- Title
- Everyday witches: identity and community among young Australian women practising witchcraft
- Creator
- Quilty, Emma Lachmi
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This thesis investigates witchcraft as a social phenomenon, by focusing on the everyday practices of young Australian witches. The thesis explores wider questions about how young witches construct meaning through cosmological systems and ritual participation. Everyday practices are deeply embodied and connect to broader ideas of belonging and identity. To explore these practices and patterns of belonging, the thesis draws on twelve months of fieldwork. This fieldwork was conducted among young Australian women practising witchcraft in, primarily, Reclaiming witchcraft, though also incorporating women practising in other traditions. The majority of the young women interviewed for this study are in their early-to-mid-twenties, some of whom grew up in conservative Christian families, which affected the development of their spiritual identities, leading them into the world of witchcraft. The thesis draws on insider participant observation methods where the researcher became immersed in the community that is the focus of this study. This thesis examines the social and cultural dimensions of spirituality, through a witchy lens, rather than a secular or rationalist perspective. Through an analysis of witchy beliefs and practices, this thesis critically considers how witchcraft is lived in everyday contexts. It considers how women embrace witchcraft as a domain where they enact femininity in a way that is counter to patriarchal discourses. Through an analysis of cosmology and ritual, this thesis aims to illuminate how young women create a sense of belonging in their communities using the symbol of the witch. It aims to inform contemporary understandings of spiritual identity work. The thesis analyses witchcraft conceptual systems using metaphors to draw out the ways the young women intertwine witchyness into their everyday lives. One of the primary metaphors that came out of the analysis was weaving. Weaving emerges in the ways the young women intertwine themselves into a sense of sociality that encompasses the past, present and future, as well as human and non-human persons. From this web of witchyness, the thesis aims to inform current understandings of how young people understand themselves and their place in the world. Witchcraft represents an attempt to improvise on the historical threads they have inherited to create their own narratives. The young women in this study live these stories through seemingly mundane practices that become part of their everyday lives.
- Subject
- anthropology; sociology; witchcraft; identity; community; gender; youth
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1410860
- Identifier
- uon:36246
- Rights
- Copyright 2020 Emma Lachmi Quilty
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 346 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |