Veganism. An exploration of vegan identity through narrative

Shine, Veronika Dharma

4. term

Psychology, Master

2018

2018-05-31

This thesis is centred around veganism, or more specifically, vegan identities. The goal with the paper is to explore how vegan identities are created, how they develop and how they are sustained. The majority of available research on the area of veganism are quantitative studies that divide larger groups of vegans in general categories or motiva-tions for including veganism as a part of their lifestyle. This study explores vegan iden-tities qualitatively with the purpose of contributing to the existing knowledge within the field with in-depth analyses of four single case studies and thereby a fuller understand-ing about which mechanisms are in play when vegan identities are shaped. The meta-theoretical approach to this paper is social constructionism. Cultural psycho-logical and sociocultural perspectives contribute to this paradigm with approaches that focus on meaning-making processes. Tania Zittoun’s (2009) introduces concepts of ‘ruptures’ and ‘transitions’ that leads to changes in the life-course with a focus on how identity, knowledge and sense play together in a dynamic way. The approach to exploring vegan identities is to conduct narrative interviews. Through the analysis of small stories, four analyses of different vegans’ narrative are presented. These offer different positions on veganism, each focusing on and going in depth on the nuances of what is relevant for their narrative and their identity.

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