ESAGENDER –MIDTERM CONFERENCE

NAPOLI –16-17\10\2014

Veganism as implicit religion: a

gender perspective

Vincenzo Romania



Research group

“Food, Cultures and Societies”

coordinated by Franca Bimbi





UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA

DEPT. FISPPA

(Philosophy, Sociology,

Pedagogy, and Applied

Psychologhy),

Doctoral School of Social Sciences







Go vegan means..

• An extended practice

• A “flexible” and multiple lifestyle

• Participating to the actions of a
movement supporting ethical claims
(Cherry, 2006) or to the activities of
saved animal oasis.

• Sharing a conception of peace and
non-violence (Jainism and Ahimsa)

 Diffusion

• USA: 3%

• UK: 2%

• Italy: 0,6% (vegetarians are 6,5%, 70%
of vegs are women) (Eurispes, 2014).

• Germany: 0,9 (2013)



 Motivations

• Ethical (respect for animals, refusal of the
connection between feeding and
sufference). Ethical vegs are prevalentely
women (66,7 vs. 30,8% men, Eurispes,
2013);

• Health. Prevalently men (42,3 vs. 28.2%)

• Environment.

• Religious ( Buddhism and Seventh Day
Adventism).

A weltanschauung entailing

• Anti-capitalistic ideology (sustenaibility,
degrowth concerns)

• Recognition of a moral presence to
animals (Mika, 2006; Jasper and Nelkin,
1992) ad commitment to animal rights
(Maurer, 2002).

• Holistic vision of health and wellness ->
healthization and spiritualization of daily
life (Melucci, 1991)

 Hypothesis

• Ethical veganism can be considered as a
form of implicit religion (Bailey, 1997) that
gives meaning to daily life and produces
sensible effects on vegans’ relationships,
consumptions, education.

• As other forms of religious identity, it
constitutes a primary source of identity,
influencing all vegans’ daily life’s roles.

An implicit religion: definition

• Bailey (1988, 1997) defined an implicit

religion as a belief integrating three
aspects:

• A commitment

• A so called integrating foci

• And a series of intensive concerns
with extensive effects.



Ethic vegans – Integrating foci



• The unity of all living creatures;

• A particular vision of the blood as a
vehicle of one’s animal soul;

• Health as a religious awe obtained
through purity (Douglas, 1975);

• The superiority of humans can only
be demonstrated through respect.

“Integrating foci “suggest that “implicit religion” will reveal itself in those focal points that
integrate wider areas of life” (Bailey)

Commitments and concerns

•  Performing an ethical form of consumption

(food, transportation, cosmetics, clothing,
cleaners, identity cues, including gender
displays).

•  Performing social actions in daily life,
consistent with peace, anti-violence, anti-
specism, refusal of any form of exploitation.

•  Cultivating relationships with vegans or with
wise people. Stigmatising non-vegans ->
conversely, self-stigmatising themselves.

•  Participating to protests or working for vegan
associations and animal-oasis (see further).

Carolina Nuti studied ippoasi in an unpublished work (2012)

 The research

• Focus: the interactions between vegans
into the most used Italian vegan
webforum (veganhome.it)

• Data collection technique: covered
netnography

• Temporal context: june 2013- june 2014

• Material collected: 1357 posts,
theoretical sample.

• Approach: narrative analysis of the
threads

Functions of the forum (I)

• Specifying what is vegan and what is not:

distinguishing veganism from other mere
food practices (example: crudism).

• Solving ethical conflicts: indicating how a
vegan should behave in a given situation
(Ex: long-distance adoptions).

• Give emotional, human and practical
support to new vegans through:
storytelling, practical information, providing
arguments against opposers.

 Functions (II)

• Explaining how to manage

relationships, mainly in the familial
contexts (ex.: wife-husband’s
relationships)

• Organising and sharing the process of
conversion.

• Informing in a wider sense.

• Sanctioning misbelievers -> a strong
normativity

Social identity (I)

• Vegans can be considered as an informal
group, in terms of admission as new
members.

• The vegan group presents an internal
stratification between experienced\ethical
vegans and rookies\healthist\flexible
vegans.

• A strong social distance between vegans
and non-vegans is produced and
reproduced through practice, giving life to
an alternative form of normativity.

Social identity (II)

• Ethic veganism represents a strong
commitment for believers and a form of
collective identity involving a strong role-
person identification (Turner, 1990).

• An ambivalence can be registered between
the vegan ethics of peace with any human
being, and the tendency to frame the
relationship with non-vegans as a war with
enemies, to defend and bolster ethic
boarders.

Gender perspective (I)

• Vegan food plays a major role in the family
as a mean to affirm women’s authonomy in
the education of children and in the power-
relation with husband, asking for a general,
comprehensive respect.

• In this sense, an implicit process of framing
non-vegans as violent, masculine,
conservative people can be registered in the
narration of vegan as a daily life form of
commitment.

Gender perspective (II)

• Comparing my research with the recent
literature on food and gender (see Cairns et
al., 2010), veganism seems to deconstruct
\re-frame a series of socio-semiotic axes
between food and:

• Motherhood

• Care

• Gender inequalities.

• Body and self-care.

 Scenario

These former results seem to suggest
the need to integrate my research with
a future, larger cross-cultural analysis of
the effects of veganism on gender
dynamics in different countries.



THANK YOU!