2026-10-09T11:49:41Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34037004 2026-09-30T21:34:09Z category_34166 portal_771 item_type_8 month_year_09_2026

Sheltering at the End of the World: Exploring Prepping Practices in Aotearoa New Zealand Eleanor Pollard (25146450) Social and cultural anthropology Prepping Ethnography Anthropology of futures Prefiguration New Zealand research Political Anthropology Temporality School: School of Social and Cultural Studies 440107 Social and cultural anthropology 139999 Other culture and society not elsewhere classified Degree Discipline: Anthropology Degree Name: Master of Arts Degree Level: Masters <p><strong>This thesis examines prepping practices, epistemologies, and imaginaries in Aotearoa New Zealand. Prepping is a contested term used to describe the activities of people taking material action to mitigate the impacts of perceived future crisis scenarios, from earthquakes or floods to social collapse or apocalyptic nuclear events. How do preppers in Aotearoa New Zealand understand, imagine, or experience crisis, and what do their responses anticipate for future social arrangements? I argue that prepping involves diverse anticipatory epistemologies that necessitate engagements with particular material practices. Thus, prepping can be best understood as a form of prefigurative politics, embodying new structures of relationality at familial, community and state levels. Using ethnographic data from interviews and participant observation with self-identified preppers across the North Island of New Zealand, I trace the relationship between specific settler colonial imaginaries and contemporary prepping utopias. By going beyond the archetypal ‘bunker prepping’ depictions and attending to the specificity of prepping lives here at the geographic ‘end of the world’, I consider how preppers’ responses to present and predicted crises embody futures where individuals and communities take on more responsibility for their own safety. Inspired by the contention that prefigurative politics can make visible “otherwise hidden pathways” out of crisis paralysis and towards alternative futures, I suggest that analysing prepping in Aotearoa New Zealand offers insight into how preppers construct meaningful lives in the face of complex global crises and seemingly inevitable collapse (J.K Gibson-Graham 2014, S151).</strong></p> 2026-10-01T00:00:00Z Text Thesis 10.26686/2ac9-k346 https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Sheltering_at_the_End_of_the_World_Exploring_Prepping_Practices_in_Aotearoa_New_Zealand/34037004 Author Retains Copyright