PROCESSEN ATT FÖRÄNDRA EN LIVSSTIL : En sense-makingstudie med fokus på vegetarianer och veganers erfarenheter av förändrade matvanor

The purpose of this paper is to examine how vegetarians and vegans ascribe meaning to the process of changing from a meat-based to a plant-based diet. Using Brenda Dervin's sense-making methodology, I look into the complex and dynamic ways vegetarians and vegans experience their worlds. In contrast tomuch of mainstream research which regard vegetarians and vegans as static, the paper tries to answer the following questions: How can you understand vegetarians and vegans from the sense-making term”verbings? That is, how do vegetarians and vegans make and un-make sense during their changing process? What kind of contexts in form of inner and outer effect is and has been important in their making and un-making of sense? How do my interviewees in this particular moment in time and space seethemselves and their changing process in relation to the rest of society? The results presented are based on six semi-structured interviews influenced by sense-making's life-line method. Four interviews were conducted with vegetarians and two with vegans. Their age ranges from twenty to thirty two, and the amount of time they have been vegetarian or vegan range between eight months to eleven years. As shown in other studies, vegetarians and vegans are phenomenons that are more complex than mainstream research gives them credit for. My findings support this claim in concluding that my respondents use adiverse set of both internal and external hows to make sense of their vegetarianism and veganism. Forexample, internal in form of emotions and external in form of facts. Furthermore, my results may help to broaden our understanding of lifestyle changes beyond dietary, like going from a sedentary to an active life.