes me ashamed to be part of the human race when I see videos like this. Fortunately, I am human and I have the power of choice. I will never eat meat again’.

In particular, respondents’ descriptions were replete with examples of how their newly perceived ideas of and relations with animals impacted on their choices, in turn fuelling specific desires and practices to produce a becoming-veg*n body. As some respondents described this,

I will never look at animals & animal products ever the same again. How can you look into the innocent eyes of an animal & then think ‘hey, I’m hungry now so it’s time to die!’ I’m now vegan, how else can I live now I know an animal has to suffer for me.

I tried to imagine myself being locked in a cage and in pain all the time. I believe very strongly that animals can feel all the emotions that we feel. To me they are SOMEONE and not SOMETHING! I stopped eating meat for a long time and now I’ve cut all dairy and eggs from my diet. I feel much better knowing there is nothing on my plate that came from someone who had to suffer for it.

Myself and my husband took the pledge and became vegetarians at the beginning of this year … I have a clear conscience now and know it was the right thing to do. I view all sentient life as equal, I can’t love a dog and cat but eat a cow and pig.

Animal bodies are thus territorialised as worthy of care, love and consideration, as someones not somethings. More to the point, animals are territorialised as sentient, in pain, innocent and as looking back at observers, as being more than meat. Respondents also described other powerful affective connections that becoming veg*n had produced, expressing a new relationality with their own bodies and movement within the world with regard to their own ‘general health and well-being’. Common points here were that a veg*n diet had given them a ‘new outlook on life’ and that ‘being vegan is the best thing that ever happened to me’. Such views are also evident in the following posts:

I went vegan, lost about 20 lbs, and became healthier mentally and physically. I believe, because of my vegan diet, I have more energy, and took a part in soccer, jogging, and many other active hobbies. I do not have the guilt of supporting animal cruelty by eating animal products.

In every possible way. Becoming a full-time vegetarian has led me to healthier eating and well-being, a more active lifestyle, ease of losing unwanted weight, higher energy levels, and improved performance at both work and study.

About a year ago I decided to go vegetarian. And about 5 months ago I decided that wasn’t enough – so I embraced veganism … The thought that I am doing my best to live compassionately is the driving force. The AMAZING health benefits are a bonus. People need not be scared by the change, but happy that they are making better, informed choices for the animals, and for their health!!

These affects were also assembled with a range of other relations, including those with friends and family, food preparation and recipe sharing, supermarkets and eating places, as well as with broader advocacy ideals:

I feel like I’m creating positive change by cutting animal products from my diet and advocating for other’s change through my blog The Power Plant. I share yummy recipes, restaurant reviews, animal friendly product reviews and tips for living a cruelty-free life. I’ve helped over 8 people make the decision to cut down on meat, go vegetarian and go vegan too!

I became a vegetarian 3 years ago. This has changed my life, I feel so good because of my decision. I try to select products that are cruelty free, and I try to educate friends and family to choose their products more carefully.

I am now a vegetarian and do everything in my power to share the knowledge that I have, through facebook and signing petitions etc.

These extracts suggest a becoming-veg*n body located within an assemblage comprising physical, psychological and social relations that combine in complex ways to territorialise bodies. This assemblage also mediated other forces – for instance, education, normative assumptions regarding food production and distribution and consumerism – that also impinged on bodies. These are points we take up in the subsequent discussion where we address even stronger affective connections promoting animal advocacy.

Becoming-activist

Analysis of the data suggests that many respondents were not just facilitated towards becoming-veg*n, but that the Make it Possible assemblage(s) also produced a variety of other activist-becomings. For instance, while YouTube comments articulated a commitment to going veg*n, other identifiable commitments included sharing the campaign and donating to Animals Australia (Rodan and Mummery, 2014b). Such commitments meant in practice enough donations for television and print advertising (including full page posters in multiple national newspapers), grassroots outreach initiatives and a general increase in Animals Australia’s lobbying power towards ending the legal exemptions that permit cruelty to animals in factory farms. Conversion of commitments – capacities – into actions itself marks the production of further affective connections which might see respondents undertaking further actions and entering into further assemblages. These may include contacting politicians and industry, exploring and participating in additional campaigns and sharing beliefs and resources with social networks. Such capacities were strongly articulated in responses to the My Make it Possible Story forum, with over half of the 1065 stories uploaded on the opening day of this forum expressing various commitments to public animal advocacy: ‘I cried myself to sleep for many days. Then I started to collect signatures, donate money and make better choices. I also try to create awareness to those who still do not know what is happening’:

I am now … an animal rights activist. I attended many rallies for Animals Australia and donated countless times. By being informed it has helped me share my views with friends and family; share all posts from Animals Australia on my social media to spread the word, even take random company along to rally with me, urge others to look out for certain labels on meat and dairy products and helped to donate all the proceeds from my late father’s funeral to Animals Australia.

