Office for Environmental Programs - Theses

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End date: 2022 × Subject: Bourdieu ×

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    Power Shifts: A study of Agency in the Australian Environmental Movement
    Bock, Chante ( 2022)
    Successful environmental campaigns have become critical as the consequences of delayed action on climate change have become extreme in Australia with the frequency of floods, heat waves and bushfires severe. This research constitutes a qualitative study into how campaigners’ agency informs their strategies in the Australian environmental movement. Detailed data was gathered from 4 semi-structured interviews with campaigners in Australian in an effort to understand the relationships between campaigns and campaigner’s understandings of their agency. The data was thematically analyzed through the lens of Bourdieu’s sociological Practice theory of habitus and the field to find themes. Identified themes focused on the structure of the participant organisations such as: fundraising and financial independence; internal barriers like team relationships and burn-out; large external themes were power structures, like capitalism and campaigns strategies that related to those. The research suggests that organisations’ fundraising structures, as well as activist cultures held elements that acted as barriers towards campaigns at times. Campaigners were concerned that through the social cultures that they built around and within their organisations, they could be reproducing structures of capitalism and other systems of oppression. The thesis ends by offering theoretical and practical implications that the results hold, as well as recommendations and words of encouragement for the Australian environmental movement.
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    What facilitates engaging with the practice of gardening?: A case study of the Ashwood College Permaculture Food Garden
    Corbo-Perkins, Gabriella ( 2015-11-02)
    The aim of this research project is to identify what facilitates engaging with the practice of gardening at the Ashwood College Permaculture Food Garden. It is a qualitative investigation into the experiences of six volunteers at the case study garden. The analysis takes a sociological approach through the use of practice theory. A practice can be understood as a “routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one other” (Reckwitz 2002, p. 249). To put it simply, social practices are things that people are competent in doing, and that once learned, can be reproduced routinely. The main theories within this body of research are explained, and then synthesized in order to form a framing for analysis of the case study garden. The framework is applied to analyse and explore the relationship between the volunteers at Ashwood and community gardening. The findings are then used to inform strategic recommendations for increasing volunteer support at the garden. This report concludes that if practitioners are to accept a modified or new practice it is crucial to ensure that the field is clearly defined, the motivation is reinforced, and the volunteers’ skills are constantly developing to their satisfaction. While the theoretically informed strategic suggestions are specific to the volunteers at Ashwood, the results can be applied to similar community based organisations that are trying to attract increased volunteer support.