Vegans and cyclists are often outsiders, negotiating food systems and built environments that prioritize omnivores and motor vehicles. Pedaling Resistance: Sympathy, Subversion, and Vegan Cycling examines the relationship between veganism and cycling through the journeys, experiences, and reflections of a dozen vegan cyclists from the United States and beyond.
The essays in this collection explore the unity between cycling for health, work, competition, transport, and joy, and the issues of animal suffering, environmentalism, and speciesism inherent in veganism—all through lenses of class, race, gender, and disability. Pedaling Resistance illuminates themes of everyday resistance and boundary crossing to uncover the greater social and political issues that underlie the decisions to give up animal products and choose cycling over driving.
Carol J. Adams is a feminist scholar, activist, and animal-rights advocate. A pioneering commentator on the ethics of veganism, she earned her master of divinity at Yale University. Her numerous books include The Sexual Politics of Meat, Burger, and Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time.
Michael D. Wise, a longtime amateur bike racer, is an environmental historian and cultural geographer at the University of North Texas. He is the author of Native Foods, Producing Predators: Wolves, Work, and Conquest in the Northern Rockies, and many essays on the historical dimensions of food and animal-human relationships in North America.
“Over many years, I have realized that the relationship between veganism and cycling has deep roots. This collection of essays will go a long way toward showing that being vegan is 100 percent compatible with being a strong cyclist.”
—Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals and Dogs Demystified
“Pedaling Resistance took me on a ride that affirmed my belief that physical movement creates time and space to explore, examine, and execute my vegan activism—and reminded me that whether cycling solo or in a pack, I’m part of a collective working to create justice for all.”
—JL Fields, author of The Complete Plant-Based Diet: A Guide and Cookbook to Enjoy Eating More Plants
“An exemplary anthology that honors the animal body and its free movement through space, without exclusion or expectation of perfection.”
—Martin Rowe, editor of Running, Eating, Thinking: A Vegan Anthology
Food and Foodways is a series from the University of Arkansas Press that explores historical and contemporary topics in global food studies. We are committed to representing a diverse set of voices that tell lesser known food stories and to provoking new avenues of interdisciplinary research. Our strengths are works in the humanities and social sciences that use food as a critical lens to examine broader cultural, environmental, and ethical issues. In addition to scholarly books, we publish creative nonfiction that explores these topics with a focus on food’s sensory dimensions.
