Dams and Flows: Immersing in Western Meaning Systems in Search of Ecocultural Reflexivity

ABSTRACT

In this unprecedented era of anthropogenic ecological destruction, this study illustrates inadequacies in conceptual language available in Western settings to think deeply and holistically about “nature.” At the same time, the study illustrates transformative potential of moments of ecocultural reflexivity. Using free write methodology, we examine ways participants in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia articulate what they mean when they say “nature.” We interpret participant streams of consciousness as representative of a wider Western river-way, a channel of dominant, multiple, and contradictory meanings in continuous movement. We identify conceptual obstructions that provide glimpses into ways Western ecological relations are bounded and dammed by binary, fragmented, and unconsidered meanings. Yet reflexivity in the face of such obstructions, and in potent ecocultural side streams of childhood remembering and ecocentric cosmology, provides some participants a lucid flow of regenerative narratives at a time such shared stories are urgently needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecocultural reflexivity
• western environmental discourse
• meanings of “nature”
• cosmology
• childhood
• streams of consciousness
• free writing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use compound terms such as “ecoculture” and “humanature” and phrases such as “with/in/as ‘nature’” to enmesh humans, culture, and “nature” as they are in life (Milstein, 2011; Milstein et al., 2011).

2. The phrase “more-than-human world” avoids reproducing human/nature and culture/nature binaries and instead reframes “nature” or “environment” as encompassing and extending beyond human experience.

3. Of these, 210 participants were in the US, 82 in New Zealand, and 19 in Australia. Gender information was collected from about two thirds of the study participants (132 females and 70 males). Gender differences associated with lists, redundancy, childhood, and cosmology themes examined in the present article were not significant.

4. Six of 14 utterances that included childhood asserted a no binary meaning and three troubled the binary; 28 of 71 utterances that included cosmology asserted a no binary meaning and 13 troubled the binary

5. A self-designation for New Zealanders, named after one of the country’s iconic and endangered birds.

Additional information

Funding

Tema Milstein wishes to thank the United States’ Fulbright Core Program, New Zealand’s Fulbright Senior Scholar Programme (Fulbright New Zealand), and Australia’s University of Tasmania Visiting Fellow program for supporting research that informs this study.