“People don’t feel good if they can’t feed you:” the role of commensality and kinship making in plant-based dietary transformations from the perspective of vegans

This article explores the experience of turning vegan in a meat-centric society in the context of sustainable dietary transitions through the theoretical lens of commensality and kinship. The aim is to shed light on how vegans navigate social challenges that arise around their new eating preferences and how they shape their social environments through maintaining their existing kinship ties with non-vegans. A grounded theory analysis of in-depth interviews with 18 vegans in Iceland in addition to responses by 35 vegans to a qualitative open-ended questionnaire reveals how everyday commensality can facilitate socio-cultural changes through a process of negotiation and mutual adjustment in intimate social spaces. The results point to the significance of kinship building and the dynamic role of the fundamental human activity of sharing food when it comes to cultivating and establishing new food values, a process that is important to understand and enhance in the broader context of dietary sustainability transitions. The research contributes to food studies by exploring commensality both in relation to veganism and sustainable dietary transitions. It adds to the relatively small number of qualitative studies on veganism, providing a perspective from a small, geographically peripheral and heavily meat-oriented society.