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- Title
Emotional Landscapes of Risk: Emotion and Culture in American Self-sufficiency Movements.
- Authors
Ford, Allison
- Abstract
Americans who identify as "homesteaders" and "preppers" seek to live "self-sufficient" lifestyles by distancing themselves from institutions that mediate access to the environment. This paper asks why individuals adopt "self-sufficiency" based practices and finds that they respond to discomfort about being embedded in risk society by adopting self-sufficiency as an emotion management strategy that fits within an American cultural logic of individualism. Based on ethnographic methods including interviews and participant observation representing two sub-cultures of American self-sufficiency movements, I show that cultural narratives about risk generate uncomfortable emotions that must be managed, resulting in material changes to daily practice via emotion management strategies that embrace cultural individualism. Self-sufficiency allows participants to reconcile American individualism with the lived experience of dependence on untrustworthy institutions, that expose them to global, impersonal risks, thus alleviating discomfort and reinforcing cultural beliefs. The self-sufficiency practices homesteaders and preppers adopt result in changing relationships to the environment. This paper intervenes in environmental theories that overlook the significance of emotion in shaping environmental practices and calls for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between emotions, culture, and material practices.
- Subjects
EMOTIONS; SELF-reliant living; RISK society; LANDSCAPES; CULTURE
- Publication
Qualitative Sociology, 2021, Vol 44, Issue 1, p125
- ISSN
0162-0436
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11133-020-09456-x