I became an activist. Today, I speak out regarding animal rights/welfare issues and try to educate and inform others. Awareness is crucial for this.

Respondents described in particular their recognition of the need to raise public awareness and to take political action. For instance, they ‘sent protest letters to the government’ and ‘spread the word via social media’, lobbied, attended rallies and actively assisted in animal rescue:

I have gone vegetarian and I adopted 5 rescue chickens from Edgar’s Mission in May this year … I go to most of the protests and let my friends know through Facebook that factory farming and live export is NOT acceptable. I shop that way too and have noticed that the supermarkets are starting to take notice. People power!!

I donate to groups who try to end animal suffering and I try to inform others. I have read and researched broadly on animal rights and have actively assisted in animal rescue. I don’t believe you can be exposed to the truth of these issues and not be changed forever.

Not at all happy. I changed to free range eggs, and wrote a letter of disapproval to Pace poultry farms, re. cage eggs. Stopped buying pork products … Wrote letters to the formers labour govt Minister for agriculture …

I continued to learn all I could about the horrors of factory farming as well as vivisection, fur farming and all the ways that humans inflict violence on animals. I attend legislative sessions to voice my concerns, hand out leaflets at the university and talk to anyone who will listen and hope they will open their hearts to these animals.

Comprising a different set of physical, social and political relations to that examined earlier, this assemblage strives to territorialise the bodies of not just animals (as needing advocacy and action) and respondents (as caring and committed to action) but those of others. Other bodies – those of politicians, the general public and ‘random company’ (as one respondent puts it) – are presented as needing to be re-territorialised away from animal cruelty and stances in support of factory farming. In addition, one’s own body also remains in focus for the strengthening of its territorialisation by the campaign, with many respondents talking of their ongoing attempts at self-education so as to better their advocacy capacities.

Becoming-ethical-consumer

Similar territorialisations inform the becoming-ethical-consumer capacity which is also strongly visible in both campaign YouTube comments and the My Make it Possible Story website. In the former, content analysis has identified a common theme of shopping responsibly, including the researching of products, lobbying for free range products and boycotting inhumane products and companies (Rodan and Mummery, 2014b). The latter also shows a strong theme of consumer action according to which respondents may not commit to veg*nism per se but pledge to make their own shopping habits more ethical and those of family and friends (Rodan and Mummery, 2014a, 2016):

I shop more carefully now. I only purchase free range eggs, and although I rarely eat meat, when I do buy it, I make sure it’s not factory farmed. It can be difficult and the labelling on products needs to be clear but I only have to see these animals in my imagination to know it’s worth the extra effort to find it.

Less is more. If I am suspicious that the produce is not cruelty free I will go without. Factory farming is an abomination. Sourcing cruelty free produce is my husband’s and my priority.

Produce, in other words, is invested with more value than that afforded by its comparative price or nutritional benefits. Both sites also show a stress on ideas of choice and consumer power: ‘It’s the choices we make everyday that can make the biggest difference’; ‘Consumer choice can make the change. We are all part of the system and it is high time we say no to factory farming’:

We as consumers have that power, we just need to be the voice for the voiceless and make a stand. I now see what we buy as more than just where we spend our money, we can either choose to contribute to the suffering of thousands of animals each time we buy dinner, or we can make the compassionate decision to do the right thing. Information is power.

Respondents talked explicitly of taking action through their purchasing decisions, recognising that ‘buying power was in the hands of the masses’. Hence, comments and stories consistently included phrases such as: ‘as a consumer we have the power’, ‘avoid factory farmed goods’, make an ‘informed consumer choice’ and ‘pledge to consume less animal products’.

Supermarkets and other food provision sites, such as butchers and farmers markets, are an important element in the becoming-ethical-consumer assemblage in that they assemble consumers around specific kinds of food and product choices: organic, free range, cruelty-free, sow-stall-free, factory-free and pasture to plate:

I only buy sow stall free pork, free range chicken and eggs, and organic mince. I try to teach my children the importance of respecting all life, even if it is bred to be food for us. I never knew the extent, and true horrors, of factory farming however, until this campaign brought it to my attention. Thank you.

Free range and sow stall free is now how I shop. It’s been amazing how many conversations have started at the egg section of the supermarket while selecting free range with other consumers commenting how it is the way to go – how can anything healthy come out of an unhealthy and unhappy chicken?

