THESIS
My doctoral thesis explores how creating spaces for experimenting with alternate ways of seeing enables re-narration and re-experiencing of the lifeworld. It examines how transformations in worldviews can be conceptualised and develops the framework of 'following the narrative' in order to study this in practice. The empirical work was undertaken with participants in the Dark Mountain Project, a network of writers, artists and thinkers who inquire into cultural responses to social, ecological and economic crises.
If you read, quote, critique or find inspiration in this work I would love to hear from you.
Transforming Sustainabilities: Grassroots Narratives in an Age of Transition. An Ethnography of the Dark Mountain Project
Abstract, Contents, List of figures, List of tables, Acknowledgements
Motivation and rationale behind this research
Framing and composition of the thesis
Chapter 2: Onto-epistemological transitions towards sustainability
Grassroots innovations for sustainable consumption
Onto-epistemological transitions
The rules and visions that guide environment-making
Chapter 3: Researching onto-epistemological change
Constructing the travel guide
Developing the case study
Connecting the trails
Chapter 4: Beyond civilisation
What do you do, after you stop pretending?
Uncivilisation as a space between parallel narratives
Changing the rules of the game
Shifting worldview: from Logos to Mythos
To the foothills of the mountain
Curating and holding the conversation
Moving beyond the realm of civilisation
Venturing into the unknown
Chapter 5: (Re)imagining reality
Finding community
The reality of collapse
Descending into the future
Between stories
Reworking the frames of reference
Embodying change in creative practice
Re-storying: the narrator of the lifeworld as a poet
Chapter 6: Embodying the future
Re-enchantment and relationship with place
Wild time and embodied temporalities
Improvisation as an attitude and mode of organisation
Craft and the vernacular
Innovation at the level of the rules
Down the dark mountain
Answering the research questions
Re-narrating sustainabilities
Diffusion of the rules and visions of environment-making
Re-storying the lifeworld as journeying
Grassroots narratives and sustainability transitions
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