Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

Accepted Paper:

An improper nature: introduced animals and 'species cleansing' in Australia  
Adrian Franklin (University of Tasmania)

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the social and cultural content to eradication thinking and programs for introduced species in Australia. What is held up to be a purely scientific and ecological logic is exposed to contain themes of nationalism and social exclusivity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the social dimensions of the vilification of introduced species in Australia. While the case against all of the more vilified species (e.g. cats, donkeys, wild horses, camels) is based on the scientific facts of their threat to native species, this paper argues that eradication policies have been (very widely) pursued even where no such evidence exists. Equally, some species that are highly invasive and a danger to some native species (trout, deer, hare) are not subject to the same degree of vilification or intensive eradication policies. It is argued that there is a compelling but unacknowledged social content to such policies and the attitudes that support them. The paper identifies a range of social and cultural factors that weigh into the equation illuminating a powerful relationship between nature and nation formation and nationalism. It illustrates how biopolitics and nature aesthetics are shaped by particular post-colonial configurations. The paper also analyses how taxonomies of proper and improper animals express, and fuel, tensions between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians as well as recent anxieties about migrants and refugees.

Panel P07
Performing nature at world's ends
  Session 1