Beyond good taste?

Abstract

The contribution focuses on everyday moralizing practices in ethically-morally based veganism. By means of the interpretative analysis of selected interview sequences with Vegans from Germany, I reconstruct in how far vegan work of conviction opens up a society-critical perspective on the normalization of animal consumption. The interviewees relate to aspects of sustainability, ethics of responsibility and care in order to plausibilise the necessity of individual and social transformation processes. At the same time, other (sometimes unconscious) motives play a role. They aim at persuading fellow human beings to share the same convictions and pursue a vegan lifestyle. The power to act in shaping (intimate) social relationships contrasts with the felt powerlessness in the context of (anonymous) social structures and processes of animal consumption. A veganisation of the social environment often leads to tension in everyday life. The interviewees seek to address these tensions preemptively by making use of promising strategies of vegan persuasion.