Guest Editorial and Review:

Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy

KEVIN M. DUNN
This is the first occasion on which Australian
Geographical Studies has devoted most of an
issue to the sub-discipline of cultural geography.
Perhaps the numbers of cultural geographers in
this part of the world could never before have
justified such a collection. This is not to say that
cultural geography has been absent from
Australia, indeed the sub-discipline has had a
continuing presence (Anderson and Jacobs, in
this issue). Still, the 1990s have been exciting
times for cultural geographers in Australia.
Their sub-discipline has experienced a phase
of growth and dynamism. Cultural geography
sessions at recent IAG conferences have been
well attended, and the number of paper sessions
has grown (5 at IAG Monash in 1993; 5 at the
remote IAG Magnetic Island in 1994; and 10 at
IAG Newcastle in 1995).
It is entirely appropriate that this issue of the
new look Australian Geographical Studies
should open with a selection of papers from
this burgeoning sub-discipline of Australian
geography. This issue provides one of the first
forums for Australian cultural geographers to
outline their directions and contributions to non-
specialist colleagues. The following collection
of papers can not however, be considered in any
way exhaustive of the rich and varied corpus of
Australian cultural geography. To get a proper
sense of the scale and scope of Australian
cultural geography requires an engagement with
a range of existing and forthcoming texts
(Anderson and Gale, 1992; Johnson, 1994a;
Gibson and Watson, 1994; Stratford, forth-
coming). The aim of this thematic issue is to
demonstrate the critically reflexive, politically
engaged and policy-relevant nature of work
being carried out by cultural geographers in
Australia. The papers raise important questions
about a range of government policies,
demonstrate some of the approaches used within
cultural geography and grapple with issues
surrounding its practise in Australia.
This guest editorial also provides an
opportunity to respond from an Australian
perpsective to some recent concerns expressed
about cultural geography in general. These
include the claim that a cultural turn within
geography has seen a focus on esoteric issues to
the neglect of more material and structural
concerns. Critics have claimed that the language
of cultural geography is inaccessible and
perhaps undemocratic. Others have questioned
whether many of the research interests of
cultural geographers can rightly be claimed as
geographical. Some of these criticisms may be
reasonable but others emanate from a
misunderstanding of some of the core concepts
used in this sub-discipline, others still are
expressions of resistance to the entrance into
human geography of some of the insights
developed in cognate disciplines.
1
Australian Geographical Studies April 1997 35(1):1-11
Kevin Dunn is Lecturer in Geography at The University of
New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052.
Vera Chouinard pointed out that this is a
period of the re-presentation of and re-creation
of progressive research (1994:2). Indeed, the
Cultural Geography Study Group of the IAG
was formed in the context of a debate between
followers of so-called old and new cultural
geography (Cosgrove and Jackson, 1987;
Duncan, 1990:1124; Price and Lewis, 1993).
This is not the place to re-visit this debate.
Pulvirenti (in this issue) outlines some of the
tenets of this new cultural geography. The first
report of the Cultural Geography Study Group
of the IAG, charted the Groups research focus.
The focus was upon the way in which identities
were developed or socially constructed, and
how they were interconnected with the construc-
tion of landscapes, places and environments
(Jacobs, 1994:11). The sub-discipline also
retained the traditional cultural geography brief
of interpreting the cultural landscape. A review
of cultural geography in Australia confirms
Jacobs argument that contemporary members
of the Cultural Geography Study Group adopt a
perspective typical of the new cultural
geography (Jacobs, 1994:11).
Any geography which calls itself radical must
be about fighting to understand better how we
and others can challenge social oppression
(Chouinard, 1994:5). The authors of the papers
in this issue demonstrate a commitment to
exposing the way discursive and non-discursive
regulatory frameworks determine the life
chances of differently empowered groups. In
particular there is a focus upon the way in which
oppressions are justified on the basis of group
identity or representations in the media. These
oppressions can include marginalisation,
cultural imperialism, exploitation (both in the
production and distribution of surplus labour),
disempowerment, violence and ecological harm.
As with cultural geographers elsewhere, concern
extends to other biota, to landscapes, and to the
global commons (Matless, 1996:3813).
Cultural geographers in Australia quite
appropriately consider themselves (privileged)
advocates of the oppressed. They are critical of
the dominant, and often conservative, ideas and
instrumentalities which provide succour to
oppressions.
