Practising Immanence: Living with Theory and Environmental Education makes creative contributions to both qualitative inquiry and environmental education by exploring how each of these ideas seep and fuse into one another; creating a space where methodology becomes pedagogy, and where each of these is already always environmental: indivisible with life. Clarke’s energising and innovative approach offers a challenge to conventional research practices and shows ways in which inquiry can be done differently. Drawing on new materialisms, affect theory, and the practical philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the book details the PhD journey of the author, merging stories and theory (and stories of theory) in the production of eight ‘haecceities’ — a philosophical concept which prioritises the thisness of a thing or event. This move allows a novel methodological approach whereby the haecceities act as sites of variation on the events of the book: the self as unstable and posthuman; the environment as everything (immanent) rather than as an overly romantic or a green version of nature; and the tensions that these moves create for ethical orientations in education, inquiry, and life in the Anthropocene. Practising Immanence brings theory to life through a diffractively critical style, and a unique approach to environmental pedagogic practice. This radical and vitalising book will be of interest to those inspired to explore environmental problems and inquiry with each other; and to those drawn to creative-relational, narrative, embodied, and post-qualitative approaches to research.

Practising Immanence: Living with Theory and Environmental Education makes creative contributions to both qualitative inquiry and environmental education by exploring how each of these ideas seep and fuse into one another; creating a space where methodology becomes pedagogy, and where each of these is already always environmental: indivisible with life. Clarke’s energising and innovative approach offers a challenge to conventional research practices and shows ways in which inquiry can be done differently. Drawing on new materialisms, affect theory, and the practical philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the book details the PhD journey of the author, merging stories and theory (and stories of theory) in the production of eight ‘haecceities’ — a philosophical concept which prioritises the thisness of a thing or event. This move allows a novel methodological approach whereby the haecceities act as sites of variation on the events of the book: the self as unstable and posthuman; the environment as everything (immanent) rather than as an overly romantic or a green version of nature; and the tensions that these moves create for ethical orientations in education, inquiry, and life in the Anthropocene. Practising Immanence brings theory to life through a diffractively critical style, and a unique approach to environmental pedagogic practice. This radical and vitalising book will be of interest to those inspired to explore environmental problems and inquiry with each other; and to those drawn to creative-relational, narrative, embodied, and post-qualitative approaches to research.

‘New materialisms’ refers to a broad, contemporary, and significant movement of thought across the social sciences and cultural studies which attempts to (re)turn to, renew, or create alternative philosophies of matter. Such philosophies spring from multiple sources but are in general an attempt to bring the indissolubility of the social and environmental more forcefully into our analytical frames and modes of inquiry and tackle a perceived over-reliance on discourse and language in the so-called post-modern era of philosophy and social science. This movement in thought is underlaid by, and meets up with, the climate and biodiversity crises and the nature of the human condition (and modes of learning or becoming), within the field of environmental education. This volume brings together academics working at differing intersections of environmental education and new materialisms, highlighting tensions, knots, and lines of flight across and for research, practice, and theory. As such this collection draws on multiple interpretations and streams of thought within new materialisms and demonstrates their significance for those engaging with environmental education policy, practice and research. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research.