Containing Multitudes

Given my daily work as Professor of Sexology, you can imagine my thrill and excitement when I listened to Bob Dylan’s latest album, “Rough and rowdy ways”, and discovered that the old master of poetry and rock ’n’ roll had made his somewhat unexpected entrance into my professional world and field of expertise

Transforming sustainabilities: grassroots narratives in an age of transition. An ethnography of the dark mountain project

The framing of sustainability as a goal of aligning human needs with protection of the environment has been pursued through various definitions and frameworks in policies and programmes across a wide range of contexts. And yet, unsustainable modes of production and consumption are accelerating the global destruction of natural habitats, depletion of resources, release of greenhouse gasses and other forms of pollution. Thus, the nature and scale of the changes that the earth is undergoing is bringing conventional approaches to, and understandings of, the sustainability challenge into question. This thesis re-examines the framing of the sustainability challenge instead as one of understanding the relations between humans and nature implied by dominant cultural narratives. Through building a theoretical understanding of how human-nature relationships can be understood and studied, and devising a methodology for examining individual and collective ontologies and epistemologies, it investigates how alternative worldviews are imagined and embodied in grassroots innovations. Specifically, it provides an indepth ethnographic study of the Dark Mountain Project – a network of writers, artists and thinkers who explore cultural narratives that move beyond the meta-narrative of progress. It shows how engaging with the beliefs and assumptions entailed by the dominant Western meta-narrative can open up for new knowledges and actions to address the sustainability challenge. The thesis suggests that creating sustainable ways of living involves active participation in the way ‘sustainability’ is imagined, storied and enacted. Findings indicate that creating spaces for active experimentation with alternate ways of seeing, co-creation of new vocabularies and development of creative practices, is a direct way to enable re-narration and re-experiencing of human-nature relations. It concludes that engaging with transitions in worldviews as a transformation in the experience of social life provides a promising starting point for future work on the sustainability challenge

Vestjysk studehandel som binæringsvej - om Jens Noklits handel 1828-42.

Forfatteren har i mange år været museumsinspektør ved Holstebro Museum. Han har skrevet disputats om vestjysk studehandel. Artiklen er en detailstudie om samme enne. Efter studehandelens frigivelse den 11. juni 1788, fik denne traditionsrige del af dansk landbrugseksport en markant opblomstring. Billet af den følgende tid er ofte forbundet med jyske studekonger og med store pengebeløb, vandringer over mørke ensomme hedestrækninger, og ikke mindst handelsfolkene som de store individualister med nærmest overnaturlige sanser i handelssituationens spændingsmættede atmosfære.Langt mere problematisk er det at opnå viden om den store gruppe småhandlende, der fungerede som underleverandører af stude til de kendte handelsfolk, hvis færd kan følges i blandt andet toldregnskaberne. Men det kan man sjældent med de almindelige bønder og husmænd. Esben Graugaard har imidlertid været så heldig at finde en slidt 217 siders bog fra perioden 1828-47, ført af bonden og handelsmanden Jens Noklit fra No nord for Ringkøbing.