Meg Sherval

Legal geography: An Australian perspective

Law is a powerful influence on people and place. Law both creates and is created by the relationship between people and place, although it rarely acknowledges this. Law frequently operates as if space does not matter. Law and legal processes, therefore, deserve greater attention from geographers. Legal geography is an emerging field of inquiry that facilitates much-needed attention to the interrelationships among the environment, people and social institutions, including formal laws but also informal rules, norms and lore. Legal geographers seek to make the invisible visible: to bring the law into the frame of geography, and space and place into focus for the law. Both critical and applied in approach, legal geography offers descriptive, analytical and normative insight into economics, justice, property, power, geopolitics, governance and scale. As such it can enrich most areas of geographic inquiry as well as contribute to current policy debates about the regulation of space and place. Legal geography is a way for enlarged appreciations of relationality, materiality, multiscalarity and agency to be used to interrogate and reform the law. This introduction to a special ‘themed paper’ section of Geographical Research provides a window on legal geography scholarship, including its history, contribution and ambition. The papers in the collection explore issues grounded in the legal geographies paradigm, variously analysing matters empirically detailed while engaging in broader, theoretical debates and using both Australian and international case studies.

Competing Perceptions of the Rural Idyll: Responses to Threats from Coal Seam Gas Development in Gloucester, NSW, Australia

ABSTRACT Threats to rural livelihoods and rural landscapes have increased over time as developed nations in particular look for cheaper and more locally based alternatives to traditional energy sources to drive national economies. In New South Wales, through the expansion of coal mines and coal seam gas (CSG), small towns such as Gloucester on the edge of the Upper Hunter are faced with competing visions which seek to redefine their future. Powerful and competing discourses over land use threaten not only the sustainability of the region but the integrity of its sense of place, centred on community, rurality, agricultural production and confrontation of risk from mining. The different discourses of local groups such as ‘tree-changers’, established residents and farmers conflict with those of external organisations such as the State government and mining/CSG companies which envisage Gloucester as a ‘balanced’ space of co-existence and position it as a new node in the carbon supply chain.

Value, Identity and Place: unearthing the emotional geographies of the extractive sector

ABSTRACT The practice of natural resource extraction remains a key function of the global economy, and has been the subject of a considerable body of research, across multiple academic disciplines. Growing awareness of the economic, socio-cultural and ecological aspects of extractive practices (and their impacts) have also forced change in the way in which this research is conceptualised. Yet, despite conceptual shifts, a lack of engagement with the felt and emotive dimensions of the extractive sector remains striking. As a complex and highly contested industry, acknowledging emotion is crucial to breaking down problematic representations of the sector as a ‘rational’, ‘economic’ and emotionless space. This paper emphasises the need to engage and prioritise emotional and affective registers when thinking about, and representing, the extractive sector. Specifically, this paper explores the role of emotion in problematising approaches to the material across the sector, as well as in unsettling the often taken-for-granted and highly gendered workplace identities that characterise the sector. Finally, this paper will highlight the importance of validating emotion in legitimising important relationships to place that conflict with extractive practices. In essence, this paper calls for more emotionally attuned approaches to the extractive sector, in order to engage with its profoundly emotive dimensions and impacts.

Farmers as modern-day stewards and the rise of new rural citizenship in the battle over land use

ABSTRACT A decade ago, scholars such as Michael Woods suggested that mobilisation in response to development in rural spaces was the result of a redefinition of relations between individuals, communities and the State. This remains true with the rural representing a contested site characterised by debates concerning food and fibre, water and energy security. With the recent deployment of new energy technologies in areas traditionally used for agricultural production, increased confrontation and resistance over land use has forged unlikely alliances between farmers, environmentalists and concerned others, ultimately leading to the rise of a new form of rural citizenship. In the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) where resistance to burgeoning coal seam gas operations has become the customary response of many rural communities, environmentalists and concerned others are mobilising in support of farmers, who self-identify as modern-day stewards and are actively working to protect a resource hierarchy of water, land and soil against industries believed to be putting these at risk. Adopting a qualitative case-study approach, this paper examines how residents and supporters in the regional Shire of Narrabri in NSW have responded to what many see as competing land uses. We argue that values traditionally associated with stewardship and rurality are being revalorised by citizens to actively oppose the visions of the State, which seek to prioritise extractive development over other alternate futures. We contend that this rise in rural relations represents a significant shift in the notion of citizens as “inhabitants” and presents a new and enduring form of agency.

