Taking the Long View: Cultural Continuity and Change in American Vegetarianism

• In Event: 188 - Section on Sociology of Culture. History in Cultural Explanation

Abstract

In order to understand the dynamics of cultural change, as well as those movements working to instigate change, it is useful to study long periods of history. By examining a cultural movement longitudinally, one can observe how cultural meanings are kept alive, even through periods of movement abeyance, so that they become available for reuse and reimagining when new actors come on the scene. This study follows this agenda through research on the publishing history of vegetarian and vegan cookbooks in the United States. We look at shifts in the content and form of vegetarian cookbooks, as well as the social worlds out of which these cookbooks emerge, in order to trace continuities and new directions in the vegetarian movement. Cookbooks form a consistently available, and importantly, material point of connection for likeminded readers and practitioners. As key artifacts that transmit the meaning of vegetarianism from one generation to the next, and across geographically disparate places, cookbooks have helped to establish debates and directions of the vegetarian movement.

Authors

• Laura J. Miller, Brandeis University

• Emilie Hardman, Harvard University