{"id":1341,"date":"2022-02-02T10:26:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T10:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2022-02-03T16:38:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T16:38:02","slug":"eco-reflexivity-in-extinction-rebellions-regenerative-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/religious-studies\/?p=1341","title":{"rendered":"Eco-reflexivity in Extinction Rebellion\u2019s Regenerative Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Dr Maria Nita<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although we are often told that late modernity is self-reflexive, and grounded in self-examination this reflexivity has been critiqued from many quarters for its \u201couroboric\u201d tendencies, or for not being grounded in social practice<\/span>.\u00b9 <\/span>It is as though, with the advent of what Peter Berger called the \u2018shrinkage\u2019 of the sacred, or Max Weber called \u2018disenchantment\u2019, there were fewer and fewer vistas for sustained collective reflection\u2014\u2018Sorry folks, all we have left is this small bottle of individual self-exploration leading to an intoxicating search for self-identity. It may look small, but it is bottomless\u2026\u2019 No wonder that only something as collectively sobering as the climate crisis could bring about the new \u2018elusive virtue\u2019 of ecological reflexivity, with its components of \u202f\u2018recognition, rethinking and response\u2019 (Pickering 2019), or as Extinction Rebellion encapsulates it: \u2018<\/span>Act Now<\/span><\/b>\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2018 reboot of the climate movement, Extinction Rebellion (XR), seems to have already accomplished the impossible by carrying through elements from the long 1960s transatlantic counterculture, to green millennials. When XR activists talk about REGEN\u2014the regenerative culture project at the heart of XR\u2014you can hear reverberated echoes of the alternative communes and free festivals, which seemed to have either become distant history or, may have been gestating inside new global transformative festivals (St John 2022; van den Ende 2022). Art and performance festivals had indeed preserved elements of the counterculture, but the protest spirit of the 1960s hippie culture had entered a dormant, performative, and memorialized phase (Nita and Gemie 2020). Sure, the so-called \u2018long 1960s\u2019 culture might be remembered and celebrated for two short weeks at Glastonbury or Burning Man, but could a new generation be living it out?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

REGEN (short for \u2018regenerative culture\u2019) recaptures the ethos of civil disobedience, artistic activism, and communalism of the early hippie communes which were anticipating and preparing themselves for a future world in deep crisis (Miller 1999). Take for example the four-minute clip below where an XR activist explains this new culture in the making. She describes REGEN as \u2018the mycelium upon which XR relies for its nurturing a new society that is resilient and robust and can support us all through the changes we must inevitably face together\u2019. REGEN helps us \u2018reweave ourselves as part of a living eco-system\u2019 through climate mindfulness, expressing grief, learning resilience, and experimenting with new types of self-care and communication practices\u2014like \u2018listening circles\u2019, gatherings where people listen without directly responding to each other. Surely, these are practices of eco-reflexivity\u2014but where are they coming from?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n