Wyrd Ecology
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Wyrd Ecology by Barbara Jane Davy A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfilment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Environment, Resources and Sustainability Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2021 © Barbara Jane Davy 2021 Examining Committee Membership The following served on the Examining Committee for this thesis. The decision of the Examining Committee is by majority vote. External Examiner SARAH PIKE Professor Supervisor STEPHEN QUILLEY Associate Professor Internal Member SARAH WOLFE Associate Professor Internal-external Member DOUGLAS COWAN Professor Other Members DANIEL MCCARTHY Associate Professor SHELDON SOLOMON Professor ii Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. iii Abstract This work investigates what motivates environmental action through developing a case study on how ecological conscience forms in the ritual practices of a new religious movement. I conducted a two-year ethnographic study with a community of contemporary Heathens in eastern and southwestern Ontario to investigate how ritual practices are related to the formation of conscience in the group. I used participant observation and interviews to investigate how ritual is related to conscience formation, and how it can generate a sense of obligation to others, including nonhuman others. I draw on social psychology (especially terror management theory), cognitive science, anthropology, ritual studies, and philosophy to describe and interpret three ritual practices, each of which involve some sort of gift giving. First I discuss high sumbel, a ritual of sharing drinks and giving gifts, then Dísablót, an example of ancestor veneration in which offerings (a type of gift) are given to the dead, and finally the procession of Nerthus, in which offerings are made to a figure participants understand as a power of nature associated with a particular bioregion. I find that giving gifts and expressing thanks in ritual inspires a sense of gratitude and a desire to give in turn in participants. Among these Heathens this gratitude and felt sense of obligation extends beyond human relations to include the more than human world. When one gives a gift one develops an appreciation for what one has already received, and when ritual activities include things that make participants aware of their mortality, the values that come to mind during the activity can be operationalized. In this case, values of inclusion, gratitude, sharing, and generosity are reinforced through ritual practice and influence participants’ dispositions, attitudes, and habitual behaviours. iv Acknowledgments This work is a co-labour (in Marisol de la Cadena’s sense) between me and the Heathen communities of Vindisir Kindred and Raven’s Knoll. I am especially grateful to Jade Pichette, Austin Lawrence, Erik Lacharity, Brynja Clark, and Nicole Butler for their gifts of sharing their time, knowledge, and words in multiple interviews with me to shape into this narrative. Many more people in these communities entrusted me with their stories, some of which have not made it into print yet. I am grateful for all that has been shared with me, and hope I can do it justice. Your gifts have reshaped my relations with the world, while I shape and share our words to offer them to others. Thanks to Stephen Quilley for providing me with this research opportunity and pointing me in the direction of ritual and re-enchantment, and giving me an economically and sociologically grounded understanding of gifting. Thanks also for giving me the freedom to pursue this in all the weird and wonderful ways the work took me. Thanks also to committee members Sarah Wolfe, Daniel McCarthy, Sheldon Solomon, and Douglas Cowan for sharing key sources and providing feedback on this work. I am grateful to Sarah Pike, external examiner of this thesis, whose attentive reading helped steer it into a better final form. This research has been generously supported by the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo through the Dean’s Doctoral Initiative, and the Government of Ontario via Ontario Graduate Scholarships. Thanks to Mark for being such a good sounding board, and for always being my greatest supporter. I am still learning from your generosity. Thanks also to our child for enduring the trauma of being torn away from your childhood home, and still becoming the awesome person that you are. Chapter 1 “Theory: Unconscious Motivations of Environmental Behaviour” was published in a somewhat different form by Brill in Worldviews: Religion, Culture, and Ecology as “A rationale for the study of unconscious motivations of climate change, and how ritual practices can promote pro-environmental behaviour” Volume 25, Issue 2, pages 113-129, in 2021 (doi: 10.1163/15685357-20211001) under a Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Thank you to the University of Toronto Press for permission to include portions of my chapter “To Become Ancestors of a Living Future,” (pp. 419–431) from Health in the Anthropocene: Living Well on a Finite Planet, edited by Katharine Zywert and Steven Quilley © University of Toronto Press 2020, and include reworked content from that chapter in this work. This material is reprinted with permission of the publisher. v Thank you to Equinox Press for permission to include “Reconstructing the procession of Nerthus: A contemporary Heathen ritual offering of sacrifice,” forthcoming in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies which forms the majority of Chapter 5 “A Procession of Reconnecting.” vi Dedication For all our children. May we become the ancestors they need. vii Table of Contents Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... viii List of Figures ...................................................................................................................... xii List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... xiii List of Illustrations .............................................................................................................. xiv Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 0.1 Defining Ritual ................................................................................................................. 4 0.2 Relational Ontology, Gifting Relations, and Wyrd Ecology............................................. 8 0.3 Interpretive Lenses ....................................................................................................... 12 0.4 Overview of Chapters ................................................................................................... 14 Chapter 1. Theory: Unconscious Motivations of Environmental Behaviour .......................... 17 1.1 Giving Thanks Matters .................................................................................................. 17 1.2 The Limits of Reason ..................................................................................................... 18 1.3 Unconscious Motivations: Nudges, Priming, and Cognitive Frames ........................... 21 1.4 Habitus Formation ........................................................................................................ 23 Social Organization of Denial ................................................................................................ 24 1.5 More Unconscious Motivations: Fear, Apathy, and Repression ................................. 27 Unconscious Effects of Mortality Salience............................................................................ 28 1.6 The Limits of “Changing the Story” ............................................................................... 30 1.7 What Ritual Offers ........................................................................................................ 32 Interpretive Drift and Embodying Knowledge through Ritual .............................................. 33 1.8 The Limits of Ritual ....................................................................................................... 35 1.9 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2. Methods ............................................................................................................ 38 2.1 Survey on Environmental Values .................................................................................. 38 2.2 Qualitative Research ..................................................................................................... 39 Selecting the Case ................................................................................................................. 40 Positionality Statement......................................................................................................... 46 Self-reflexive Participant Observation .................................................................................. 49 Fieldnotes .............................................................................................................................. 52 viii