Bodily learning for a (climate) changing world: registering differences through performative and collective research

Abstract

There is widespread agreement that current climate change scenarios mean we have to change how we live on this planet. Yet our current understandings of social and behavioural change seem insufficient for the task at hand. In this paper we explore Bruno Latour's notion of “learning to be affected”, and we argue that this idea of bodily learning seems well-suited to thinking about how people can be moved to act in response to the human and nonhuman world that is all around us. We also argue that research can prompt and sharpen this form of embodied learning when it is conducted in a performative and collective mode that is geared towards crafting rather than capturing realities. We demonstrate how this might occur through the example of a community garden research project based on a collective bus trip-workshop method.

Keywords:

• learning to be affected
• performativity
• hybrid collective
• community gardening
• bus trip-workshop method

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the wider group of collaborators – the Newcastle community gardeners who participated (and continue to participate) in this project. Thanks also to Newcastle City Council and the University of Newcastle for funding support. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Community Garden Conference, Canberra, 7–8 October 2010, and published in the conference proceedings, and the comments from two anonymous reviewers prompted us to sharpen the ideas.

Notes

The title deliberatively echoes Hobson's (2008) sub-title “thinking sustainably for a (climate) changing world”.

Obviously, there are numerous texts that could be referred to. Two recent and useful reviews are Braun (2008) and Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy (2010).

Here there are parallels to Rigby's (2009) discussion of “dancing with disaster” and “contact improvisation”. Like learning to be affected these concepts can help us think about bodily learning as a way of relating differently to the world around us.

The term “performativity” is often associated with the work of Judith Butler on gender. Butler (1993) argues that there is no gendered essence that subjects reflect, rather gendered subjects come into being through endlessly repeated practices. In the same way, research as a performative practice means that research is not about reflecting and “getting at” the features of the social world that exist independent of the researcher, rather the world comes into being through endlessly repeated practices that include research.

This is one way in which the idea of a hybrid collective working in a performative mode differs from participatory action research (PAR). The focus in PAR is very much on human interactions. While there are parallels (for example, both value multiple forms of expertise, and both attend in some way to emotions and affect), PAR has largely developed within a realist tradition that seeks to capture the reality of the world, particularly the reality of oppression and exploitation. For more on PAR and how it connects with and differs from participatory projects informed by a different set of epistemological and ontological understandings, see Cameron and Gibson (2005).

With only enough funding for a mini-bus and lunches, etc., for 2 days we could not include all the community gardens in Newcastle, so we focused on gardens that were relatively close to each other. Craig Manhood phoned or visited each garden to explain the project and invited the gardens to send along two representatives.

This evaluation comprised nine questions:

1.	What were the highlights of the field trip/workshop for you?
2.	What were the lowlights? What didn‘t work so well?
3.	For a similar event in the future, what do you think should be done the same?
4.	For a similar event in the future, what do you think should be done differently?
5.	Can you tell us a bit about what you've learned or what's been confirmed for you about gardening (things like crops you might grow in your community garden, or the activities you might include in the garden)?
6.	What about the way your garden is managed and coordinated. What have you learned about this (or what‘s been confirmed for you)?
7.	What about your own role in your garden or your own personal journey. What have you learned about this?
8.	Overall, can you tell us a bit about what you‘ve learned or what‘s been confirmed for you about community gardening in general?
9.	Finally out of all the things you‘ve learned through the field trip, what ideas do you plan on putting into practice?

Arguably, the distinctiveness of each garden was the result of this loose approach which meant that each garden developed in response to the specificities of its social and environmental setting.

One participant has since got a job as a community garden facilitator in a public housing estate. He has commented how almost everyday he has to “step back” from what he thinks should be done to let community members drive and own the garden and that he only learned the importance of doing this through participating in this project.

One idea is to work with community gardens in Newcastle to research more about the community economies that are being creating around each garden through ethical economic decisions about necessity, surplus, commons and consumption (see Gibson-Graham 2006; Hill, 2011).