Book Recommendations, Reviews and Author Interviews from All-Creatures.org

What is Veganism For? By Dr Catherine Oliver

Publisher: Bristol University Press

Interviewed by Kim Stallwood
June 2024

INTERVIEW

Welcome to the fifteenth in a series of interviews with authors who write books about animal rights and related matters.

Dr Catherine Oliver's new book, What Is Veganism For?, is published this month by the Bristol University Press in their What Is It For? series. Her first book, Veganism, Archives, and Animals, was published by Routledge. It brings together theoretical and empirical insights to offer a historical and contemporary analysis of veganism and what a “multispecies” future might look like.

Catherine and I first met when she was with The British Library working on the Richard D. Ryder Archives to explore collaborative activism in animal rights in the contemporary history of the movement. She kindly introduced me to her colleagues at the Department of Contemporary Politics and Public Life which led to The British Library’s acquisition of the Kim Stallwood Archive in 2020.

Kim: When and what led you to become a vegan? On your website, you identify as a beyond-human geographer. Please explain what that means and describe what you do.

Catherine: I became vegan in November 2013. At the time, I was an undergraduate student at Birmingham University studying geography and, up to that point in my life, I had been raised vegetarian by my mum, alongside my four siblings. On this particular night in 2013, my mum sent me a link to a film called ‘Earthlings’ which I think many geographers have heard of. The film shows graphic undercover footage of farms, puppy mills, and fur factories and is narrated by famous vegan actor, Joaquin Phoenix. Even though it had never crossed my mind to become vegan before, the next day I committed to veganism, horrified by the industries I had participated in while thinking I was eating ethically as a vegetarian. Over the next few months and years, I continued to learn about veganism and changed my diet and lifestyle. It was a period punctuated by a lot of heartache, anger, and sadness, but also joy in finding a path in the world that felt better aligned with my values.

It was this moment that set me on the path of writing and research as a career. I decided to do a Masters and then a PhD, researching why veganism had grown, its history and its potential future. Through this path of education and research, I became increasingly interested in rethinking our relationships with animals and, more broadly, the “beyond-human” world. In this world of academic thinking, the animal and plant kingdoms are often discussed as “more-than-human” or “non-human” but through my research and ethics, I was uncomfortable with both of these ways of conceptualising the world: the “non-human” still centres the human and makes everything else oppositional to it; while the “more-than-human” implies a category of the “less-than-human”. Through my PhD, I therefore argued for a “beyond-human” geography, which while not perfect, sought to rethink this power relations.

As a “beyond-human” geographer, I undertake research, writing, and teaching that looks to think beyond human and anthropocentric concepts. In my research, as well as veganism, this has led me to projects such as looking at the place of the chicken in contemporary and historical London, why the chicken is important to ecological futures, and more recently to the relationships between seabirds, ecologies, plants, and people in Morecambe Bay, where I now live. In my writing, I try to approach the beyond-human through more equitable ways of knowing and thinking about those we share the planet with. In my teaching, I introduce students to ways of approaching and understanding the world that decentres our human view of the world and attends to other ways of approaching research and knowledge.

Kim: Your book is published in the Bristol University Press’s What Is It For? series, which “offers fresh thinking on current debates that gets beyond the overheated polemics and easy polarizations.” Did the research and writing of the book challenge your understanding and introduce you to new ideas about veganism?

Catherine: The “What Is It For?” series was a really interesting place for this book and work to be located, as it invites and perhaps even demands that authors and readers move beyond oppositional thinking. Veganism is often framed - by both vegans and their critics—as “against” particular things: against animal cruelty and killing, against suffering, against ecological devastation. This is definitely how I was in my veganism for a long time—and rightly so! There is so much to protest against and challenge that as vegans we have to focus first and foremost on what we are against. What writing this book challenged me to do was move beyond the question of “should we be vegan?” and the work of trying to convince people to go vegan. Instead, I was able to explore different kinds of questions, like what would a vegan world look like? How has veganism changed and developed? And what are we acting to realise, not just resist?

Even though I’ve been researching veganism for almost a decade now, I am constantly learning new things about its history and present. One thing that I found fulfilling in researching for the book was learning about different vegan food cultures and practices—and I spent a lot of time trying out new recipes in the writing of the book as a result.

One of the most challenging things to research for the book was the claims and realities regarding the potential real-world impacts of veganism. There are many different claims being made about veganism, particularly in relation to its impact on the environment. While much peer-reviewed research shows the potentially enormous benefits that veganism could have on our planet, there are also many challenges to this evidence, claiming that veganism is destroying the planet through our supposed inability to stop gobbling avocados and almond milk. In researching the book, I took seriously both the claims about veganism—and how feasible a transition would be—as well as their criticisms. Ultimately, veganism isn’t going to be a complete solution to every environmental or ethical challenge the world faces but by taking it seriously as an important social, political, and environmental force, we are going to be in a better position to think realistically but also ambitiously about the future of the planet.

Kim: We tend to think of veganism as a recent development but living with respect for all life (to summarize it simply one way) has been around for thousands of years one way or another. Do you think we’re presently discovering veganism for the first time or reconnecting with or reviving ancient ways of thinking and living?

Catherine: This is such an interesting question—as I think contemporary veganism frames itself as both in different ways! In fact, I think that this divide between veganism as an ultra-modern, forward-looking technological power OR as a way of reconnecting and reclaiming our relationship with the land. For me, this tension between the possibility of the future and the romanticisation of the past is one of the key debates we are seeing in veganism today.

