Paper short abstract:

This paper invites an exploration of the notion of ‘ruin’ as it manifests within the context of coal mining, looking specifically at how notions of ruination and loss are experienced through relationships to water.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with residents in and around the small village of Wollar, situated in the north-western corner of the Hunter Coalfields in NSW. Wollar is today a ghost-town, hollowed of sociality and life after the aggressive purchasing of properties in the area by mining companies. Agricultural land and bushland have been replaced by large open cut mines and the few residents who still reside in the area grapple with a ruined landscape and the disempowering force of industry. But the impact of the mines is not only present in what has been lost and taken away. Their impact is also felt and endured through more subtle channels. Those whose lives and bodies have become entwined with the sandstone, bush, waterways, animals and sounds recognise changes in ways not captured by technical explorations and assessments. In this paper, I draw inspiration from decolonial scholarship and anthropological writing to look at how the mine’s environmental impacts on water constitute social impact beyond its material quality. I position water as a resource not only of pragmatic value but also of symbolic value in binding people and place together, and as a barometer for the emotional wellbeing of the community. I look at how experiences and emotions are embodied and ‘placial’, and how scars in the landscape become ‘marks of sorrow and betrayal, of the abuse of power and latent hazards’ (Storm 2014: 1) for those whose imagined futures have been lost in the process of mining.

Paper short abstract:

Land managers in Cape York hold different understandings of climate variability that emerge from particular environmental knowledges, values and practices. These framings come to the fore during the wet season when land managers must grapple with a changing duration and intensity of rainfall.

Paper long abstract:

Land managers in Cape York hold different ideas around the causes of climate variability. Their varied understandings of changes in climate are underpinned by particular kinds of environmental knowledges, values and practices. How people explain and deal with seasonal shifts and climate variability come to the fore in the context of the wet season, when land managers must adapt to the changing duration and intensity of the rainfall each year. Cape York land managers – particularly graziers – rely heavily on the wet season to ensure the wellbeing of waterways and pastures and to extinguish any wildfires that may be burning. For all land managers, the wet season initiates a different rhythm of life from the dry, with changes to work schedules and impacts on how mobile people can be. Cape York land managers’ talk about the wet season frequently shifts into discussions of climate change. While some land managers, like many Aboriginal traditional owners and park rangers, are comfortable with the language of climate change, others draw on the explanatory model of ‘natural cycles’ to talk about variability in the wet season. I contend that the explanatory models different land managers draw on to understand climate variation are linked to their livelihoods and claims to be appropriately situated to care for land. Discussions around climate change emerge as a way for land managers to position and make claims about their own environmental knowledge and right to care for land.

Paper short abstract:

The perceived boundedness of islands can lure some scientists to imagine ‘watertight’ field sites. In the Torres Strait where water connects, is project containment porous? This paper brings synthetic biology into dialogue with the hydro-history and fluid future of Torres Strait Islander identities.

Paper long abstract:

Surrounded by water, islands have captured the imagination of peoples and governing regimes for their seemingly bounded nature. This perceived boundedness can lure some scientists into a sense of project containment: ‘watertight’ field sites. Synthetic biology (synbio) proposes to manage invasive species at scale and in more humane ways, by engineering a gene drive (biased inheritance) to preference a single sex in the offspring of a species. Applied over generations, a gene drive promises to radically reduce a pest population through suppressed breeding. Synbio scientists have identified islands as sites where, in collaboration with Traditional Owners and other Australians, they hope to trial the release of approved drives in the future. However, islands can be bridges as much as they are boundaries. The Torres Strait Islands stretch between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea and relationships to and transport via this water informs customary connection and transnational notions of kin. In this watery world, how do watertight concepts of containment become porous, and what risks and benefits might come from a consideration of synbio science? Also, how does a changing climate impact identities in the Torres Strait? As an intra- and inter-national island ethnography, this paper will consider how synbio approaches to water may engage with the hydro-history and fluid future of Torres Strait Islander identities, and vice versa, as bridge, boundary or something in between.

Paper short abstract:

This paper critically examines the concept of friction in global change, the multi-scalar manifestations of the rights of nature movement, and the subsequent contribution of ethnographic data in identifying its strengths and limitations in response to local hydrosocial priorities and realities.

Paper long abstract:

In Victoria, First Nations peoples and their knowledges have historically been excluded from political processes relating to water governance, despite enduring custodial rights and responsibilities to care for Country. Policy reform was not forthcoming until 2017 with the passage of the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017, which protects the Birrarung (Yarra River) and its parklands as a single living entity. The legislation is informed by transnational environmental ethics that are contributing to increasingly juridical, eco-centric, protectionist approaches to freshwater governance and that find their conceptual inspiration in Indigenous worldviews. Already subject to considerable legal analysis, ethnographic perspectives can contribute to better understandings of the implications of these highly mobile frameworks at local scales. This paper will draw on early stages of ethnographic fieldwork with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung community along the Birrarung (Yarra River) in Narrm (Melbourne). Conceiving the Birrarung as a ‘zone of awkward engagement’ (Tsing, 2005, p. xi) connecting transnational ideologies, local policy and Indigenous waterscapes, the paper will reveal the productive potential of friction in the collective negotiation of ideologically divergent priorities within a dynamic network of hydrosocial relations.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in Australia, this paper considers the Rainbow Serpent’s vital contemporary role in representing ‘living water’ and non-human agency, and in upholding the beliefs, values and interests of Aboriginal communities in contemporary debates about water governance and management.

Paper long abstract:

Rejecting nature-culture dualism, contemporary anthropology recognises the mutually constitutive processes that create shared human and non-human lifeworlds. Such theoretical progress owes much to disciplinary engagement with indigenous beliefs and values that have, for millennia, upheld ideas about indivisible worlds in which all living kinds occupy a shared ontological space. In such spaces non-human species and environments are approached respectfully, with expectations of reciprocity and partnership, rather than as mere resources to be exploited.

As many societies confront the global chaos caused by their anthropocentric prioritisation of human interests, anthropologists and indigenous communities are well placed to promote alternative models, in which the non-human domain is dealt with more equitably. The Australian Rainbow Serpent quintessentially embodies ideas about the generative and potentially punitive powers of water, as well as providing a way to articulate rising concerns about the unsustainable impacts of human activities on rivers and marine areas.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Queensland, this paper considers the Rainbow Serpent’s central importance in providing long-term life support to indigenous beliefs and values, and its vital contemporary role in representing ‘living water’, non-human agency, and the interests (and identity) of indigenous communities in contemporary debates about water governance and management.