Embodied Ways of Knowing: Women’s Eco-Activism

Microsoft Word - Mortimore_Lisa_PhD_2013.docxby
Lisa Mortimore BA, Simon Fraser University, 1993 MA, University of Victoria, 2004
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Lisa Mortimore, 2013 University of Victoria
All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author.
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by
Lisa Mortimore BA, Simon Fraser University, 1993 MA, University of Victoria, 2004
Supervisory Committee
Dr. Darlene E. Clover (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies) Supervisor
Dr. Catherine McGregor, (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies) Departmental Member
Dr. Budd Hall, (School of Public Administration) Outside Member
Dr. Leslie Brown (School of Social Work) Outside Member
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Abstract
Dr. Darlene E. Clover, (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies) Supervisor
Dr. Catherine McGregor, (Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies) Departmental Member
Dr. Budd Hall, (School of Public Administration) Outside Member
Dr. Leslie Brown, (School of Social Work) Outside Member
Traditional knowledges and ways of living in harmony with the Earth and among
species have been disregarded, discarded, and destroyed as industrialisation, capitalism,
and globalisation have pervaded, all maintained in part by the Cartesian split which
dissociates body from mind, heaven from Earth, nature from culture. These hegemonic
layers of control have served to bind the fate of the Earth’s eco-systems, including human
life, to the global capital economy which thrives on growth and development at any and
all costs.
This feminist, arts-informed inquiry brought an embodied lens to the stories of
eco-activism and inquired as to the role of embodied ways of knowing and their role in
eco-activism and the toll of activism upon women eco-activist bodies. This research
inquiry interviewed thirteen women eco-activists, conducted four art-making focus
groups, and used embodied reflexivity as part of the analysis process in order to find new
understandings and knowledge to add to the limited literature on embodiment, embodied
ways of knowing, and women’s eco-activism. Furthermore, this research sought to
identify and articulate the ways in which activism practice can be more sustainable for
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activists and intended to add to the growing awareness body/mind connection and unity
consciousness for activists, educators, and others working towards social change.
The key findings of this research indicate that embodied knowledges counter
fragmented ways of living, foster sustainable practices, and offer guidance and direction
to live more harmoniously with, and on, the Earth and to practice activism. It also
expands our understanding of women’s embodied ways of knowing and illuminates our
understandings of how bodies can guide and show alternate ways of living, and practising
activism, that are sustainable. This inquiry further added to the growing awareness of
body/mind connection and unity consciousness with a focus on activists, educators, and
others interested in finding ways to live with, rather than on, the Earth.
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Supervisory Committee ...................................................................................................... ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ xi Dedication ......................................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION The Entry Point ................................................................................................................... 1 Some Background and Self Location ................................................................................. 2 Statement of the Problem .................................................................................................... 5 Purpose and Objectives of the Study .................................................................................. 7 Literature Review................................................................................................................ 8 Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 10 Significance of the Study .................................................................................................. 11 How to Engage with this Work ......................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER TWO – THE CONTEXTS The Ecological Context..................................................................................................... 14 The Present Day Context .................................................................................................. 15 Historical Context ............................................................................................................. 17 The Political Context ........................................................................................................ 20 The Sociocultural Context ................................................................................................ 22 The Psychological Context ............................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER THREE – EMBODIMENT AND EMBODIED WAYS OF KNOWING Embodiment and Embodied Ways of Knowing ............................................................... 28 The Emergence of Western Knowledge Practices of Duality .......................................... 28 Embodiment ...................................................................................................................... 31 Feminisms and Embodiment: The Body Re-membered ....................................... 32 Dimensions of Embodiment…………………………………………………….. 34 The body as biological organism……………………………………..… 35 The phenomenological body ..................................................................... 37 The ecological body…………………………………………………….. 38 The relational body………………………………………………...…… 40 The cultural body ………………………………………………………..41 The psychospiritual body .......................................................................... 42 Embodiment and the Undivided Body .................................................................. 44 Embodied Learning ............................................................................................... 46 The Body in Education ......................................................................................... 48 Embodied Ways of Knowing: Epistemological Sites ....................................................... 50 The Body as Site of Knowledge ........................................................................... 53 Earth as Site of Knowledge................................................................................... 56
