Cultural Movements, Cultural Change, and Unintended Outcomes: The Case of Vegetarianism

• In Event: 40258 - Culture II: On Novelty and Transformation

Abstract

This paper uses the case of vegetarianism to explore the role of movements in achieving long-term cultural change and those movements' inability to control the direction of that change. With religious groups at the forefront of an American vegetarian movement from the early nineteenth century until the 1970s, the rationale for not eating meat blended together ideas about spirituality, health, nature, and the immorality of eating animals. A belief in the virtues of abstinence and leading a measured life was reflected in the plain foods that were promoted. But the vegetarian movement remained highly insular, and vegetarian food choices were considered eccentric, unappetizing, and unnourishing by most Americans. In the latter part of the twentieth century, some vegetarian advocates actively rejected the emphasis on purity, plainness, asceticism, and the mandatory character of vegetarianism. In contrast, they innovated a style that favored culinary adventurousness, plenty, openness to compromise, and a voluntary character. This way of conceptualizing vegetarianism attracted a broader segment of the population but turned upside down many of the movement's foundational meanings. I argue that movements can set cultural processes in motion and keep them alive through long periods of public indifference or hostility until a changed social context creates a more receptive climate. But movement actors cannot regulate how other people, whether internal or external to the movement, incorporate cultural practices, ideas, and objects into their lives.

Author

• Laura J. Miller, Brandeis University