Wellbeing and Self-Transformation in Natural Landscapes (eBook)

Rebecca Crowther is a transdisciplinary ethnographic researcher working between, across and beyond disciplines within the arts, humanities and social sciences. Her research interests lie in the phenomenological experience of natural landscapes.

INTRODUCTIONEngaging in autobiographical reflexivity to begin with, the introduction will set up a familiar scenario of nature disconnection and the inevitable draw to spending time within nature. However, this introduction will introduce new and un-covered themes. These themes are due to my time spent within the field aiming to understand real experiences of leaving urban environments in pursuit of natural spaces and the positive transformation they are believed to offer. The most significant difference is real life participation, being within and understanding from individuals perspectives. This book will offer full qualitative accounts. The introduction will establish some of the pre-conceived ideas regarding nature and physiological benefits however will push towards the intangible experience of nature connection and argue that the only way to comprehend this is to truly understand from individual perspectives. The introduction will also tackle the contested term ‘nature.’CHAPTER ONE: A phenomenonChapter one will introduce the diversity amongst my case studies in terms of agenda, back ground and perceptions. It will also introduce the individuals with whom I worked and in doing so will situate nature within this research context. This chapter will also outline much of the interdisciplinary research in nature and wellbeing to date and highlight this research’s contributions to the field(s). This will focus on the nature experience: sociality, place and the self, ethnographic research in groups in nature, transdisciplinary ways of looking and detailing my belief that these encounters can draw similarities with performance. Within this chapter I will also discuss narratives, abstraction and personal narrative and how these have significant impact upon experience of these shared encounters.CHAPTER TWO: Mind and bodyChapter two will question how one might approach experiences that are both physical and psychological and why a transdisciplinary strategy was necessary. It will discuss my serendipitous ethnography, responsive and flexible methods as well as my Goethian ethic in observation. It will also detail why such an ethic was necessary. This chapter will outline key moments within fieldwork and how opportunity became a methodology. It will outline my being with groups and the responsive, flexible methods in context. Ultimately, this chapter will tackle journey and participation, ambiguity and development.CHAPTER THREE: BelongingThis chapter will speak of new cultural interactions, friendship, new social interactions, feeling secure, empathy, social facilitation, belonging and self-identification. The key theme within this chapter is the motivation of individuals to self-verify, to reach an ideal sense of self and to become a part of the group in the landscape. This chapter will introduce notions of liminality and the self before being fully explored in chapter four.CHAPTER FOUR: The Liminal Loop.Chapter four begins with unearthing liminality within this context, drawing from the work of Victor Turner and van Gennep. Importantly this work re-creates these terms in a metaphorical context relating to the self, the group dynamic and the perception of the landscape. First the liminoid context is explored before moving on to ideas surrounding the framing of activity, communitas, new physical and mental experiences, group dynamics and group theory. Key to this chapter is my theory that there are three sites of liminality within these rural nature experiences. This chapter also considers anti-structure and reflection, affordance and abstraction, opportunities in the landscape, changing perceptions of afforded opportunities, building context and experience, new contexts and personal narratives and the dynamics of experience.CHAPTER FIVE: Anthropocentrism and the transforming selfChapter Five is dedicated to understandings of non-human intention. It will discuss the effect of the group on perception of the non-human. The belief of some individuals in the reciprocity of the interactions between human and non will be explored by looking at personification and anthropomorphism, language and metaphor. This chapter considers nature as social and becoming effective social agents amongst the material rural landscape. I will finally discuss the inevitability of centrism. Chapter Five also the opposing end of the spectrum - looking at understandings of the agency of only the self and group, efficacy, sociality and belonging, self-development, deprivation and challenge (getting back to basics) as well as how, within some groups, excursions are designed. This chapter will also ask whether the landscape is even relevant to notions of wellbeing within such social encounters.CHAPTER SIX: Being a good personThis final chapter details how people engaging in the natural landscape compete for the moral high-ground in relation to interactions within the outdoors. This is discussed in relation to how people perceive positive transformation. This chapter poses the question - if all case studies aim for the bettering of human experience, are agendas so drastically different? Finally this chapter comes some way in pinning down the intangible ‘something’ that all individuals seemed to be looking for within their engagement with these groups and landscapes. This chapter will end with a section named Returning to the Earth: A final performance – This section is dedicated to the death of an individual within fieldwork and to her final self-verification as someone who aligns herself with the natural landscape. Here we will look at identity symbols and performing identity, bringing the text full circle.