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This volume presents inter- and transdisciplinary reflections on nature and environment in Australia in different but interrelated contexts at the intersection of the humanities and the social sciences.

The wide scope of the volume includes contributions from anthropological (and ethnographic), historical, geographical (and urbanistic), as well as legal, linguistic, literary and media perspectives, highlighting the productive intersections between these different approaches. The overall goal is to show their inseparability in the concerted efforts to meet the environmental challenges of our time.

The specific situation of Australia in the context of the current global environmental crisis is connected to the effects of climate change in relation to the post/colonial destruction of the ecological balance through interventions in fauna and flora and the exploitation of natural resources. The nexus between ecocide and genocide is thus at the core of Australian postcolonial ecocriticism, laying bare the links between and persistence of the ongoing histories of colonization, globalization and environmental destruction.

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Contents


BEATE NEUMEIER, BORIS BRAUN, AND VICTORIA HERCHE
Nature and Environment in Australia: An Introduction ........................................... 1

I. Historical, Geographical and Ethical Perspectives

NORBERT FINZSCH
Settler Imperialism, Ecocide and Social Ecological Systems .................................. 9

BILL PRITCHARD
The Tyranny of History? Australian Agriculture, Environment
and Nature from the 19th to the 21st Centuries ....................................................... 23

DON GARDEN
Colonial History, Economy and Culture:
The Influence of South-Eastern Australian Weather and Climate ........................... 33

ROBERT FREESTONE
Establishing an Environmental Agenda for City Planning:
An Australian Retrospective .................................................................................... 49

HELEN TIFFIN
Conservation Conundrums: Bats and Rats .............................................................. 71

II. Legal, Anthropological and Linguistic Perspectives

BRONWYN LAY
Material Violence as the Foundation of Law:
Settler Contract and Aboriginal Jurisprudence ........................................................ 87

CARSTEN WERGIN
Tourism Meets Environmental Activism:
Ecologies of Protest at Manari Road, Western Australia (August 2012) ................. 103

CHRISTINA RINGEL AND DAVID NEWRY
The Miriwoong Perspective on Land Rights ........................................................... 119

MARIE CARLA D. ADONE, ELAINE L. MAYPILAMA, AND MELANIE A. BRÜCK
A Signed Lingua Franca in Arnhem Land ............................................................... 139

III. Cultural Perspectives across Different Media

GEOFF RODOREDA
Walking the Land: Assertions of Sovereignty in Indigenous Narratives ................. 163

DAVID KERN
Nature as a Living Agent: Reading Nature and Environment
in Mudrooroo´s Doctor Wooreddy´s Prescription for Enduring
the Ending of the World .......................................................................................... 177

HEINZ ANTOR
Trauma, Environment and the Re-Construction of Female Immigrant Identity
in Eva Sallis´s Hiam ................................................................................................ 189

KATRIN ALTHANS
Singing Brisbane into Being: A Geocritical Approach
to Samuel Wagan Watson´s smoke encrypted whispers .......................................... 209

BEATE NEUMEIER
Nature and Environment in Performance: Trees, Storms, and Devils ..................... 221

The Contributors ...................................................................................................... 239

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