Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Politics and Social Change

City University of New York (CUNY)

Theses/Dissertations

2016

Capitalism

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Discourses Of "Cruelty-Free" Consumerism: Peta, The Vegan Society And Examples Of Contemporary Activism, Andrea Springirth Sep 2016

Discourses Of "Cruelty-Free" Consumerism: Peta, The Vegan Society And Examples Of Contemporary Activism, Andrea Springirth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper draws upon the principles of critical discourse analysis in order to examine the production of capitalist and consumerist discourses within contemporary nonhuman animal rights activism. The analysis presents evidence to suggest that the discourses being produced via the websites of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Vegan Society are consistently being constructed through market-centric ideologies that treat activists mainly as middle-class consumers. This paper argues that the consistent presence of neoliberal discourse signals an instructive entanglement with broader sociopolitical issues. Specifically, there are concerns as to how this discourse relates to what is thought …