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Accepted Paper:
Overcoming resistance related social divides by engaging in communal projects in an Australian mining town.
Michiel Köhne
(Wageningen University)
Based on ethnographic fieldwork this paper analyses how, in an Australian mining town, new forms of solidarity have grown from resistance and begin to transform an extraction oriented rural town by introducing commons-oriented practices that pursue to overcome socio-economic differences.
Paper long abstract:
Extraction often goes hand in hand with the emergence of social divides in local communities between protesting groups and those who hope to benefit from them. Often these divides are based in different positionalities resulting in contradicting expectations regarding the pros and cons of such extractive projects and thus contrasting strategies in dealing with them. In Comley, a small town in Australia, the opponents to fossil fuel extraction engaged in a large variety of tactics that aimed to stop the mining producing a strong and effective protest regarding their target, the state policy makers. However, this also resulted in emotional burnout related to how the energy devoted to this resistance was experienced as something negative and to how the resistance divided the local community. Many opponents active in the resistance therefore started to engage in something ‘more positive’ that was hoped to provide a neutral site to alleviate the dividing tensions, such as: a community vegetable garden, community renewable energy, and a yearly conference on sustainable futures. Based on ethnographic fieldwork this paper analyses how these new forms of solidarity have grown from resistance and begin to transform an extraction oriented rural town by introducing commons-oriented practices that pursue to overcome socio-economic differences.