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Toxic environments .................................................................................. 127 Listening From the Inside ............................................................................................... 129 The Earth Speaks .................................................................................................. 129 Energy ...................................................................................................... 131 My Body Speaks ................................................................................................... 133 Heart and gut ............................................................................................ 133 My voice ................................................................................................. 134 . Dreaming................................................................................................. 135 Unity consciousness……………………………………………………. 136 Effect upon the body…………………………………………………… 136 Health benefits ......... ………………………………………….137 Physical costs ............................................................................ 137 Emotional costs ......................................................................... 140 . CHAPTER SEVEN - ANALYSIS Analysis........................................................................................................................... 143 Activism—Action to Orientation—A Way of Being………………………………..… 143 Answering the Call…………………………………………………………….. . 144 The internal pull……………………………………………….. .......................... 146 Eco-activism is an Orientation .............................................................................. 147 Activist – the label…………………………………………………….. .... 149 Personal Journey of Consciousness ...................................................................... 150 Anger – coming to a different place ..................................................................... 152 Putting my body on the line…………………………………………… .............. 154 Activism as Spiritual Practice…………………………………………………. .. 155 The Ebb and Flow ........................................................................................................... 158 Sustainability……………………………………………………………………. 158 Spiritual Nourishment ........................................................................................... 161 Practices that sustain ................................................................................... 162 Personal connection .............................................................................................. 163 Finding your rhythm ............................................................................................. 164 Embodiment and Barriers to it ........................................................................................ 165 Visions of a different world .................................................................................. 168 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 170 CHAPTER EIGHT - DISCUSSION Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 171 Embodiment: An Amorphous Concept………………………………………………... 173 Activism Requires a New Understanding or Definition……………………………….. 175 Embodied Ways of Knowing………………………………………………………….. 176 The Body as Site of Knowledge………………………………………………. ............ 176 The Primacy of Relationship with the Earth in Eco-Activism………………... ............ 179 Earth as Site of Knowledge…………………………………………………... .............. 182 Implications of Embodied Knowledges……………………………………… .... 184 Embodied Knowledges and Activism…………………………………………………. 185 Activism and the Body………………………………………………………...... 185
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Earth Connection and Activism……………………………………………… .... 189 Spirituality and Unity Consciousness ................................................................... 192 Activism and Spiritual Practice ............................................................................ 195 Activism: A Way of Life………………………………………………………………. 198 Identity as Activist……………………………………………………………... ........... 198 The Challenge of Anger .. ………………………………………………………..199 Activist Communities………………………………………………………..… . 202 CHAPTER NINE - CONCLUSIONS Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 205 My Experience as Researcher……..…………………………………………………… 205 Inviting Art into the Research………………………………………………………….. 207 Challenges as the Researcher…..……………………………………………… ............ 208 For the Reader……………………………..…………………………………………… 220 References…………………………………..………………………………………….. 221 Appendix – Ethics……………………………..……………………………………….. 245
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Table 1 – Search of Research Articles……………………………………………....77 Table 2 – Themes, Subthemes, and Categories…………………………………….106
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List of Figures
Henri .............................................................................................................................. 105 Kate’s Prayer Flag .......................................................................................................... 112 Jacquie’s Prayer Flag ..................................................................................................... 113 Kelly’s Prayer Flag ........................................................................................................ 117 Suzy’s Prayer Flag ......................................................................................................... 118 Trish’s Prayer Flag ......................................................................................................... 118 Lana Marie’s Prayer Flag ............................................................................................... 119 K. Linda’s Prayer Flag ................................................................................................... 132 Zoe’s Prayer Flag ........................................................................................................... 136 Claudette’s Prayer Flag .................................................................................................. 145 Doran’s Prayer Flag ....................................................................................................... 151 Fran’s Prayer Flag .......................................................................................................... 159 Claudia’s Prayer Flag ..................................................................................................... 150 Lisa’s Prayer Flag 2nd focus group ................................................................................. 206 When silence springs forth from the fire it cannot be broken…………………………..207 Lisa’s Prayer Flag 3rd focus group .................................................................................. 215 Lisa’s Prayer Flag 4th focus group ................................................................................. 215 Lisa’s Prayer Flag 1st focus group .................................................................................. 218
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Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful for the abundance of support I have in my life. I feel deeply held by
my community that expands far beyond humans to the eco-systems that
support and inspire my work and life.
First and foremost I want to acknowledge the amazing women in this study
who not only shared themselves with me but most importantly have offered themselves in
service of our world – our precious planet, species, and landscapes. To you, I will always
be grateful for your work, your support, and your inspiration.
Secondly I want to express my heartfelt appreciation of Dr. Darlene Clover, my
supervisor, who opened the door and mentored me throughout the process. Her wisdom,
advice, sense of humour, and belief in me and this work were invaluable in
keeping the door open and the process flowing.
Dr. Budd Hall for your encouragement, kindheartedness, and wisdom you freely shared.
Dr. Leslie Brown for your great questions, thoughtful curiosity, and willingness to deeply
engage with the material and process.
Dr. Catherine McGregor for your gracious kindness and keen mind.
