Projekte / Projects

An Entangled History of Vegetarianism

When vegetarianism emerged as an organized movement in nineteenth-century Europe, references to foodways in as well as actual contacts to other parts of the world assumed crucial importance. Following the development of organized vegetarianism in Europe and its contacts with South Asia and the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1950s, this project argues that actors and discourses on both sides were impacted, though in different ways and degrees, by this encounter. Vegetarianism came to be considered a means of transforming societies, if not mankind, through the body and morality of the individual. Debates on vegetarianism were thus inscribed in discourses on nation, body, and race, on universalism and exclusion.