When property developers, politicians and a vocal community debate how local land should be used, with the media intent on exposing conflicting interests and incompatible ideologies, it is only a matter of time before plans change and careers take new paths. Written as an engaging account of politics and coastal property development in Fremantle, To the Beach is an account of the politics of ecological crisis in Australia. Through this book, Thor Kerr encourages readers to reflect on perceptions of environmental threats and solutions and describes how environmental movements form around a shared desire to live a local experience – in this case, the experience is ‘our’ beaches. Purchase If you can't make it to the wonderful New Edition Bookstore in Fremantle where the book was launched by the mayor, To the Beach can be ordered from:
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This paper, published in Continuum, is directed at furthering understandings of the function of space, time and sensory experience in environmental discourse. Limited copies of this theoretical paper, 'Negotiating green space between ecological threats and beloved objects' are available for download.
Participatory culture seems to have consigned patriarchal culture to the dustbin of history in Indonesia’s recent presidential election. A lean, clever child of the street took on and beat a bloated, bullying son of the elite—or so the story goes. Yet, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s victory over Prabowo Subianto heralds radical changes in the style, if not substance, of Indonesian politics.
After three tilts at the executive, Subianto seems to have been utterly defeated by participatory culture. In the most recent election, he had Indonesia’s richest men and its biggest media group at his back but to no avail. As former New Order newsreader, Desi Anwar asked perceptively: how could the election have been won by “some skinny, furniture maker out of nowhere who’s never ridden a horse, wielded a gun or defended the country in battle?” Subianto had played the part of a powerful, benevolent patron brilliantly throughout the campaign; he had offered an ambitious national development plan with big round numbers; his birthright had been demonstrated; and the most popular television stations had supported him. So what the hell happened? The full article was published in the Sep-Oct 2014 edition of FuturArc. In June, the Western Australian Government released draft amendments to the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. This is the legislation that determines what qualifies for heritage protection in the state – and what does not. The amendments have been met with increasing concern by Aboriginal people and scholars who see the Aboriginal Heritage Amendment Bill 2014 as a threat to the objects and sites that it claims to protect.
This study suggests that attempts to shift local planning decisions to regional decision-making bodies in the name of solving global ecological threats should be resisted because of the open meaning of these threats and their relation to sensually experienced objects of local environments; which, when threatened, produce powerful antagonisms.
A paper on this study was published in Spaces and Flows: An International Journal of Urban and ExtraUrban Studies. “I spy” is a common game in Australia. Parents play it with their children, initiating this game with the phrase “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with...” The initiator then names the first letter of an object she spies and the other players are obliged to guess what that object is. While this can be a fun and frustrating game, what matters most is not the object being spied upon but the diversion of other players from whatever else they could be doing...
Read this article from page 6 of The Jakarta Post. The Green Building Council Indonesia has bestowed its top certificates to the headquarters of BCA and Dahana explosives. This certification can be read as both helping to reform and excuse the banking and blasting industries, which are as integral to modernity as to the phrase “getting a bang for your buck”. This report on the foundations of green building in Indonesia was published in the Nov-Dec 2013 of FuturArc. By Thor Kerr & Shaphan Cox Edited by Robert Briggs, Niall Lucy & Steve Mickler In early 2012, people concerned with native-title negotiations gathered at Matagarup on Heirisson Island to discuss Aboriginal sovereignty and native-title negotiations. Setting Up the Nyoongar Tent Embassy: A Report on Perth Media explores media coverage of the Nyoongar Tent Embassy’s establishment and the sometimes violent actions taken by state authorities to eradicate it. The book reveals the ways in which Perth news media reports on these events routinely criminalised the actions of Tent Embassy participants at the expense of reporting on key issues of Aboriginal sovereignty and the members’ peaceful affirmation of native title. In its exposure of how reporting practices both legitimised and encouraged a violent state response to the Nyoongar ‘protest camp’, Setting Up the Tent Embassy offers both analysis of the Perth news media’s treatment of the Nyoongar Tent Embassy participants as well as insights into media representation of Indigenous issues more generally. |
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