Re-Thinking Nature-Connection: Practitioners’ Worldviews as Multi-Paradigmatic Entanglements

Nature-connection is increasingly promoted as a way of prompting care and concern for nature and encouraging pro-environmental behaviours. Yet its conceptual foundations remain unclear and contested, with researchers defining the construct in divergent ways. In this study, a situational analysis of interviews with nature-connection practitioners is used to provide empirical evidence demonstrating entwined and contradictory discourses at work in their talk about nature-connection theory and practice. The analysis illustrates the ways in which Cartesian dualism and relational ontologies occupy the same discursive space. The data are used to discuss possible routes toward a more coherent premise for an environmental ethic than the ubiquitous biophilia hypothesis, introducing panpsychism as a promising rationale for the moral consideration of nonhumans and the fostering of cultural intuitions of animacy in relationship to urban environments and human-made artefacts. Conservationists and educators are encouraged to explore panpsychism for its potential to provide an ethical framework for promoting a greater sense of ecological responsibility.