I do eat a little [meat] … and I eat eggs and use milk and butter. When I purchase these products I do it consciously. I prefer to buy my meat from a pasture to plate butcher, I used to have a farmers market I went to weekly, though this is not available to me anymore. When shopping in the larger grocery stores I seek out the free range chicken products. Unfortunately it’s really difficult when buying meat as there are minimal labels explaining where the meat came from. However I do look for these if I can’t get to a butcher who I know supports healthy, conscious farming.

Food purveyors are also sites of territorialisation with respondents articulating efforts to change or reward supermarket practices with regard to the sourcing of products: ‘Being vegetarian was not enough, I needed to do my shopping wisely and let companies know their practices were not acceptable’; ‘I now shop for animal friendly products, e.g. free range, RSPCA approved, etc. and engage with my local supermarket to stock these items in greater abundance’; ‘I talk to producers about how they run their farms. Many small producers are passionate about what they do and they should be recognised for it’. Such territorialisation is also reinforced by messages from celebrity chefs, both included in the campaign assemblage itself and from other chef-ethically-sourced-products-supermarket assemblages (respondents mention, for instance, British chef Jamie Oliver’s campaigns against caged eggs).

Despite the occasional articulation of the economic burden involved in buying cruelty-free, and despite challenges to the campaign message by Australia’s National Farmers’ Federation and other pro-factory farming bodies (see, for example, Malone, 2013; The Land, 2013), economic concerns – either personal or national – were not seen by respondents as able to re-territorialise and counter their becoming-ethical-consumer body. Indeed, a typical counter to any mention of these economically framed affects was an appeal to morality and the imperative for new norms regarding human treatment of animals: ‘I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem’; ‘I believe future generations will look back in angst at the barbaric behaviour we display as meat eating humans’. Or in another respondent’s words, the aim is ‘to be responsible in my buying choices and protect my animal family’. These extracts thus suggest that the becoming-ethical-consumer assemblage foregrounds ethics over economics, territorialising human bodies into revised relationship with not only animals but also supermarkets, other food purveyors and policy makers.

Conclusion

In each of these three becomings, then, human and animal bodies are connected affectively in different ways, along with beliefs, desires, feelings, behaviours and interactions, with these generating further affective connections and assemblages, connecting bodies, ideas and beliefs to other relations, further territorialising the campaign message regarding the importance of changing mainstream practices. Most importantly, what is clear is that the affective connections from the Make it Possible assemblage are indeed strongly territorialising, effective in mobilising bodies and producing activists of a variety of stripes who arguably see themselves as part of an assemblage of animal activism and care for animal welfare. Connected assemblages of personal, social, cultural, political and economic relations further work to produce capacities including comportments, identities and subjectivities that establish what it might mean to be veg*n, an animal activist and/or a caring and ethical consumer and citizen. These are comportments that are gathering momentum. There are two broad points we wish to draw from this.

First is the importance of affect. The Make it Possible assemblage has been strongly criticised for its explicit engagement of emotionally affective frames (see, for example, Keogh, 2015). This is an important point in that this wariness concerning emotion comprises one of the reasons animal activism is often framed as radical extremism, as unable to support sensible public debate (cited in Bettles, 2013). New materialism sees this wariness and associated critique as misguided; affect has impact and to require it be eliminated from social decisions is wrong-headed. At the same time, new materialism must also recognise that other forms of reasoning have impact (Fox and Alldred, 2016). In considering how new norms, decisions, relations or events might come about, the aim can only be to map all forms alongside all other affective elements and relations.

The second point to emphasise is that the Make it Possible assemblage(s) and affects clearly demonstrate the new materialist point that no distinctions or hierarchies need to be made with regard to the affective capacities of physical versus social or psychological elements or human versus animal elements (Van der Tuin and Dolphijn, 2010). Indeed, according to new materialism, it is not possible to categorically order assembled elements as to their comparative affects, and to want to do so is to forget the fluidity and contingency of affective connections and assemblages (Fox and Alldred, 2016). Of course, while an assemblage’s multitudes of relations and affects can clearly be effective in producing commitments to social change – and we would see the Make it Possible assemblage(s) as effective – their effects can also not be guaranteed. Other affects and assemblages may always work to de-territorialise the connections and associated capacities outlined above, assembling instead with beliefs about human priority, the need to protect the farming economy, the national interest, the status of livestock and industry standards to reject the campaign message and produce a different array of desires, capacities and actions. These too, of course, are always able to be de-territorialised again. This is an important point as it stresses that all factions and positions can be changed and that de-territorialising affective connections can enable new positions to emerge that can shift the ground and as a consequence facilitate the formation of new assemblages. In other words, activist commitments might just be one relation away even for those seemingly hidebound and pro-factory farming.