Vegetarian Diet: Consumption in the Context of Asceticism

Abstract

The research contributes to the study of the consumer practices and internal structure of vegetarian community. On the one part, vegetarians are seen as ascetic lifestyle followers, whereas on the other vegetarians constitute a part of consumer society as evidenced by the rapid growth in specialty “vegetarian market”. Thus, we come up with the contradiction between vegetarian’s demonstrated ascetic idea of abandoning consumption and real engagement into the processes governed by the consumer society. The research is conducted in mixed-method design. The qualitative part is formed by 21 in-depth interviews with “experienced vegetariandieters” of various stages in Russia (vegetarians, vegans, raw-vegans and fruitarians). Furthermore, the survey is built on a random sample of the same empirical object (225 selfcompleted questionnaires) in order to estimate and verify some of the qualitative-part results. The research shows that consumption is central to the process of transition to vegetarian diet as takes the adaptive part: identical goods and services contribute to the group assimilation. The extent of adherence to “vegetarian market” is differentiated according to the type of vegetarian diet. It is supposed that all the vegetarian diets (vegetarianism, veganism, rawism, fruitarianism) can be accounted as unity, which is split into several hierarchical types of diet (stages). The process of transition to various stages (from conventional diet to vegetarianism, from vegetarianism to veganism, from veganism to rawism and fruitarianism) is interpreted via the “rite of passage” theory and its’ three phases (separation, transition and incorporation). The results show that there exists a vegetarian hierarchy, where vegetarian-dieters can sequentially advance their stage via the circular “rite of passage” (which means that each several transition between any of the vegetarianism stages requires anew “rite of passage” to be thoroughly accomplished).