I also want to extend a heartfelt appreciation to Dr. Sharon Stanley and Dr. Norah Trace
who have both mentored and opened my conceptual and lived experience
of conscious embodiment and embodied ways of knowing.
Friends who cheered me on and on and on! I particularly want to acknowledge
Catherine and Murray for their encouragement and advice.
My family who believe in me and are supportive of whatever
new endeavour I embark on.
Finally, I want to recognise Stacy, my beloved, who graciously listened, edited, talked
about, and held my hand so to speak throughout this process. You are one of a kind.
And I mustn’t forget Henri, my feline muse, who hung in there when the going got rough,
always listening, never interrupting and occasionally typing a few words as he
walked across my laptop to get my attention.
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Dedication
This dissertation is dedicated to all those who work on behalf of the Earth
and all her species. May you fall deeply into the wisdom of your body
and have it hold and guide your activist practice.
CHAPTER ONE
The Entry Point
This worked called me – I felt it in my bones, it stirred me deeply – my body guided me
to and through the work. It began long before I started my doctoral work…in February of 2006 I
was invited with two colleagues to Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories to teach a trauma
resolution workshop. Having never been to the North I was struck by many things – most
notably the apparent intactness of the culture and connection to the land of the Indigenous people
despite the colonisation and extermination policies and practices utilised in residential schools. I
was also struck by the undeniable power of the land – how my body dropped, as if the land
helped hold not only my own suffering but the suffering of the people I was with. By my body
dropped, I don’t mean that I collapsed, rather I felt a slowing and expanding of my inner self, the
way my body regulated, the way I stood in myself and the ways in which I was in connection
with those around me. I felt changed by the land, supported by it, in ways that I had never
experienced.
My curiosity was peaked. What was the link between a deep connection to the land and
resiliency? How did that connection impact embodiment? What were the links between the
sacred, land, and embodiment? I was looking for answers but at the time I found it hard to form
the questions…I could feel them in my body yet they were not ready to be articulated. I
followed this felt sense, it was an inkling of a knowing…I could feel a pull and I began putting
pieces together. During this time I was in contact with Dr. Darlene Clover who encouraged me
to do my doctorate with her in leadership studies. To consider moving departments from
counselling psychology was a challenge for me because of my own fractured worldview and the
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proliferation of dualities in educational and professional disciplines. I struggled to trust this
move into an expanded interdisciplinary view, and feared that this expansion would alienate me
from colleagues in my professional life. My initial work was to drop deep into my own knowing
and to be willing to stand in what I believe – I couldn’t afford to care that within my field or the
fractured world this choice was not understood if I were to lead or move forward from a place of
embodied integrity. For me, I found that place by dropping into my own knowing, not only of
my own knowing, but by trusting the relationship of Darlene Clover who had been open hearted
and encouraging from the beginning. Having taken the leap, grateful for the opportunity and
support, I have been graced with having the space to explore, link, and expand my understanding
and to articulate the ways in which embodied ways of knowing counteract the fragmented self
and world. In doing so I believe that it made one small stand toward my own integrated
approach to living and in building a bridge between individual and collective healing oft
delineated in academia.
Some Background and Self Location
As a white, middleclass, straight woman I have been afforded much privilege throughout
my life. In my twenties and early thirties I worked in multiple non-profit agencies: I was keenly
aware of the "costs" associated with doing front line crisis and counselling work and taking
action towards changing the status quo. I myself had seen, felt, and witnessed despair, rage,
isolation, heartache, and triumph. I knew and saw great women burn themselves out over and
over again. I witnessed this unchecked drive, or as I would now name it, disembodied activism,
create issues in their bodies and interpersonal lives.
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In 2002 I began training as a somatic therapist and began my own long journey of
becoming embodied and living with a non-dualistic consciousness. This work continues to date.
As a body oriented psychotherapist, educator, and social activist I continued to have first-hand
experiences and to witness many challenges which activists experience through their activism, at
this point with a new lens – embodiment. I came to believe that much activist, leadership, and
educational work often lacks the personal embodiment, awareness, or action imperative for
ethical and sustainable practices towards the self, as exemplified in experiences of burnout,
compassion fatigue, isolation, and despair. In looking to the literature I could find nothing that
addressed these concerns. I delved into more mainstream authors such as Starhawk, Joanna
Macy, and Paul Hawken and continued to make connections from my own experience and my
experience as a psychotherapist; I also started delving into writings of Jungian scholars through
the Spring Journal of Archetype and Culture edited by Nancy Cater. I was inspired. I came to
be curious about how embodiment was linked to ways of knowing through connection to the
body, Earth1, and spirit, and how these ways of knowing offer support and guidance for care and
action. This led me to this research – to explore how the body guides women’s eco-activism and
how the body is affected by eco-activism. More specifically, I looked at how 13 women eco-
activists used their bodies to access embodied ways of knowing or embodied epistemological
sites to support and guide them in their activism and self-sustainability.
