ABSTRACT
Scholars note that contemporary vegetarians adopt a meat-free diet for individual health, ethical, and, increasingly, sustainability concerns. Contemporary vegetarians frequently invoke “sustainable citizenship,” which recognizes the responsibilities of the individual to local and global communities on issues of environmental, economic, and social justice. This connection between vegetarianism and citizenship has nineteenth-century roots. Much like today's vegetarians/vegans, early advocates of vegetarianism highlighted its physical and ethical advantages, helping adherents function as independent citizens and participate in civic life.
To explore the evolving relationship between vegetarianism/veganism and citizenship, this chapter analyzes nineteenth-century and contemporary public writing by advocates of vegetarianism/veganism in the United Kingdom. These discourses share concern about vegetarianism and citizenship. Both not only promote vegetarian lifestyles but also suggest new models for how ideal citizens should participate in and shape public life through verbal and embodied utterances. However, this chapter argues that historical and contemporary vegetarians discuss citizenship in distinct ways: historical discourses focus on how an individual can lose the right to participate in public discourse of an idealized society by eating meat, whereas contemporary discourse centers more squarely on the discursive responsibilities incumbent upon an individual in the communities in which they are already a citizen.
