This study developed a model of youth work practice based on a philosophy of nonviolence. Youth work in Australia is in the process of creating a clear self-consciousness and idea of its role, and a philosophy of nonviolence provides a strong foundation for further development. The study was based on the first three phases of intervention research (problem analysis and project planning, information gathering and synthesis, and design) within a heuristic paradigm. It involved a literature review, a telephone survey of 60 youth workers, in-depth interviews with 20 young people and 15 youth workers, and focus groups with 16 youth workers. Literature on youth work in Australia and Britain, and youth care in Canada and South Africa helped identify key features of youth work. Ten principles of nonviolence were developed based on principled nonviolence literature. The telephone survey provided a broad overview of current practice in New South Wales, and identified issues for further exploration in the interviews. The in-depth interviews with youth workers and young people explored their perceptions of violence and discrimination within their services; ways in which youth workers prevent and respond to disruptive, violent and unsafe behaviour; and ways in which youth work practice can be consistent with a philosophy of nonviolence. Based on the research, a model of nonviolent practice was developed, and then refined following focus groups with youth workers. The model encourages youth workers to be committed to nonviolence in all they do; to develop a reflective work practice; to build professional, caring relationships; to focus on power-with; to be committed to social change; to apply principles of social justice; to ensure there are adequate, appropriate staff and resources; to negotiate clear expectations and boundaries; to create a positive environment; to respond to behaviour nonviolently; and to facilitate informal education. / PhD Doctorate

This thesis examines the discursive position of 'goddess feminism', in relation to some of the difference- and eco feminist positions from the1960s and until today. In focus are the texts of the two goddess feminists, Monica Sjöö and Starhawk. The thesis contributes to a historiographical (re)situating of their political and religious narratives. It also contributes to an elaborated understanding of these goddess feminists and the goddess feminist discourse they are part of. The tentative feminist figuration 'the goddess identified feminist’ is articulated as a tool to discuss the religious and political discourse of goddess feminists as part of contemporary feminist and environmental political conversations and practices. Donna Haraway’s and Karen Barad’s post humanist theoretical interventions are used to explore and discuss the affinities between goddess feminists (re)negotiation of the subject/s 'goddess/nature/human' – and the (re)negotiation of 'nature/human’ made by new materialist/post humanist difference- and eco feminists of the 2000s. Rosi Braidotti’s writings on sexual difference, becoming and feminist figurations further informs the conclusions drawn in the thesis. Drawing on the methodological approaches of Clare Hemmings and Mieke Bal in the analysis of story-telling and subject construction, a contribution is also made, to the understanding of how story-telling as part of a discourse, produces meaning and asymmetric subject relations. In particular the thesis shows how a compassionate feminist storytelling involuntarily produces subject positions through, essentialist dualisms, hierarchical ordering and othering. In parallel, the thesis also discusses alternative narrative strategies that focus on both the discursive boarders and affinities. / Baksidestext: Det här är en bok om två gudinnefeminister och deras religiösa och politiska berättande. Men det är lika mycket en bok om ’gudinnefeminism’ och hur denna feministiska position relaterar till, skiljer sig från och överlappar med andra skillnads- och ekofeministiska positioner från 1960-talet och till idag. Magdalena Raivios doktorsavhandling omförhandlar historien om ’gudinne-feminism’. Den synliggör även innehållet i Monica Sjöös och Starhawks berättelser om samhället, gudinnan/naturen/människan, framtiden och revolu-tionen. Här visas hur problematiska generaliseringar och uppdelningar i ”vi” och ”de andra” skapas i berättandet – men att Sjöö och Starhawk även vidgar och omförhandlar innebörden av begrepp som ’kvinna’ och ’natur’. En feministisk figuration kallad ’den gudinneidentifierade feministen’ används som tentativ utgångspunkt för nutida samtal om feministiska och miljöpolitiska visioner och för-ändringsstrategier. Avhandlingens resultat styrker tidigare forskning som visat att ett ”feministiskt medkännande berättande” – trots sin välmenta ambition – ofrivilligt medverkar i skapandet av diskursiva gränser, hierarkier och generaliseringar. Som ett teoretiskt bidrag, formuleras och diskuteras här några skillnadsfeministiska ansatser till alternativa berättandestrategier.

Earth Matters examines the relationships between alternative religion in North America and the natural world through the twin lenses of the history of religions and cultural anthropology. Throughout, nature remains a contested ground, defined simultaneously the limits of cultural activity and by an increasing expansion of claims to knowledge by scientific discourses. Less a historical review than a series of fugues of thought, Earth Matters engages with figures like the French vitalist, Georges Canguilhem, the American environmentalist, John Muir; the founder of Deep Ecology, Arne Næss; the collaborators on Gaia Theory, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis; the physicist and New Age scientist, Fritjof Capra; and the Wiccan writer and activist, Starhawk. These subjects move in spirals throughout the thesis: Canguilhem opens the question of vitalism, the search for a source of being beyond the explanations of the emerging sciences. As rationalism expands its dominance across the scientific landscape, this animating force moves into the natural world, to that protean space between the city and the wild and in the environmental thinkers who initially moved along those boundaries. As the twentieth century moves towards a close, mechanistic thinking simultaneously reaches heights of success previously unimagined and collapses under the demand for complexity posed by quantum physics, by research in genetic interactions, by the continued elusive relationship of mind to health. This allows the wild to return inside through the internalization of consciousness sparked by the American New Age, but also provides a new model to understand the natural world as complex zone open to a wide variety of strategies, including the multiplicities of understanding offered through contemporary neopaganisms. Earth Matters argues for the necessity of the notion of ecology, both as an environmental concern but also as an organizing principle for human thought and behavior. Ecologies are by their nature complex and multi-variegated things dependent upon the surprising and unpredictable interaction of radically different organisms, and it is through this model that we are best able to understand not only ourselves but also our communities and our efforts to make sense of the external world.