Voices for the voiceless: \nanimal rights activism in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Veganism and animal rights activism are minority ethical beliefs and practices amply covered by the academy and the media, often in stark contrasts. This outsider coverage influences public perception, often leaving insider perspectives misunderstood and overgeneralized. The work of this dissertation is primarily concerned with the application of a folkloristic lens to vegan and animal rights communities in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador and Toronto, Ontario in an effort to counterbalance outsider opinions of these groups with the nuances of insider voices and lived experiences. \nThis dissertation also makes the case for a folkloristics of ethical belief via the exploration of veganism in the lives of St. John's and Toronto vegans and examines various elements of performativity in Toronto animal rights activism. Central to this work is an argument rooted in the philosophical writing of Antonio Gramsci and the folklore scholarship of David Hufford that veganism is a tradition of counter-hegemonic belief and that its counterpart, carnism, is not simply senso comune but a tradition of hegemonic belief. The philosophical positions of Peter Singer, Tom Regan, Josephine Donovan, and Gary Francione on the rights of animals are situated alongside folkloristic scholarship of belief to produce a framework for the analysis of ethical belief in vegan life narratives belonging to research participants in both cities. These narratives provide insights into the nuanced perspectives of participants about animals and food when they were children and young adults, detail their transitions from carnism to veganism, outline their current \nethical beliefs systems, and offer commentary about the challenges they face and supports they receive from others for their beliefs. \nFollowing these life narratives, four ethnographic accounts of participant observation at animal rights demonstrations illustrate some of the ways veganism is enacted and performed. The Roaring Silence Against Bill 156 march provides an opportunity to analyze communicative competence in speakouts. The Toronto Cow Save vigil explores the place of pilgrimage, memorial, and persuasion at slaughterhouse demonstrations along with their impacts upon various target audiences. The Toronto Cow Save vigil problematizes hegemonic violence against vegan animal rights activists via the death of Regan Russell. Finally, the GRASS Bar Isabel protest examines the spatial and verbal tensions created by protesters and police at a dynamic, hyperlocal restaurant demonstration against the presence of foie gras on the menu.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.048 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".