Complexity and accessibility
Over the last few years a number of complaints
have been made about inaccessible writing in
human geography. Susan Christopherson
warned that much of both positivist writing
and Marxist theorising were alienating to new
entrants and non-specialists in geography
(Christopherson, 1989:8788). An elitist
theoretical enterprise had evolved, and an
alienation of a significant portion of the
discipline was one result. Progressive projects
within geography, such as feminist geography,
had not been removed from such complex
language and writing, nor from such criticism
(Whatmore, 1992:234). Geographers writing on
postmodernism have particularly been criticised
for using an arcane and tortured writing style,
which is held to be undemocratic and virtually
incomprehensible to those not in a (fairly small)
group (Massey, 1991:34). Nicky Gregson has
persistently argued in reviews of social
geography that the cultural turn within human
geography has seen the spread of a writing style,
and use of terms, which are exclusionary
(1993:5256; 1995:139). Badcock (1996)
mused that the interpretive turn of
postmodernism will eventually be revealed as
a discredited and pretentious enterprise. Others,
however, are less concerned about the use of
complex or unorthodox terminology and writing
styles, and are wary of demands for simple and
unproblematic writing (Rose, 1995). I certainly
baulk at calls for harmony and order
(Badcock, 1996:91).
Let me set out a defence of complexity and
show why some degree of theoretical flux is
unavoidable and welcome. The phase of growth
in cultural geography has been marked,
unavoidably, by a complexity borne of profound
reflection and theoretical sprawl. The multipli-
cation of theory and concepts have been
symptoms of self-reflection and reformulation
within cultural geography. These reassessments
have occurred throughout the humanities and
2 Australian Geographical Studies
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social sciences. Anderson has recently argued in
this journal that human geographers are creative
disobediants, who, rather than plough through
cognate disciplines searching for insights, forge
their own perspectives within trans-disciplinary
spaces and furrows (Anderson, 1995:1234).
More than an interdisciplinary magpie, but a
weaver of transdisciplinary threads states
Matless (1996:380).
Cultural geography has benefited over the last
two decades from at least three key philo-
sophical movements: the research orientations
of cultural studies; the insights of feminism,
and; the philosophical reflections of post-
structuralism. These influences provided new
research mores; asserting the importance of
identity and of the politics which surround it,
challenging geographys gender blindness, and
demanding that we hold into question the
readings and interpretations that we construct
as academic geographers. If geographers are
truly integrative (Gibson-Graham, 1996:xii)
then the influences of feminism and
poststructuralism have always been destined to
shake the basis of cultural geography. The
contemporary extent and nature of such a
transformation is unclear (Johnson, 1994b).
Nonetheless, this has been a period which has
seen the disruption of established concepts and
approaches. This has also disrupted radical
approaches such as Marxism and feminism
(Gibson-Graham, 1996; Pratt, 1993). One result
has been a conceptual dynamism and
complexity.
Many of the basic tenets of poststructuralism
and third wave feminisms suggest that this
unsettled moment is indeed the beginning of a
permanent unsettled or permanent troubled
period (see Butler, 1990). In Virtual
Geographies Mackenzie Wark argued that
social scientists were approaching, if they had
not yet arrived at, the phase of being finally
unfinished (1994:228). This is a situation in
which we continually question the concepts and
categories which we construct, deploy and
reinforce. A constructivist position holds that
categories of humanity, identities, and our other
conceptual orderings are contingent and
dynamic, they are not natural or a primordial
given (Butler, 1990; Jackson and Penrose,
1993).
The papers in this issue adopt such an
approach. It is a position which demands that
we challenge those naturalised categories which
have never previously been problematised or
troubled (Kobayashi and Peake, 1994:230). For
most Australian cultural geographers identities
and places are constructed, and are therefore
contingent and provisional. It is again part and
parcel of being finally unfinished or
permanently unsettled. This then is a defensive
call for flux, for dynamism, and critical
vigilance. It is a call for the recognition that
categories of humanity, identities, and our other
conceptual orderings are all socially
constructed. The challenge, however, is to have
a complexity and diversity of thought that
remains accessible. The papers in this issue
seek to do this.
But is it geography?
Deciding what counts as legitimate
geographical knowledge is constantly being
debated, and debated within certain strict
regulatory confines (Rose, 1993:24). The
policing of the discipline occurs in a number
of forums, both formal and informal. Take for
example Crabbs (1995) criticism of recent
research publications in human geography in
Australia. Crabb argued that there is a trend
toward the esoteric, with work beset by the
latest theories and in desperate need of a
solid factual foundation (1995:9,10). Cultural
geographers working within a feminist
paradigm receive the most criticism of all.
