Abstract:

Introduction:
The global spread of Covid-19 demonstrated the human impact on living nature and once again revealed the need of changing attitudes towards the planet and the life on it. Taking into account the emergence of a new culture related to ecological values and their globalization as one of the main cultural transformations in the recent decades, this study focuses on making explicit the conditions of possibility of this emergence. An essential aspect of the attitude toward nature and its protection is the formation of pro-environmental behaviour based on a pro-environmental mindset on the grounds of similarly oriented pre-reflexive dispositions. The study here presented aims at making explicit the deep dispositions of young people toward a disappearing and increasingly more valuable and valued natural resource – water.

Methodology:
Unlike conventional empirical sociological research with, as Bourdieu warns, its asymmetry and specific symbolic violence, the present study adapts an already tested nonclassical qualitative methodology – the so-called ‘Projective Study by Free Associations’ (PSFA). It incorporates elements from three hetero-geneous approaches – 1) ethnomethodological interventions in the world of everyday life (Garfinkelian breaching experiments), 2) the method of free associations in psychoanalysis, and 3) the projective test in psychology. Rethought with regard to the goals of this study, the proposed non-conventional qualitative methodology provides access to the unconscious ideas of respondents related to water that are revealed in the course of the study through their free associations.
The study was done within the specific Laboratory for Applying Non-conventional Sociological Methods that was organized and carried out online in 2021 as a part of the practical training of sociology students. The participants in the Projective Study by Free Association (PSFA) were students whose presence at the training was obligatory as a part of the curriculum. The experiment itself was done by us in the double role of both teachers and researchers. The goal was, by the so-called ‘training by research’, to create a dialogical space where students should meet in leaving the, so to say, virtual classrooms, in order to take part in the fieldwork, the immediate process of obtaining data, and also in the very development and application of the methods of analyzing these data.

Results and conclusions:
In result of the described procedure, the pre-reflexive attitudes toward water in the young people participating in the projective study by free associations are objectivated in several interpretive keys: life, raw natural force, danger, occupation, hygiene, nature-beauty, value, industry. The participant’s explanations as to the connection between associations, keywords and relations between the revealed interpretive keys permit the conclusion that the pre-reflexive dispositions of the studied persons demonstrate a high level of pro-environmental behaviour in everyday life with regard to water, as well as an orientation to viewing water as an increasingly more valuable capital of key importance to all spheres of life and daily affairs which therefore must be used very reasonably and with the due attention and respect.

Keywords:

Young people, water, pro-environmental thinking, training by research, dispositions, projective study, free associations, sustainability.