Paper short abstract:

Drawing on recent research in Queensland, this paper considers notions of ownership in relation to water. It observes that the material qualities of water encourage processual, fluid 'ways of owning' that challenge artificially fixed concepts of property and exclusive forms of ownership.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on recent ethnographic research with river catchment groups and other environmental managers in Queensland, this paper considers notions of ownership in relation to water. Building on the precept that human-environmental engagements are mutually constitutive in both material and metaphorical terms, it observes that, as a relation between persons and things, concepts of property require some degree of material stasis. It suggests that the material qualities water elude such conceptual fixity, and enable - indeed necessitate - more fluid forms of ownership.

Making comparative use of some of the principles of Aboriginal Law, it considers subaltern 'ways of owning' that are processually acquired: through the accumulation of knowledge; through creative processes of identity construction; through the construction of aesthetic and emotional attachments to place; and through imaginative and physical engagements with a material environment. More phenomenological ways of owning are implicitly or explicitly connected to wider social and cultural processes, and thus subvert the concept of enclosure and separation on which conventional notions of property depend.

Water ownership in Australia, as elsewhere, is central to a longstanding ideological tensions between collective rights, and the desire of individuals and elite groups to enclose and gain control of water 'resources'. There is a parallel divergence in values with, on the one hand, a commitment to sustaining social and ecological needs and, on the other, an approach dominated by competitive short-termism. As well as challenging conventional notions of property, alternate forms of water ownership draw attention to the specialised nature of economic activities and their separation from wider social and ecological processes. This paper suggests that, although currently subsumed by dominant discourses and values, alternate claims therefore have some potential to support a more integrated and thus sustainable approach to environmental management