The Vicissitudes of Becoming: Holding Space among a community in Tākaka

Abstract

This thesis represents embodied practices in everyday life in an intentional community, facilitated by a visionary, feminist and a peace activist Sunshine Appleby in Aotearoa New Zealand. Established in 2018, the New Directions Connections Learning Centre is rooted towards spiritual awakening, community building, commensalities of healthy eating and zero-waste living. Holistic and utopian by its nature, the community building experiment is run at her home; opened to visitors, residents and participants in the different programs and activities. Nevertheless, the community, rooted in the spirituality of the New Age, is deeply affected by the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions and mandates that leads questioning the government, safety and wellbeing.

In an attempt to understand the meanings encoded in the organization of a community and why a woman in her late 70s chooses to share her daily life with a bunch of strangers, I dive in to living with them for 3 months during the winter 2021. The research is, however, based on my year and a half (August 2020 to February 2022) living between Nelson, Golden Bay and Wellington while studying remotely throughout the period. As a becoming ethnographer, I explore the peculiarities of Golden Bay; predominantly one, the practice of holding space.

This thesis is my attempt to elucidate the observed and the experienced by having been the space-holder myself. It is an audacious attempt to understand the novelty of New Age in relation to the re-emerging conspiracy theories and what has holding space to do with it. Is it exploited in activism? Do people actually believe in the conspiracies or is it a political stance of dissensus? Or aesthetical, perhaps?