“ … Like Confrontational About It, which I didn’t Expect” —An Analysis of Conversational Experiences of Women Vegans When Dining with Colleagues: Meat Eating as a Symbolic Capital in the Workplace

Topić, Martina; Round, Gabrielle

Abstract

This study is based on 28 interviews with women vegans based in England, UK. The study aimed to explore the everyday experiences and cultural capital of women vegans; however, interviewing revealed a large focus on the workplace culture as a place of exclusion, expanding the research to a two-tier analysis of the social and workplace experiences of women vegans. The study draws from communication research on veganism as a communicative practice and focuses on conversations when dining together using also Bourdieu’s cultural capital framework. The research questions were centered on exploring the cultural capital of women vegans, the social and office experiences of women vegans, and how office experiences correspond with the social experiences of women vegans. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the social experiences of women vegans, and an abductive analysis was conducted to capture workplace experiences, followed by a second thematic analysis of office data. Results point toward the dual exclusion women face at societal and organizational levels for being vegans, and workplace exclusion is particularly linked to networking and out-of-work events when colleagues dine together, which often results in unwanted attention and hostilities in conversations. The findings also reveal that being vegan is not linked to one’s class origin but potentially could be linked to cultural capital as women vegans share cultural capital and now work in middle-class jobs, however, the study argues that meat-eating seems to present symbolic capital in the workplace, which stems from wider social meat-eating expectations whereas veganism is seen as awkward, radical and extreme.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 5, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Dec 15, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 31, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 16, 2026
• Journal: Communication Studies
• Print ISSN: 1051-0974
• Electronic ISSN: 1745-1035
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2024.2440953