Open University, Cardiff, UK.
Br J Sociol. 2011 Mar;62(1):134-53. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01348.x.
This paper critically examines discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers in 2007. In setting parameters for what can and cannot easily be discussed, dominant discourses also help frame understanding. Discourses relating to veganism are therefore presented as contravening commonsense, because they fall outside readily understood meat-eating discourses. Newspapers tend to discredit veganism through ridicule, or as being difficult or impossible to maintain in practice. Vegans are variously stereotyped as ascetics, faddists, sentimentalists, or in some cases, hostile extremists. The overall effect is of a derogatory portrayal of vegans and veganism that we interpret as 'vegaphobia'. We interpret derogatory discourses of veganism in UK national newspapers as evidence of the cultural reproduction of speciesism, through which veganism is dissociated from its connection with debates concerning nonhuman animals' rights or liberation. This is problematic in three, interrelated, respects. First, it empirically misrepresents the experience of veganism, and thereby marginalizes vegans. Second, it perpetuates a moral injury to omnivorous readers who are not presented with the opportunity to understand veganism and the challenge to speciesism that it contains. Third, and most seriously, it obscures and thereby reproduces exploitative and violent relations between human and nonhuman animals.
本文批判性地考察了 2007 年英国全国性报纸中关于素食主义的论述。在为可以轻松讨论和不能轻松讨论的内容设定参数的同时，主流论述也有助于构建理解。因此，与素食主义相关的论述被呈现为违反常识，因为它们超出了易于理解的肉食论述的范围。报纸往往通过嘲笑或认为素食主义在实践中难以或不可能维持来诋毁素食主义。素食者被各种刻板地描述为苦行主义者、时尚主义者、多愁善感者，或者在某些情况下是敌对的极端主义者。总的来说，这种做法对素食者和素食主义进行了贬低性的描绘，我们将其解释为“素食恐惧症”。我们将英国全国性报纸中对素食主义的贬损论述解释为文化再现物种主义的证据，通过这种方式，素食主义与其与非人类动物权利或解放相关的争论脱钩。这在三个相互关联的方面存在问题。首先，它在经验上歪曲了素食主义的体验，从而使素食主义者边缘化。其次，它使杂食者读者的道德受到伤害，因为他们没有机会理解素食主义以及它所包含的对物种主义的挑战。第三，也是最严重的一点，它掩盖了并因此再现了人类和非人类动物之间剥削和暴力的关系。
