Research Seminar - We Are All Preppers Now: Doomsday preppers, climate activists and subcultures of imminent collapse.
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, 4 August Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | After the Future: Heat, Collapse, and Exhausting the “Future of Work” | Dr Luke Munn |
Friday, 25 August Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Promoting children’s environmental responsibility in the EFL classroom | Dr Valentina Adami |
Friday, 1 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Portraying Asian-diasporic identity beyond the limits of the literary label Asian-Australian | Catriona Arthy and Olivia De Zilva |
Friday, 8 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Exploring Digital Humanities through the Lens of Journalism: A Case Study of Reader Comment Analysis | Dr Lujain Shafeeq |
Friday, 15 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Carly-Jay Metcalfe and Bianca Millroy | |
Friday, 22 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Coping with eco-anxiety: A guided journal trial | Dr Ans Vercammen and Dr Skye Doherty |