With the rise of cultured and lab-grown meats, there is much talk about how these could replace animals in all sorts of places—from pet food to fast food to luxury food. The potential for the almost-eradication of animal suffering—should these novel technological foods be developed and culturally accepted—is enormous. However, there are also massive problems with this, for example, this technology is likely to be developed and owned by huge corporations and therefore isn’t going to disrupt the damaging food systems, but also that it won’t fundamentally change our relationship with consumption, or perhaps with animals.

On the other hand, there is the idea of veganism as a way to reconnect with nature, disrupt harmful relationships with consumption and the environment, and the revival of past practices of, for example, growing food and improving our knowledge of plants and environments. Veganism can open people’s eyes and practices to all kinds of new ways of viewing and relating with the world, particularly around desires to live more ethically. But, the idea that we can fully return to old ways of living without a complete revolution in every corner of the world, in every conceivable way, is not realistic.

We therefore are having to negotiate a veganism that is both embracing technology and turning to the past and these two are usually seen as oppositional and divisive. However, it’s possible that there can be an embracing of multiple different vegan futures.

There can also be a real sense of inter-generational loss between vegans as the history of the movement, as with many activist movements, is unpreserved or hard to access. This is where archives like yours, Kim, are so important in building connections and evidencing the long history of animal rights and veganism. I think when we become vegan because everything is new to us, it’s sometimes difficult to initially recognise the histories we are part of. I can see the pier of framing veganism as the future, but to do so, we need to also celebrate these rich histories and recognise that veganism can be—and always is—multiple things at once!

Kim: Your book reminded me of the growth in diversity among vegans and the many different perspectives on how veganism can be viewed. Does this vegan diversity reflect the diversity of people’s perspectives and how they can be united on core values?

Catherine: Veganism is so varied and diversifying in so many different ways at the moment! This can make the vegan movement confusing or perhaps even incoherent from the outside: how can a group that supposedly agrees on core values have such different interpretations and practices? As veganism has become more visible, there is a concern from some that its meaning has ‘diluted’. And the growth of the ‘plant-based’ moniker in the food sector can further complicate things. However, I don’t think it is a weakness of veganism that it has multiple different practices or perspectives, I think this is one of its biggest strengths!

While veganism was coined in Britain in the mid-20th Century, the practice of eating plants and legumes for ethical and spiritual reasons has existed for much longer. The historical people weren’t called vegans, but aren’t they still our inspirations and pioneers for the vegan movement? As veganism has become more visible and, yes, grown significantly in the last decade, it has introduced new ideas to people and, in turn, new people to the vegan movement. People have become attracted to veganism because they believe in the rights of animals, but also because they believe it is an environmentally positive action to take, or because they want to improve their health. While for vegans like you and me, the primary motivation is the belief that we shouldn’t eat or harm animals, the growth of veganism has been fuelled by its diversifying appeal. And while people may become vegan for one reason, they often tend to embrace the wider benefits of veganism in their journey.

With new voices in the movement, there is a risk that the values of veganism change and morph—but perhaps this is also an opportunity to embrace nuance and complexity in veganism, in building a veganism for the future. The issue of connecting people on core values is always a difficult one, as it requires us to have some degree of agreement on what we’re doing, and why. But with veganism becoming appealing for many different reasons, it’s perhaps key at this moment that we reflect and try to build power in the places where we do connect.

Kim: How do you see the future of veganism? Are you hopeful that veganism's influence will successfully shape the planet’s future at a time when there are so many challenges?

Catherine: It depends on the day! Some days I feel so full of hope for the potential of veganism, but other days I am just filled with despair. At the moment, it’s very difficult for me to visualise a planetary future that embraces a better world when every day for the last eight months, we have seen the genocide of the people of Palestine in front of the whole world, and our leaders and media have ignored or minimised the scale of destruction. On a planet where this scale of violence and devastation can be unleashed and seemingly nothing can stop it, how can it be possible to imagine a future where humans, animals, and the earth live equitably side-by-side?

For me, veganism has justice at its heart. The strategies of the vegan movement have been to build power in people, cultivate interspecies empathy, and educate about the plight of animals who are used and abused for human purposes. However, this justice isn’t just about animals: it is about accountability to one another, challenging the inequalities amongst humans, and fighting for a planet where we can all live without violence.

I believe that veganism is going to keep growing and gaining social and political power, but that we are also going to face some serious criticism and backlash from people and, crucially, corporations and governments invested in the maintenance of the status quo. We have already seen this recently in the USA with the banning of lab-grown meat by Governor Ron DeSantis and the beef lobby in Florida, positioning these foods as produced by the “global elite” as part of their “authoritarian plans.” As ridiculous as this might sound to us, the political and economic investment in killing animals is enormous—and something that is going to be very hard to challenge.

However, I think veganism is already massively punching above its weight in becoming an increasingly desired topic of conversation in the climate and health spheres. For a group that is only 1 per cent of the global population, we are certainly getting people talking and hopefully, this will shift in the future. But, getting the world on board with the liberatory aims of veganism is a much greater challenge—and one that requires us to resist oppression and violence everywhere.text

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Oliver is a lecturer in the Sociology of Climate Change at Lancaster University. Previously she was a research associate in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. A geographer interested in research beyond the human, she works on historical and contemporary veganism, the ethics and politics of interspecies friendship through human-chicken relationships, and multispecies ethnographic research, most recently with seabirds. She has been featured on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, written for Tribune, and had her work cited in The Guardian and The Independent. She is the author of Veganism, Archives, and Animals: Geographies of a Multispecies World (Routledge, 2022) which won the Runners' Up Prize in the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society's Book Prize in 2022 and was a finalist for the prestigious AHRC/BBC’s New Generation Thinkers.

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