During this time I have had the good fortune of being invited to different communities to
work. I continue to feel welcomed and supported by different lands and have received great
teachings from the participants about how their connection to the land and Earth supports them.
Most notably I have been to the mountains in Kaslo, BC which held our work so deeply and
firmly that I felt called to do part of the research in the Nelson area. I felt called and followed
1. I capitalise Earth to show respect
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that inkling by interviewing four women who lived there individually and then by returning
months later to meet with them and carry out an arts-informed focus group. I make my home on
Coast Salish territory in Victoria, BC. Throughout this time, the land and ocean has remained a
faithful supporter of me. I carried out the remainder of my research in Victoria or in the
surrounding area, interviewing nine more women and holding three additional arts-informed
focus groups.
By inquiring with women eco-activists about how the body informs, affects, and is
affected through their activism, this study is able to offer some insight towards social and
ecological transformation and increased sustainability for eco-activists and all of life, as “social
justice cannot be achieved apart from the well-being of the Earth; our fates are intertwined”
(Mack-Canty, 2004, p. 169). Further, this study gives voice to embodied ways of knowing that
have the potential to counteract the fractured ways in which we understand and carry out living.
In reflecting on the past six years I see that I entered into the programme knowing that it
would companion me as I came to understand what it is to lead from the inside out. The gifts
that have fostered that along the way have been plentiful, most notably the awareness of just how
deeply dualistic frameworks are embedded in my psyche and how utterly colonised I am. The
paradox is that this awareness is comfortable, as in familiar, and it is incredibly uncomfortable.
Merely my choice to do a PhD with the hopes of decolonising myself is absurd as I sit with it
now. It is not unlike engaging in war to establish peace. Yet, shift has happened, and continues,
as I am here and writing with the knowing that the journey is not over for in every moment it
begins.
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Statement of the Problem
Many scholars argue that we live in a fragmented world (Bai & Scutt, 2009; McGilchrist,
2009; Tacey, 2010; Ray, 2008). Long before you and I were born, the ways in which we live
with, and on, the world were fractured. We are born into this way of being and it has become
woven into the contextual landscape of our lives, both within and outside of us: Who we are,
how we live, and the choices we make are not inseparable from the sociocultural and political
arenas in which we exist. I believe it is the fracturing of life that is the problem in the
industrialised world of the twenty-first century; a global market that supports capitalism, abuses
of power, and exploitation. In Canada and in the United States capitalism is at the very core of
our fragmented ways of life creating ongoing local and global issues visible in areas of health
and healthcare, poverty, war and human rights, the criminal justice system, education and
credentialing, and environmental concerns: Merchant (2005) claims “The global ecological crisis
is exacerbated by the globalization of capitalism” (p. 30). The current and worsening ecological
crisis is merely one of many symptoms that illuminate the destructive nature of this fractured life
and our collective crisis of consciousness: “The so-called environmental crisis is actually
misnamed….It is not a crisis that begins with the environment, but one that begins with human
consciousness” (Tacey, 2010, p. 335).
There are overwhelmingly vivid expressions of ecological destruction and suffering
resulting both directly and indirectly from the fractured ways inherent in first world living.
While there is widespread disagreement amongst scholars and scientists within the
environmental field, many believe that telltale signs are abundant and forewarn of what is to
come if new, radical ways of being and knowing are not adopted (Hawken, 2007; Macy, 2007;
Orr, 2009a; and Suzuki, 2007). O’Keeffe (2010) suggests that as the state of the Earth continues
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to deteriorate, humans, individually and collectively, are being called upon to re-vision or re-
imagine our relationship and how we live in and on the Earth. Different ways of knowing and
being that have been silenced and excluded by “the power regimes that currently organize our
world” (personal communication, Leslie Brown March 11, 2013) are needed to make the radical
shifts necessary to alter the trajectory of environmental destruction and the impending fall-out.
More and more, people are responding to, and engaging in, activism towards sustainability and
changing individual behaviours (Clover, 2002). World-wide, women are engaging in
environmental justice (Barry, 2008), but despite this, environmental issues continue to increase
(Clover, 2002) and there exists expanding uncertainty as we traverse this unknown territory. The
current dominant global ideological agenda cannot be underestimated: Issues of environmental
degradation are political and are enabled by governmental support and corporate issues (Clover,
2002). In the current epoch of “neo-liberal governments and global economic forces,
environmental and social justice movements are increasingly challenged to tackle the structures
underpinning…