Resource Management and Geography - Theses
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ItemDrought, power and change: using Bourdieu to explore resilience and networks in two northern Victoria farming communities( 2013)It is often assumed that social networks are sufficiently strong in rural communities to assist individual community members in times of crisis by providing support and advice. This research examines how social networks operate in two rural communities in northern Victoria and whether these networks contribute to building resilience to climate change impacts, as defined by drought. The research questions are based on the characteristics of social-ecological resilience to bring together the human and biophysical aspects of the system. The research is underpinned with Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ to identify how power structures operate in the case study communities. I undertook a case study approach to investigate two sites in northern Victoria to allow for some comparative analysis and to help understand the cross-scale interactions. I used a mixed methods approach including in-depth interviews with 44 farmers and service providers; participant observation which included spending 8 weeks at each site and attending a variety of events; and a document and archival search for the environmental and social history for the last 130 years. My findings show issues of power are prevalent in the research communities - predominantly power through discourse. Current institutional structures do not provide the flexibility for farmers to learn and adapt to changing conditions. Their adaptive capacity is constantly weakened through a range of factors where drought is only one of the variables. The reactivity and inconsistency in the policy process confuses ‘signals’ between scales often leading to maladaptive practices and responses at the farming and regional scales. As the social-ecological system in this research becomes less stable over time, experiencing more intense shocks occurring at shorter intervals, the system gets closer to reaching its threshold. Over the past 130 years, technology and institutional adaptations in the pursuit of productivism have disguised the harshness of the landscape where ‘drought’ becomes the culprit and the production system is never questioned. Farmers’ innovation, resilience and adaptation are all being constrained by values and power structures that are outside their control. Institutional structures reinforce existing systems to such an extent that there is no space to consider the landscape in different ways. Using Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ as a theory to underpin resilience thinking is a constructive way to understand the links between scales and expose power structures that do not support social-ecological resilience in a way where resilience is about the capacity to be flexible – these structures support resilience as persistence.