Vegetarianism: Movement Or Moment: Promoting A Lifestyle For Cult Change

5. The Beliefs and Strategies of Vegetarian Movement Leaders

5 The Beliefs and Strategies of Vegetarian Movement Leaders If you eat a Twinkie, no one will listen. —Howard Lyman, 1996 Vegetarian Summerfest Why do movement leaders choose some strategies and overlook others? How do they determine which ones will be the most effective? Sociologists recognize several important structural factors that shape social movement strategies, including material and human resources, political constraints, and group decision-making activities,1 but far less attention has been paid to the shared group knowledge that contributes to the strategy-making process. In the vegetarian movement, a rich, complex set of ideas about how personal, cultural, and social changes occur channels leaders’ choices about which strategies to implement and how to put them into effect. These ideas answer important questions: How do people become vegetarians? How might mainstream culture become more vegetarian friendly? How might society enact structures that support vegetarians and vegetarian diets? In general, how do changes happen, and what are the best ways to effect those changes? Although vegetarian leaders share many perspectives on these questions, 89 most focus more on how individual people change than on how ideas and political structures and other institutions in society change. How Do People Become Vegetarians? Vegetarian leaders, activists, and advocates express three beliefs about how people change their diets: (1) people adopt vegetarian diets through interactions with other vegetarians; (2) although people are likely to resist dietary change initially, they may eventually embrace change; and (3) people who change their dietary practices slowly are more likely than those who change rapidly to commit to vegetarianism. These three beliefs often overlap, and a single strategy may support more than one of them. Encouraging people to gradually include more vegetarian meals in their diets supports both the belief that people initially resist dietary change and the belief that gradual change is preferable to rapid change. Sometimes, however, a particular strategy can conflict with strategies that support other beliefs. For example, encouraging vegetarians to become ideal role models (based on the belief that social interaction helps move people toward vegetarianism ) may negatively affect strategies to increase tolerance toward nonvegetarians (which are based on the belief that people are likely to resist dietary change initially). Consequently , a “perfect vegan” role model may become overly zealous and impatient with nonvegans and ultimately alienate them from vegetarianism completely. The Importance of Social Contact Vegetarian leaders believe that most people become vegetarians through social interaction. Although direct personal experience (such as witnessing animal slaughter or feeling disgust at the sight of raw meat) and contact with media expressions 90 Chapter 5 of vegetarianism (such as watching videos or reading books and magazines) may spark initial interest, social interactions enable people to interpret these experiences in support of vegetarianism . For this reason, leaders emphasize the importance of interacting with nonvegetarians. In A Vegetarian Sourcebook , Akers writes, “Even if it were possible for vegetarians to live a life apart from non-vegetarians, it would not be desirable ; the spread of vegetarian ideas is greatly facilitated by a social mixing of vegetarians in the larger non-vegetarian population .”2 Through social interaction, vegetarian advocates can encourage others by exemplifying what it means to be a vegetarian and by giving them information about the vegetarian lifestyle. In an EarthSave International audiotape, Lyman explains, “I personally believe that survival for us is going to be one-on-one: talking to our friends, our parents, our business associates about why it is we ought to change what we’re putting at the end of our fork, eating lower on the food chain, buying organic.”3 Similarly, Gary L. Francione, Rutgers University law professor and legal advisor to NAVS, told his audience at the 1995 Vegetarian Summerfest: “If you can get ten people a year to give up meat, you can do more good than most animal rights organizations.”4 Many vegetarian leaders recognize the limitations of their organizations; organizations provide outreach materials and sometimes run issue-focused campaigns, but they need individual vegetarians to inspire and motivate others. Therefore, every vegetarian is a walking advertisement for the potential benefits and hazards of vegetarianism. The vegetarian movement strives to motivate people to change through self-interest, and positive examples can provide motivation for this change. Consequently, leaders encourage vegetarians to be physically healthy, morally consistent, and personally likable—not entirely for the benefit of practicing vegetarians but more to provide exemplars of behavior and appearance that...