Bioregioning: Composing a politics of place for living well together

There is an urgent need to find more just and sustainable ways to inhabit the Earth. Postcapitalist literature has called for new ways of living well together that are beyond capitalist relationships and practices. This has included a strategy of ‘starting where we are’ to build on already-existing diverse economic practices and foster more just and sustainable livelihoods. I use bioregioning to turn attention to the question of ‘where are we?’, and to ask what bioregioning might contribute to understanding place and the composition of ecological livelihoods.
Bioregionalism is an eco-philosophy that advocates for living according to natural landscape and ecology as a strategy for sustainability (the ’reinhabitation’ of bioregions). Bioregionalism has been critiqued in geography because for its neglect of the spatiality of power and the economy, and the risk of environmental determinism. This thesis examines how this ecological thought has been reinvigorated through the verb ‘bioregioning’. It is based on qualitative research of two groups, Bioregioning Tayside (Scotland, UK) and the Casco Bay bioregion (Maine, USA), including interviews and 160+ hours of participant observation.
I mobilise Gibson-Graham’s politics of language, politics of the subject, and politics of collective action. I find that bioregioning unsettles narratives of place, showing that the relationship between humans and ecology is contingent and changing. This opens up the possibility of place-based politics. Secondly, bioregioning generates new, more collective forms of subjectivity based on exposing interconnectedness for ethical negotiation. Finally, through bioregioning, forms of collective action are emerging that offer tentative experiments in moving forward together, rather than a single theory of change. This thesis not only offers empirical examples of how community groups are mobilising relational understandings of place in their projects, contributing both to geographical spatial concepts, and community economies literature.