Veganized: How Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Transformed a Fringe Movement
Gone are the stereotypes of “alfalfa sprouts and mashed yeast”. Today’s vegans are celebrity chefs, record-setting athletes, Ivy League doctors, scientists building meat from animal cells, and high-profile Silicon Valley investors. Based on over 150 interviews with the insiders of this newly emerging lifestyle movement, I ask the intriguing question: how does a cultural practice become mainstream? I show that rise of veganism has been a long time coming, carefully crafted by clever change makers I call cultural entrepreneurs.
The Icons—chefs, athletes, and influencers— changed the image of veganism, making it aspirational and appealing. The Informers—doctors, researchers, and filmmakers—taught us about the consequences of what we put on our plate. Finally, the Innovators—company founders, CEOs, and investors—created nascent industries (“plant-based” and “cell- based”) that seek to take animals out of the food system entirely through technological innovation.
Veganized explores how a whole generation of idealistic advocates pivoted from education to entrepreneurship, changing the future of food as we know it.
FIRST BOOK
Oxford University Press (2013)
Societies show a cultural predisposition (or "habit") toward more or less inequality. These social inequalities have a number of hidden costs, ranging from unnecessarily high rates of physical and mental illness, addiction, violence, and crime. In order to address these major inequalities—and to resolve their associated social problems—we must first overcome the underlying habit that connects them all.
ARTICLES
Frye, Margaret and Nina Gheihman. 2018. Sociological Science 5: 596-627.
“Imagining the Nation: Research on Everyday Nationalism in the Social Sciences.”
Bonikowski, Bart and Nina Gheihman. 2014. The International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2nd Edition, edited by James D. Wright. Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
AWARDS
Harvard University
PhD Candidate (2013-19)
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Completion/Writing/Mid-/Pre-Dissertation Fellowships, Arthur Leman Fund Fellowship, Krupp Foundation Fellowship, Edward H. Kavinoky Fellowship, Jens Aubrey Westengard Fund, WCFIA French Language Study Grant, SSHRC Doctoral Scholarship.
University of Toronto
BA & MA in Sociology (2008-13)
SSHRC Master's Scholarship, Lorna Marsden Award, Simeon Heman Janes Silver Medal, McNab Scholarship, Kiyoharu and Kiyoaki Momose Memorial Scholarship, Norman Bell Memorial Scholarship, Raymond Breton Award, Rex Lucas Award, Max Weber Award, Valerie Story Scholarship, Mary Mounfield Bursary, Muriel McCuaig Memorial Scholarship, White Scholarship, Professor William Kingston & Dr. John Kingston Scholarship.
