Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian Ecological Thought and Action

by Martin Mulligan, Stuart Hill

Overview

As a continent of extreme, rare and complex environments, Australia has produced a startling group of ecological pioneers. Australian thinkers and innovators have made some truly original contributions to ecological thought. This study traces the emergence of ecological awareness in Australia. By constructing a social history with chapters focusing on different fields in the arts, sciences, politics and public life, Martin Mulligan and Stuart Hill are able to bring to life the work of significant individuals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521009560
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/22/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.71(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. The colonisation of Australian nature and the first stirrings of ecological thought; 3. Seeing the land in a new light: people and landscapes in Australian art; 4. Of drovers' wives and a timeless land: land and identity in Australian literature; 5. Taking nature to the public: nature education in public media; 6. Towards a conservation ethic: birth of the conservation movement; 7. Working at the edges of mainstream science: Australian innovations in ecological science; 8. Thinking like an ecosystem: Australian innovations in reconceptualising and redesigning land and resource management; 9. Challenging terra nullius views of people and nature: on the origins and impact of the Aboriginal Land Rights Movement; 10. Green politics in the wide brown land: the cross-fertilisation of wilderness politics and social justice agendas; 11. Towards a communicative ethic: some Australian contributions to ecophilosophy; 12. Conclusions.

Editorial Reviews

The book celebrates Australia's rising ecological consciousness and contributions to global environmentalism through artists, activists, and scientists. The story unfurls historically, beginning with the not-very-ecological Joseph Banks, who with Captain James Cook, visited Australia in 1768-70, calling the land to indicate its claimability. Discussion proceeds to landscape painters, literary figures, those who took nature public (journalists, broadcasters and writers), conservation activists, innovators in the science of ecology and in land and resource management, and activists for Aboriginal land rights, for wilderness, and for social justice. This upward trajectory from sin (anthropocentrism) to salvation (ecocentrism) ends with three prominent ecological thinkers: the ecofeminist Val Plumwood; the deep ecologist, John Seed; and the cartoonist of alienation, Michael Leunig. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Opposing it to the scientific/imperial tradition, Mulligan and Hill (both social ecology, U. of Western Sydney) argue that in Australia, the Arcadian ecological tradition emerged with the work of landscape artists and bush poets. They describe how the romantic/Arcadian tradition evolved as Australia's artists and writers struggled to come to terms first with the initially threatening landscapes, and later with criticism of anthropocentric western philosophy. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

'For Australians of any age, it is a superb primer for increasing one's knowledge of the history of ecology in this country.' Gardening Australia

'Mulligan and Hill's Ecological Pioneers provides a rate conjunction: a rattling good read that is also a work of wide-ranging yet meticulously detailed scholarship … its emphasis on the human and the vulnerable makes for an account that is more than usually engaging … it is my opinion that this is a very fine book … what emerges is an informative, compelling, compassionate, grounded and immensely entertaining social history of Australian environmentalism.' Ecopolitics

From the Publisher