Office bearers of the IAG received complaints
following the publication in this journal of
Robyn Longhursts (1994) article dealing with
corporeality. Research on lesbian spaces
continues to be a source of both formal (Skelly,
1994) and informal ridicule. Gender studies has
faced, and still faces, an uphill battle to be
recognised as real geography (Rose,1993). Such
research is criticised for being trivial, of focused
Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy 3
Institute of Australian Geographers 1997
at the wrong scale the home (McDowell,
1992:404) or the body. These judgements of
what is and is not geography will function to
thwart thought, to stifle and prevent exploration,
to inhibit the production of the new (Grosz,
1995:130). These intolerances to different ideas,
innovative research questions and new topics
are fundamentally limiting and confining. The
policing of legitimate geography, in journals,
at conferences and in lunch rooms, can be an
exclusionary and deeply conservative process.
Cultural and material concerns
Anderson and Jacobs (in this issue) outline how
cultural geography in Australia has been an
inherently politicised project. Contrary to this
finding are the claims circulating in
international journals which assert that much
of cultural geography has become esoteric or
devoid of social comment and critique. The
focus upon issues of identity has recently
withstood criticism, mostly from the Left, as
to whether it is sufficiently grounded or
concerned enough with material issues.
Firstly, this has been manifest in the recent
debate, mostly within Professional Geographer,
between what we might call textualists and
materialists. A second manifestation of this
debate is the critiques by political economists
levelled at those interested in identity politics.
These two contemporary controversies are
worthy of brief review and response. They are
also demonstrative of a profound creative
tension within human geography in the 1990s,
between orthodoxies of political economy
established throughout the 1980s, and the
emerging discursive perpsectives associated
with the cultural turn of the 1990s (Richards
and Wrigley, 1996:535).
The debate in Professional Geographer came
in the wake of critical reviews of the collections
put together by Barnes, Duncan and Ley (see
The City as Text, 1990; Writing Worlds, 1992;
Place/Culture/Representation, 1993). These
texts focused on the discursive construction of
identity and of places. A number of reviewers
and guest editors have been critical of such a
textualist approach, asserting there is a shortage
of empirics, a lack of political engagement, and
the production of figurative and unreal
geographies (Badcock, 1996; Chouinard, 1994;
Gregson, 1993; Peet, 1996; Thrift, 1994).
Gregson was depressed by a geography
seduced by text, texts and intertextuality and
which had lost the desire (and the confidence?)
to say anything about this empirical social
world (1993:529). Thrift was concerned that
the textualist approach, as outlined in Writing
Worlds, does not give sufficient room to issues
of power and oppression, and that there is often
little sense of a world out there (1994:110).
For Peet the textualist approach does not allow
for an assessment to be made as to how well a
theory or model relates to a material world
external to the theorist (1996:97). Badcock
(1996:94) argued that the work of those urban
geographers who have been influenced by the
interpretive turn is suspect because of its
subjectivity. But, as Walton has poignantly
argued, the only external or real world
accessible to us is the one which we construct
through our interpretations (1995).
Accepting landscape as text (in the
contemporary sense of the term) implies that
what we can know is not a given, universal,
authentic world, but an epistemologically
mediated reality, constructed linguistically as
well as materially (Walton, 1995:62).
The act of interpreting a place or a group, and
any rendering we do of them, is text-like
(Walton, 1995:62,64; 1996:100). However, this
should not mean that there is no such thing as a
real world independent of the observer, but only
that we have no access to it as a pre-interpreted
reality (Walton, 1995:62,64; 1996:99). A more
useful approach may be to dissolve the false
distinction between the symbolic and the
material, and to position identities and land-
scapes as simultaneously culturally, socially,
economically and physically constructed
(Matless, 1996:386). Notwithstanding this more
radical call for a new materialism, the question
need not be about whether the identities and
4 Australian Geographical Studies
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places so depicted are real or constructed, but
rather it should be about the appropriateness of
the characterisation put forward.
The contemporary controversy surrounding a
supposed clash between identity politics and
political economy is another manifestation of
the so-called discursive / materialist tension. In
recent years a new episteme referred to as
identity politics, or the new politics of
difference, has emerged from within cultural
studies and elsewhere. Key theorists in this
philosophical development have included
Cornell West and Iris Young. Unlike earlier
libertarian researchers, these theorists do not
reject or suppress difference as part of their
advocacy for subordinate groups (West, 1990)
nor as part of their exposure of oppression
(Young, 1990a; 1990b). These theorists
recognise that group mobilisation and self-
validation necessitate an assertion of group
identity. Socialist feminist Nancy Fraser has
positioned this research project as recognition
politics, and demarcated it from socialist aims
of redistributing surplus labour (1995). In a
recent edition of New Left Review, Fraser began
her assessment of what she calls recognition
politics by drawing the following distinctions
and dichotomies.
