Paper short abstract:

An unprecedented unconventional gas boom along Australia’s east coast has led to a variety of community responses. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with resisting non-protest groups, I explore the negotiations between knowledge and ignorance claims in responding to projects’ risks and impacts.

Paper long abstract:

The rapid development of unconventional gas reserves along Australia's east coast has led to significant challenges for local regional and rural communities. Especially the unprecedented gas boom in the state of Queensland caused a variety of community responses from embracing economic benefits to active civil disobedience. In this paper I critically explore this multitude of responses following ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with communities in the states' Western Downs region. In doing so I stress the importance of avoiding oversimplified conceptualisations of 'the rural community' in relation to responses to large-scale resource developments, which has also methodological and moral implications for the social researcher's role.

I draw on data generated at the move from the projects' construction into the operations phase. At this stage, some of the initial protest and civil disobedience movements have disappeared, but efforts of members of affected communities to cope with or resist the industry's progression are ongoing. Focusing on these less activist voices, I introduce cases of residents and local groups that refuse being classified as protester. Trying to avoid de-legitimisation, these groups are rather attempting to be recognised actors within the decision-making process, which leads to continuing negotiations over valid knowledge claims and ascriptions of ignorance. I conceptualise these often unequal epistemic dynamics through a critical utilisation of Nico Stehr's concept of 'knowledgeability' (a bundle of enabling competencies). In positioning knowledge within an interactional and processual framework, I explore the contemporary citizens' position within the resulting politics of knowledge in the context of complex techno-scientific controversies.