Anitra Nelson

Effective Community Engagement for Sustainability: Wombat Community Forest Management Case Study

The first significant government sponsored community‐based forest management project in Australia was initiated in Central Victoria in 2002. This paper analyses the initial stage of the Wombat Community Forest Management Pilot Project. The paper develops a functional concept of ‘effective community’ for structuring community engagement in these kinds of natural resource management projects. The effective community has characteristics in common with a community of interest, adopts a bioregional perspective, embodies the values of environmental stewardship and interacts in a fully informed way as a ‘discursive community’ (Meppam 2000). The paper offers general advice for organising effective community engagement in such projects and 12 recommendations for governments developing similar initiatives elsewhere.

Using On-Line Geographical Visualisation Tools to Improve Land Use Decision-Making with a Bottom-Up Community Participatory Approach

This paper examines the development of a prototype suite of on-line integrated multimedia-GIS tools to assist in bottom up decision-making. These tools are being developed in the context of scenario planning to enable the community to actively explore different land use options and the implication of government structure and strategic plans. A case study approach is undertaken, focusing on the Jewell Station Neighbourhood, situated in the City of Moreland, Greater Melbourne Region, Australia. The paper documents the first stage of the project, in developing three land use scenarios delivered through a range of technologies including: VRML, HTML, GIS, Pixmaker and Flash. The paper concludes by outlining the future directions of this research that include: the construction of a virtual sandbox, usability testing, and community consultation.

The poverty of money: Marxian insights for ecological economists

Abstract Karl Marxs philosophical, political and sociological analysis of the workings of capitalism provides insights regarding the character of monetary value (price) and the role of the market that are relevant to ecological economists. Ecological economists are divided over the utility of pricing components of ecological systems and the potential role of the market in achieving ecologically sustainable societies. In the Marxian-influenced socialist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, similar issues were raised by those preoccupied with organising state policy and manipulating the market to achieve social justice. For example, at particular points in the Russian and Cuban revolutionary processes, the potential and limitations of monetary pricing and market exchange were debated in a heated and detailed way. In as much as ecological economists hold certain interests in common, it is worth reflecting on Marxs view of the human role within nature and analysing the discussions and experiences of Marxian experimenters in social transformation that relate specifically to exchange.

The Impacts of the Global Financial Crisis on Housing and Mortgage Markets in Australia: A View from the Vulnerable

Housing markets are at the centre of the recent global financial turmoil. In this well-researched study, a multidisciplinary group of leading analysts explores the impact of the crisis within, and between, countries.

Productive Creative Writers’ Relationships: A Communities-of-Practice Framework

The notion of a ‘community of practice’ offers fruitful ways to frame and assess literary activities for the producers of literature, creative writers. Referring to Woody Allens film Midnight in Paris (2011), the experiences of two Australian writers and the Australian Seven Writers’ community of practice, we discuss gaps that our research approach aims to fill through investigating the significance of specific writers’ literary relationships in developing their creative writing skills and work. Framing such relationships as professional ‘communities of practice’, we argue that studying the functions of contemporary writers’ relationships as working environments has the potential to inform both creative writing learning and arts policy-making. As such, advocating for a community-of-practice conceptual framework is the main aim.

Praxis and Axis: Theory as Practice in a Melanesian Case Study

This chapter reflects on methods used by an Australian participatory action practitioner to design and facilitate a process to explore and re-design the future model, functions, and program of a Papua New Guinean forest certification service, Forest Management and Product Certification Service (FORCERT). Throughout this nine-month process (2013–2014), guided by action research principles and applying appreciative inquiry, participants developed new skills and roles and enhanced their critical thinking skills. Our analysis has highlighted certain contradictory tensions, with real practice undercutting some ideal principles of action research. These challenges mainly arose from working in a different, Melanesian, cultural milieu—as hierarchical dispositions interrupted a fully participatory approach to determining the future of FORCERT—challenges that the practitioner responded to using a variety of constructive techniques.

“Your Money or Your Life”: Money and Socialist Transformation

ABSTRACT This article argues against a common-sense logic that money can assist in socialist transformation, espouses a non-market ecosocialist position and urges greater clarity in associated discourse. Analyses of capitalist operations show that growth is not simply a characteristic tendency of capitalism but rather an essential outgrowth of its deficiencies. Marx identified these deficiencies, indicating that the end of capitalism was an end to money, that is, exchange value. Money is not a tool but evolves as a code of conduct to structure social relationships that reproduce inequity, competition, distrust and alienation. Indeed, the existence of capitalists and capitalism without money is inconceivable and impossible in practice. Money refusal and the development and defence of fair non-monetary forms of livelihood continuously critique capital and demonstrate alternative (or at least “hybrid”) socialist forms. Contemporary anti-capitalists have developed constructive skills to move beyond money and capitalism in their practical development of “green materialism.” However, a wide-ranging discourse remains to be had on moving beyond money sooner rather than later. The final section of this paper sketches a non-market ecosocialist vision.

Disability and mortgage default: an Australian study

Debates on human rights and discrimination regarding housing and disability need to emphasise community care and inclusion as principles for improving policy. A qualitative study of Australian mortgage default reveals special difficulties for households with a member with a disability; that is, illness, impairment or injury limiting everyday activities and enduring for several months. Interviews showed that such households adopted similar strategies to other mortgagors with serious financial difficulties but tended to have fewer and less attractive options. Given the crisis in Australian disability welfare services and the 2010–2011 Productivity Commission inquiry recommending major reforms, these findings can inform policy.

Capitalism: of, with, in, by and for Debt

More importantly, though, the openness of Panayotakis’s view of economic democracy is not to be confused with a politics that is ultimately merely liberal. It is crucially tempered by the point that economic democracy be seen as a ‘‘cultural project’’ (131) that aims to change not only how and what we produce and how we govern ourselves, but also how and what we consume. As with the earlier discussion of gender relations, the insistence on opening up ‘‘private’’ spheres to critical scrutiny, as well as its insistence on the reality of power inequalities, sharpens the project’s critical edge.

Remembering Stephen Randall Niblo (1941–2008)

Abstract Today I feel like the boy featured at the start of the story Crazy February: Death and Life in the Mayan Highlands of Mexico by the US anthropologist Carter Wilson. My copy of this book is the 1974 University of California paperback edition and it is falling apart. This boy is all at once the perpetrator and victim of his own circumstance. He has a man, who we will find out he has killed, strapped to his back and he is on a journey to a town where justice will be dealt. Why do I feel like this boy?