Food that Matters: Sustainability and the Material-Discursive Boundaries of Carnist and Vegan Food Practices A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2019 Steffen Hirth School of Social Sciences [Blank page] 2 Contents List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... 7 List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ 8 Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 9 Declaration ......................................................................................................................... 10 Copyright Statement .......................................................................................................... 11 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 13 Introduction 1. Research Problem ........................................................................................................... 16 1.1 One Hunter or 1,000 Gardeners: Social-Ecological Footprints of Livestock ................. 20 1.2 The Boundary-Drawing Practices of Veganism – Structure of the Thesis ...................... 26 Part I: Design 2. Positioning of the Research ........................................................................................... 30 2.1 Social Studies of Food and Consumption ............................................................................. 30 2.1.1 Agricultural Geography vs. Geographies of Food ....................................................................... 31 2.1.2 Reading Ethical Consumption for Difference rather than Dominance ................................... 32 2.1.3 Political Ecologies of the Possible .................................................................................................. 34 2.2 Drawing the Boundaries of Veganism ................................................................................... 36 2.2.1 Scientific Analyses and Popular Books .......................................................................................... 36 2.2.2 Social Sciences and Humanities ....................................................................................................... 37 2.2.3 Sociology and Human Geography .................................................................................................. 41 2.3 Relational Materialism and Posthuman Performativity ....................................................... 51 2.3.1 Relational Sociology .......................................................................................................................... 52 2.3.2 Material-Discursive Practices in Accordance with Agential Realism ........................................ 56 2.3.3 Political Ontology in a Relational Manifold: Conceiving Possibility as a Spatial Degree of Freedom ........................................................................................................................................................ 63 3. Objectives and Methods: A Material-Discursive Ethnography of Vegan and Carnist Foodscapes ......................................................................................................................... 71 3.1 Research Objectives and Questions ....................................................................................... 71 3.2 Methodology: Reading for Difference ................................................................................... 73 3 3.3 Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 78 3.3.1 Preserving Websites ........................................................................................................................... 80 3.3.2 Conducting In-depth Interviews ..................................................................................................... 80 3.3.3 Ethnographic Observation and Participation ................................................................................ 82 3.4 Data Analysis .............................................................................................................................. 84 3.4.1 Interpretive Analyses of Sustainability Websites in Retail ........................................................... 84 3.4.2 Analysing Interviews and Other Data ............................................................................................ 86 3.4.3 Limitations .......................................................................................................................................... 87 Part II: Analysis 4. Posthumanist and Humanist Politics of Possibility in Agri-Culture ............................ 89 4.1 A ‘Personal’ Decision: The Case of Bradley Nook Farm .................................................... 89 4.1.1 Social-Ecological Reasons for Quitting Animal Agriculture ....................................................... 91 4.1.2 Media Echo No. 1: BBC Countryfile—‘whatever your views on veganism, you have to admire him’ ................................................................................................................................................... 94 4.1.3 Media Echo No. 2: The Daily Express—‘viewers in melt-down as vegan farmer eats an egg’ ................................................................................................................................................................. 98 4.2 Humanist ‘Sustainability’ and the Carnist Apparatus ........................................................ 101 4.3 Conclusion: Veganism as a Representational Eating Practice ............................................. 106 5. Entangled with Carnism: Vegan Advocacy’s Fuzzy Boundaries ................................ 108 5.1 Co-operating with Carnism?.................................................................................................. 109 5.1.1 ‘Co-operate or die’ ........................................................................................................................... 110 5.1.2 A Vegan Politics of Possibility ....................................................................................................... 114 5.2 Excluded from Ethical Veganism: Environment, Wildlife, and Production ................. 118 5.2.1 Drawing the Boundaries of Ethics: ‘the ethical-moral position was just about animal rights’ ........................................................................................................................................................... 119 5.2.2 Vegan Politics of Possibility—Addressing the Materiality of the Production Side ............... 120 5.3 Conclusion: Repoliticising Mutual Aid and Existence .......................................................... 123 6. Sustainability within the Productivity Paradigm ......................................................... 125 6.1 Sustainable Intensification: A Productivist Oxymoron ..................................................... 126 6.2 Producing Dairy on Arable Land: Feed vs Food Crops ................................................... 128 6.3 Feeding the (more-than-human) World with Vegan Productivity .................................. 138 6.4 Conclusion: Finding a ‘Correct Balance’ to Survive the Sixth Mass Extinction ............... 142 7. Sustainability within the Efficiency Paradigm ............................................................ 144 7.1 Sustainability on the Far Horizon: How Efficiency Gains License Practices in Absolute Terms .............................................................................................................................................. 145 7.1.1 Sustainability as Dictated by the Invisible Hand ......................................................................... 145 7.1.2 ‘It’s not a Sustainability Conversation’: Vegan and Organic Products as Consumer Beliefs .......................................................................................................................................................... 147 4 7.1.3 Sustainability’s Complexity and Change....................................................................................... 149 7.2 Increasing Efficiency, Saving Practices ................................................................................ 150 7.2.1 Saving Animal Agriculture ............................................................................................................. 151 7.2.2 Saving Chicken (Food Waste) ........................................................................................................ 152 7.2.3 Saving Culinary Culture (Meat and Dairy Substitutes) .............................................................. 154 7.2.4 Saving Bananas ................................................................................................................................. 155 7.3 The Boundaries of Sustainability in Dairy Farming ........................................................... 157 7.4 Conclusion: How ‘Getting Better’ Saves Practices not the World ...................................... 162 8. Vegan Organic: An Emerging Food Practice .............................................................. 164 8.1 Omitting Fascist Food