PhD (General)

Bibliography

Kate grew up in the Lake District, UK . She lived on the western shore of Ullswater – the place that inspired Wordsworth to pen his ode to daffodils:

I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Kate moved to Tasmania during the battle to save the Franklin . Infused with her father's love of the outdoors and her mother's commitment to environmental activism, Kate became a passionate campaigner for the protection of Tasmania 's wild places.

She studied Science (Botany) at the University of Tasmania , completed a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Studies and worked in a variety of environmentally focused roles in government and non-government sectors. This work motivated her to pursue her interest in environmental thought.

Kate is currently undertaking postgraduate research in the area of ecophilosophy. Her research considers who we are and how we are within the Australian landscape. She is interested in re-evaluating the ideas and assumptions that underpin our sense of self in relation to the broader ecological world. Kate draws on deep ecology as the foundation for her research, particularly Warwick Fox's transpersonal ecology.

Her work is informed and inspired by a lived recognition of her relationships within the ecological world:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Thesis summary

Within urban Australia we live with an assumption of separateness from the broader ecological world. If we are to connect with ‘nature' we are drawn to leave our homes and venture into wild places. Within wild places we can experience ourselves as part of the ecological world. Our sense of self can shift from that of an autonomous individual to that of an ecological self – a sense of self based on recognition of ourselves as ecological beings. We can perceive our existence as profoundly interconnected with that of the broader ecological world.

This dissertation explores the process of identification within urban Australia ; it explores how we can recognize ourselves as ecological beings within the suburbs, as well as within wild places. This exploration includes:

• A phenomenological consideration of life within Australian suburbia;
• Construction of an alternate worldview/cosmology;
• An emerging sense of ecological self;
• Implications for deep ecological thought, and for day-to-day living.

Contact

boothk@postoffice.utas.edu.au

Papers

Booth, K (2007) Recapturing Lived Experience: Roles for phenomenology in science and the School community, unpublished

Booth, K (2007) Humans as Animal: The cosmology of hairy underarms, unpublished