TY - CHAP

T1 - Escaping the Modern Predicament: Nature as refuge and community in contemporary health practices in Wales, Sweden, and Finland

AU - Lord, Ed

AU - Ohlsson, Henrik

PY - 2023/2/1

Y1 - 2023/2/1

N2 - This chapter engages with the burgeoning international phenomenon of therapeutic nature practices, such as ecotherapy, forest bathing, and forest therapy. This is informed by the author’s ethnographic research in European geographical and cultural contexts with much in common but also notable differences: Wales, Sweden, and Finland. In all of these fieldwork contexts the idea that ‘natural’ spaces were somewhere one could ‘get away’ to as an ‘escape’, as something ‘set apart’ or seen as ‘other’, was key to the therapeutic framing of the activities. This was both an escape from perceived pathological effects of society and an escape to a complex community of life represented by nature. Therefore in these fields nature is a community, but one without social roles and stratification, a communitas, as described by Victor Turner. In Turner’s understanding, communitas arises in a liminal state, an in-between state where the social system is dissolved within a ritual framework, enabling participants to transform, reconstitute themselves, and re-enter society in a new role. A lack of social roles and demands is still an absence, of course. However, in many practitioners’ accounts it is also clear that positive characteristics are attributed to earth beings. The presence of life and living beings is experienced as revitalising. A transformation can be argued to take place, but this is primarily within the individual, rather than outer cultural or societal change. Also of note was a mostly positive view of nature, with little consideration of the potential for threat or danger. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how therapeutic nature practices both reflect and resist contemporary Western culture.

AB - This chapter engages with the burgeoning international phenomenon of therapeutic nature practices, such as ecotherapy, forest bathing, and forest therapy. This is informed by the author’s ethnographic research in European geographical and cultural contexts with much in common but also notable differences: Wales, Sweden, and Finland. In all of these fieldwork contexts the idea that ‘natural’ spaces were somewhere one could ‘get away’ to as an ‘escape’, as something ‘set apart’ or seen as ‘other’, was key to the therapeutic framing of the activities. This was both an escape from perceived pathological effects of society and an escape to a complex community of life represented by nature. Therefore in these fields nature is a community, but one without social roles and stratification, a communitas, as described by Victor Turner. In Turner’s understanding, communitas arises in a liminal state, an in-between state where the social system is dissolved within a ritual framework, enabling participants to transform, reconstitute themselves, and re-enter society in a new role. A lack of social roles and demands is still an absence, of course. However, in many practitioners’ accounts it is also clear that positive characteristics are attributed to earth beings. The presence of life and living beings is experienced as revitalising. A transformation can be argued to take place, but this is primarily within the individual, rather than outer cultural or societal change. Also of note was a mostly positive view of nature, with little consideration of the potential for threat or danger. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how therapeutic nature practices both reflect and resist contemporary Western culture.

UR - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-10294-3_8

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-031-10294-3

DO - 10.1007/978-3-031-10294-3

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-3-031-10293-6

SN - 978-3-031-10296-7

T3 - Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability

SP - 165

EP - 189

BT - Relating with More-than-Humans

A2 - Chamel, Jean

A2 - Dansac, Yael

PB - Palgrave macmillan - Springer

CY - Cham, Switzerland

ER -