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Nature, Work and ‘the Environment’: Contesting Sentiments and Identities in the Southwest of Western Australia
Author(s) -
Trigger David
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1999.tb00018.x
Subject(s) - environmentalism , sociology , rhetoric , ethnography , identity (music) , face (sociological concept) , politics , environmental ethics , identity politics , natural resource , resource (disambiguation) , meaning (existential) , gender studies , political science , social science , law , anthropology , aesthetics , epistemology , computer network , philosophy , linguistics , computer science
Contesting discourses about natural resource development present a rich arena for ethnographic investigation. This paper focuses on interviews with environmental activists and forest industry defenders to document a struggle over the meaning of land, work and nature in the southwest of Western Australia. While Green activists condemn what they regard as crimes against nature, this moral challenge to rural communities from urban‐based environmentalism is inverted by those working in the industry, such that local cultural practices are celebrated in the face of what is seen as emotional and non‐scientific rhetoric. Conflicts about resource development are thus driven in significant respects by identity politics. The paper argues for the importance of cultural analysis, focused particularly on concepts of identity and ‘place’, in the study of contesting moral claims about what should be done with ‘the environment’.