School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses

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Start date: 2000 × End date: 2009 × Subject: Victoria × Subject: Environmental aspects ×

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    The many lives of the Goulburn River : sustainable management as ontological work
    Lavau, Stephanie ( 2008)
    In this thesis I consider what it might be to do sustainable management of the Goulburn River, which meanders through the dry plains of northern Victoria, in Australia. This river touches many lives. It is celebrated as the "lifeblood" of local rural communities and the water supply for the "food bowl" of Australia. Economic development, social well-being, natural environment, and cultural heritage: a diverse array of community values and expectations are embodied in the contemporary management of the Goulburn River. The core theme of sustainable management with which I engage in this thesis is the integration of environment and development. Rather than evaluating sustainable management as more or less successful techniques, or as competing discourses, I interrogate sustainable management of the Goulburn River as ontological work. Using a material semiotic analytic, I tell of the many lives of what we call "the Goulburn River". These multiple river realities are emergent in particular orderings of routines, people, materials and narratives of river management and rural life. Through a series of historical narratives about post-settlement relations with the Goulburn River, I distinguish three modes of enacting river: utilitarian, ecological and sustainable. Utilitarian rivers proliferate throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, through an increasing array of rural industries that seek to progress the nation by improving mechanistic, under-utilised and deficient nature. Ecological rivers gain prominence in the late 20th century, amidst concerns that fragile, living, authentic nature is being threatened by human industry and requires protection. Amidst the recent antagonistic interferences between utilitarian rivers and ecological rivers, I identify the emergence of a new mode of enacting and relating rivers, that of sustainability. Utility and ecology are held in tension, I claim, in the contemporary vision for the Goulburn as sustainable or healthy working river. Through case studies of the sustainable management of the Goulburn River's frontages, flows and fish, I explore the ways in which river practitioners negotiate the ontological difference that is enacted in utilitarian and ecological rivers. Sustainable management, I contend, seeks to remake the relation between these river realities, to shift from an adversarial dynamic of competition to a more convivial dynamic of co-existence. Paddock and wildlife corridor; irrigation water and environmental water; trout fishery and native fish habitat: I argue that these utilitarian rivers and ecological rivers are made to intermingle by "cleaving" ontological difference. I distinguish a series of strategies through which these rivers are being drawn together whilst being held apart. This co-ordination and distribution of multiplicities produces ambiguous entanglements of rivers, which are invoked as sustainable or healthy working river. I thus identify sustainable management as holding together utilitarian rivers and ecological rivers in generative tension, thus sustaining ontological difference (albeit to varying degrees). In doing so, I confront the keen critiques of social science scholars about the vagueness of sustainability, and argue that we need to learn ways of living with ontological ambiguity.