We Are All Preppers Now: Doomsday preppers, climate activists and subcultures of imminent collapse

Presented by: Dr Tom Doig

Date: Friday 16 September 2022
Time: 12–1pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)


Abstract

This presentation will discuss Dr Doig’s research into doomsday prepper, survivalist and climate activist subcultures, with a focus on Aotearoa New Zealand. This is an ongoing creative non-fiction / narrative journalism project, which uses methods including media analysis, oral history interviews and participant-observation. The research to date suggests that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the sociocultural category of ‘prepper’ has undergone significant depathologisation and ‘mainstreaming’, as members of the general public reassess their own attitudes towards disasters, risk and emergency-preparedness. At the same time, there has been a proliferation of new subcategories of prepper: ‘Sunday preppers’, ‘fitness preppers, ‘financial preppers’, and so on. In the face of this definitional fuzziness and inconsistency, I propose that the concept of ‘prepping’ is best understood as simultaneously 1) a belief system and 2) a set of material practices, as well as 3) a self-identity. This presentation will also present preliminary findings from research in Aotearoa New Zealand, which suggests that some ‘Kiwi preppers’ exhibit political and ideological views quite distinct from the prevailing US stereotypes of preppers as right-wing, libertarian and misanthropic


Presenter

Dr Tom Doig is a Creative Writing Lecturer at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Hazelwood (Penguin Random House, 2020), The Coal Face (Penguin Books Australia, 2015) and Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure (Allen & Unwin, 2013), and the contributing editor of Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books, 2020).


 

About Research Seminar and Workshop Series

 


School of Communication and Arts Research Seminar Series

The research seminar and workshop series occur each semester, each with a different topic and guest speaker from UQ or otherwise.

Friday, 16 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Archives: A Knowledge Café on Ways of Knowing, Seeing, Being, and Accessing

A conversation hosted by Kate Newey, Bernadette Cochrane, Madelyn Coupe, and Hannah Mason

Friday, 23 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at 09-738

Dispatches from Trump-World: Preppers, Climate Disasters and a Front Row Seat the 2024 Republican National Convention

Dr Tom Doig

Friday, 30August
12-1pm

Indigenising the Curriculum Pedagogy JamDr Amelia Barikin and Prof. Anna Johnston

Friday, 13 September
12-1pm

Assessment Security Pedagogy JamDr Amelia Barikin and Dr Maureen Engel

Friday, 20 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Upside Down: Adaptation and Digital Affordances in Stranger Things

Dr Bernadette Cochrane

Friday, 11 October
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Linking research, teaching and engagement – the PEATLI project

A.Prof Elske van de Fliert

 

Venue

Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)