Thinking about how past social movements succeeded at large-scale attitude and behavior change seems important, and I’m not sure why there isn’t more attention to that kind of thing in EA discussions around animal advocacy.
I recently read Gandhi’s autobiography and found some useful stuff there.
Thank you @Jamie_Harris for sharing that research! Looking through it briefly it seems like there is some information there that may actually help me reply to a concern a campaign supporter has. I’m excited to go through it in more depth.
Excited reading your comment Benny! Appreciate you sharing that you also find value in examining past social movements. I’d also enjoy seeing more historical movements incorporated into these discussions.
Out of curiosity, does Gandhi bring up animals explicitly in his autobiography? I read a brief chapter about him in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism and found his view’s on non-violent resistance and autonomous villages inspiring.
Yeah he talks about vegetarianism a lot actually! Here’s one paragraph about his efforts to promote vegetarianism as a young man in England:
What he describes is one of the problems we want to solve at Allied Scholars for Animal Protection – clubs die when student leaders graduate because there’s no larger infrastructure to support recruitment.
I love how well that excerpt links to the work you’re doing at ASAP! Glad to hear that he brings up vegetarianism often in the autobiography. It’s interesting to read that he was intellectually converted, and I enjoy him speaking to the “no zealot like a convert” phenomenon.
Thanks for sharing this on the forum!
Thinking about how past social movements succeeded at large-scale attitude and behavior change seems important, and I’m not sure why there isn’t more attention to that kind of thing in EA discussions around animal advocacy.
I recently read Gandhi’s autobiography and found some useful stuff there.
In case you and @David Michelson haven’t seen them, I and some colleagues did a bunch of research into social movement case studies a few years ago.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ATpxEPwCQWQAFf4XX/key-lessons-from-social-movement-history
Not to suggest that more wouldn’t be useful, just an FYI in case you didn’t know and would find them helpful!
@Jamie_Harris thanks for sharing! I will put this on my reading list. :)
Thank you @Jamie_Harris for sharing that research! Looking through it briefly it seems like there is some information there that may actually help me reply to a concern a campaign supporter has. I’m excited to go through it in more depth.
Excited reading your comment Benny! Appreciate you sharing that you also find value in examining past social movements. I’d also enjoy seeing more historical movements incorporated into these discussions.
Out of curiosity, does Gandhi bring up animals explicitly in his autobiography? I read a brief chapter about him in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism and found his view’s on non-violent resistance and autonomous villages inspiring.
Yeah he talks about vegetarianism a lot actually! Here’s one paragraph about his efforts to promote vegetarianism as a young man in England:
What he describes is one of the problems we want to solve at Allied Scholars for Animal Protection – clubs die when student leaders graduate because there’s no larger infrastructure to support recruitment.
I love how well that excerpt links to the work you’re doing at ASAP! Glad to hear that he brings up vegetarianism often in the autobiography. It’s interesting to read that he was intellectually converted, and I enjoy him speaking to the “no zealot like a convert” phenomenon.
Yeah that was interesting! He was raised vegetarian, ate meat for a while and then went back to it.
Also, re social movements and animals—James Ozden has some useful research.
I’d definitely be interested in reading more about his life, definitely humanizes him in a way that feels inspiring.
Also yes, I’ve read some of James Özden’s work! In November I wrote a post about his most recent article “Winning is underrated in grassroots movements” that I published to the IP28 campaign website (https://www.yesonip28.org/post/winning). I hadn’t initially thought to post it on the EA Forum, but maybe it could make for a helpful cross-post.
I think that would make a great cross-post!