‘Drought-proofing’ Regional Australia and the Rhetoric Surrounding Tillegra Dam, NSW

Abstract Water conservation, distribution and management are highly contested in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. During the height of the Millennium drought calls from local politicians and community leaders alike suggested that there was a need to ‘drought-proof’ not only the Hunter region but also the Australian continent from recurring climatic events. In response to this, Hunter Water Corporation framed its long-term sustainable water policies around the proposed development of ‘Tillegra Dam’ as a means to ensure future water security for the region. Local residents, centred around the ‘No Tillegra Dam Group’, opposed the dam, pointing to its harmful effects and more sustainable demand-side options. Scientific studies also indicated that future droughts were unlikely to place stress on current water levels, thereby making the dam unnecessary. Hunter Water, however, co-opted the notion of ‘drought-proofing’ to argue for the continuation of large-scale infrastructure projects rather than pursue less costly, more sustainable options. As a result, arguments and discourses over the dams construction became increasingly complex, involving environmental, economic and ethical issues that ultimately favoured local community perspectives. This paper examines how the different stakeholder arguments were framed and considers the important role that communities can play in altering decision making.

Arctic Alaska's Role in Future United States Energy Independence

For decades, Arctic Alaska has provided US mainland states with plentiful oil supplies. As reserves in the Prudhoe Bay fields decrease, however, the USA has been forced to consider new options to guarantee the nations energy security. While debates continue to rage about its reliance on foreign oil, increased prices, consumption levels, and climate change, the USA is now contemplating whether predicted new discoveries might actually allow it to become an exporter rather than importer of oil and gas in the near future. This paper considers the role Arctic Alaska might play in helping secure future US energy security and independence. It also considers what other options exist for securing the State of Alaskas own future post-Prudhoe Bay.

Affect, risk and local politics of knowledge: changing land use in Narrabri, NSW

ABSTRACT As conflicts emerge over land use when extractive industries arrive, what counts as legitimate knowledge about the risks generated by these developments becomes important to how individuals formulate their opinions. This article analyses knowledge, risk and perceptions of future land use in the Narrabri Shire, a rural area in Australia. In a risk society, especially a ‘post-truth’ one, the production of knowledge, whether scientific, political, media or commercially driven, does not provide more security and certainty, but more insecurity and uncertainty. This article uses Bourdieusian concepts informed with theoretical insights about affect and emotion to understand how reflexivity about risks and environmental politics are interpreted. Land use practices are emotional for some local farmers, where their ‘sense of one’s place’ is structured by their deep connection with the land and is therefore structuring of their land use politics. For others, their response may be couched as more economically ‘rational’, but this also expresses an emotional position in an affective economy that destabilises traditional economic understandings of rational/emotional dichotomies. Affect and illusio can contribute to understanding the colour and intensity of the positions occupied in response to land use disputes.

The local politics of rural land use: Place, extraction industries and narratives of contemporary rurality

This article contributes to discussions of place and social change in rural sociology with a focus on the local politics of rural land use. In particular, the article explores the way that one rural place is responding to changes in the local and regional economy connected with the arrival of extractive industries such as mining and coal seam gas (CSG). The article shows how attitudes towards extractive industries are formed through notions of place and community within broader narratives concerning rurality and global capitalism. The local politics of land use enrols complex and contradictory forms of place attachment into the articulation of competing narratives about rurality, and intervenes in the local social relationships of rural areas. The politics of extraction in rural Australia is therefore situated at the forefront of contemporary economic and cultural changes that are part of the reshaping of place amid the broader dynamics of contemporary global capitalism.

Introducing the 'Tee' Change -- Marketing, Management and Planning Implications

Mobility, housing and population movements have long been a concern of planners, demographers and geographers alike. More recently, focus has turned to the phenomenon known as the ‘sea’ and/or ‘tree change’ with various studies voicing concern about the implications involved in these types of movement to coastal and regional locations, as well as for the nation as a whole (Gurran et al. 2005; Murphy 2002; Stokes 2008; Walmsley 2003). Of equal concern, but currently under-researched, is the increasing growth of residential golf course developments as an alternate option for retirees, empty-nesters, or simply those seeking resort-style living arrangements. This type of development represents another aspect of exclusive residential development occurring not only on suburban fringes, but also in coastal and hinterland locations. Through a review of current literature, this paper considers the forces driving this type of development. It also questions whether there are any benefits to be gained by allowing these types of developments to go ahead and considers what implications might exist for future management and planning practice.