Paper short abstract:

Explores the politics surrounding drainage and enclosure of a wetland, and the continuing debates surrounding the future use of this ‘temporary land’ as a contested resource

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore a particular British landscape (the East Anglian Fenlands) from an ethnographic and historical perspective. The Fens are a place where the Protestant Work Ethic has been inscribed on the landscape; labour cuts drainage ditches to bleed the peat, and creates productive land where once there was only feckless and lazy swamp. Or, to listen to the story another way: labour attempts to impose man's will on God's dominion, with disastrous consequences for humans and for other species. It remains a contested environment, represented variously as a natural flood barrier, a carbon sink, a key element in Britain's food security, and a tourist attraction. I aim to explore how wetland is enclosed as a resource, and in particular I want to explore the contested politics that surround the kind of resource that it becomes. How has the Fenland been 'mastered', and given peat shrinkage, climate change, and post-glacial rebound, how secure is this mastery?