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The Vegan lifestyle: how it went from rare to everywhere
10 years ago, being a vegetarian was hard, let alone being a vegan. Nowadays veganism is almost unavoidable in our daily lives. This article tries to explore when veganism became this big and how social media can help or has helped with this.
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Language, Culture and Globalization
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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Back to topThe introduction of veganism
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As mentioned before, this article will explore when the rise of the veganism happened in The Netherlands and how social media play a role in enlarging the number of vegans. The information in this article has been found on sites, articles or videos on veganism. All of the information that is used, has been analysed and reflected to the analytical model of a ‘transnational culturescape’ from Appadurai (1996) and Castells (2010). In this paper we will talk about The Netherlands as the local, and we will analyse this in accordance to the global.
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The data as to how many vegans there currently are is inaccuratescription of this articleIt is very hard to find accurate data on how many vegans there are in the world right now, since there has not been done lots of research on this matter. Besides, veganism comes in many forms, so some people do not call themselves a real vegan when they are what we consider as a vegan in this article, one who steps aside from the use of any animal product.
s e.g.such an organization.get to know a little motivator ofhas beenresearch on the number of vegans in The Netherlands has been done at the time, from which we can conclude that in 1996 The Netherlands counted around 16.000 vegans.Back thenThe NVV had 439 members at that moment. Van Velzen says that the number of members has grown immense, especially the past few years. From this we can thus conclude that veganism thus has become a bigger thing the last years, but I will address this a bit later on. The NVV had 2.246 members at the beginning of 2017. According to Van Velzen, the NVV suspects to have a number of 2.762 members at the start of 2018.From this we can conclude that veganism still is growing in The Netherlands, since in one year time, around 500 people are expected to have registered as member of the NVV. Van Velzen continues to say that the NVV thinks that there are around 100.000 vegans in The Netherlands at this moment. This expectation is build on comparing the data of the research from 1996 and the number of members of the NVV, to the number of expected members in the beginning of 2018 (16.000/439 x 2.762 = 100.665). These are the only numbers that I would like to use in this paper. From now on, I would like to focus on when veganism became a bigger thing.
"Even though the first traces of the non-diary diet can be found in the early 1800’s, veganism is a real product of the modern-20th century Western culture." (Arrpe, Mäkelä & Väänänen, 2011, p. 277)
Vstartedan- as wellThis soft form of globalization, globalization with a focusa , started by the foundation of the American Vegan Society in 1948. (Calvert, 2014, p. 12).With this, emerged The book on the Vegan Society published by Dr Sam Calvert, states that “veganism is enjoying a period of media interest in the UK and US press as well as in other parts of Europe, unlike anything it has known before” (Calvert, 2014, p. 1).
the growth ofvisible as well when we look at. Google trends is a site by Google that shows us the statistics of how much a certain topic has appeared in the queries in Google’s search engine in a certain amount of time, at a certain scale. We can put in per example the term “vegan”. Google Trends will show me a graphic with a blue line that indicates the “interest over time” in a certain timespan.By thisis meant.
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Another important thing to keep in mind as well is that since the emergence of web 2.0, we do things that we’ve never done before. From now on, we are prosumers: we produce knowledge as well as consuming knowledge. People who take actively part in the online discussion on veganism per example spread tweets or food-logs in which they tell about what they eat as a vegan on a daily basis, so producing knowledge, as well as consuming knowledge by peer example using recipes found only to make that food which they eat.
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YouTubers are great examples of the “prosumers”, as mentioned before. When one shows in a food-log all they ate in one week as a vegan, they create new content and thus produce new knowledge. They also consume already existing knowledge, by having cooked a certain thing according to a vegan recipe found online per example.
The Celebrity Community
Role models, especially role models who are active online, are great people for influencing others. When we see a role model use or promote something, or in this case a certain lifestyle, we know that we can use this something or this lifestyle as well to become just like our idol. By showing online that you are vegan, you promote this onto your followers, who will want to know more about this and who might want to be just like you, and so start to live as a vegan as well.
Ariana Grande is a great example of an international popstar who has showed online that she follows a vegan lifestyle. She has thousands, if not million of followers both off- and online, and by showing that she is vegan she spreads the message and can inspire people to follow her.
Another openly vegan celebrity a bit more close to home is the Belgian singer Ian Thomas. Ian Thomas has been open about his vegan lifestyle on various social media platforms, especially on his Twitter page.
One of the famous Dutch vegans is YouTuber and singer Teske. She hasn’t been living completely vegan for that long, but has vlogged her way through the process of becoming vegan and also has shared videos on what she eats as a vegan now, as well as many Instagram posts on her food. This is an example of a (Dutch spoken) video from Teske in which she talks about what she ate during one week as a vegan.
These three examples are only a grasp into the many online influencers that share their beliefs and vegan lifestyle online and in media, maybe not with influencing others as their first intention, but sure to show that it’s possible to live vegan and that it is for a good cost.
Back to topRole models, especially role models whop are active online, are great people for influencing others.
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Back to topEnoughness, accent and light communities: Essays on contemporary identities. Tilburg papers in Culture Studies 139.
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