The struggle for recognition is fast
becoming the paradigmatic form of political
conflict in the late twentieth century.
Demands for recognition of difference fuel
struggles of groups mobilized under the
banners of nationality, ethnicity, race,
gender, and sexuality. In these post-
socialist conflicts, group identity supplants
class interest as the chief medium of political
mobilization. Cultural domination supplants
exploitation as the fundamental injustice.
And cultural recognition displaces
socioeconomic redistribution as the remedy
for injustice and the goal of political struggle
(Fraser, 1995:68).
The criticism of identity politics from the Left is
that the focus upon issues of recognition, such
as cultural imperialism, are a distraction from
more grounded concerns such as exploitation
and marginalisation. Identity politics is
positioned as lacking a materialist and a
structural edge.
Many geographers have been critical of the
influence of discursive approaches, and of the
focus upon the politics of identity, within social
and cultural geography. Gregson has expressed
concern that social geographers have become
preoccupied with meaning, identity,
representation and ideology at the expense of
a material or concrete focus upon social
inequalities (1995:139). Gregson traced this to
the cultural turn in human geography, as
announced in New Words, New Worlds (Philo,
1991:13). To others the interpretive turn in
urban geography is responsible for influential
practitioners losing sight of the attendant
human costs and for shedding a politics of
advocacy (Badock, 1996:92,96). Harvey has
argued that the recent progressive movements,
broadly grouped under rubric of identity
politics, have contributed to an undermining of
the socialist project.
This weakening of working-class politics in
the United States from the mid-1970s
onwards can be traced back to many causes
[. . .]. one contributory feature has been the
increasing fragmentation of progressive
politics around special issues and the rise of
the so-called new social movements focusing
on gender, race, ethnicity, ecology,
multiculturalism, community, and the like
(Harvey, 1993:47).
Cultural geographers certainly take seriously
questions of identity. Yet, while it is the case
that identity is largely an outcome of
signification, this does not mean that it is
dismissible as tangential or non-material.
Constructions of identity are outcomes of
prevailing ideologies and structures, but they are
also, importantly, constitutive of them. Indeed,
almost every form of subjugation requires the
root oppression of cultural imperialism, in
which a group of people can be marked as
exploitable, or marginal, or inferior (Young,
Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy 5
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1990a:5860,64). The depiction of a group of
people, the place they inhabit, and they way they
inhabit it, all have crucial material implications
for those people (Sibley, 1995). This has been
shown to be the case by Australian cultural
geographers with regard to ethnic enclaves
(Anderson, 1990; Dunn, 1993), whole parcels
of a city marked as a socioeconomic Other
(Hodge, 1996; Mee, 1994), racialised districts
like Aboriginal Redfern in Sydney (Anderson,
1993), sites of privilege such as walled suburbs
(Hillier and McManus, 1994) or landscapes
significant to indigenous people (Jacobs, 1993).
This could be taken to suggest that remedies
targeted at cultural injustice may be even more
fundamental than those aimed at socio-economic
injustice. What is certain is that matters cultural
issues of identity, citizenship, empowerment
and so on are as structural and material as
issues traditionally linked to the political
economy. As Anderson and Jacobs point out in
this issue it is misleading and limiting to position
the economic as material and structural, while
boxing agency and the local as cultural. The
cultural and economic are indeed mutually
invasive, and they simultaneously structure
both time and in place. The power of definition
is a fundamental axis around which benefits and
oppressions accrue, as McLeay and Dowling
(both in this issue) show at the national and local
scales. The dismissal of the politics of identity as
a distraction, is not only part of an economic
reductionism, but it reveals a naivety about how
oppressions are facilitated and naturalised.
Representations of landscapes, and of environ-
mental degradation, are critical components to
any socioecological remedy (Baker, in this
issue). Cultural geographers focus upon
imagery, upon identity and representations. This
is not, ipso facto, an evacuation of the social,
material, structural or political. In a review of
social and cultural geography Matless (1996:
3856) revealed the immense interest and
activity in the geographies of poverty and
exclusion; the recent focus upon spaces of
citizenship is demonstrative of this. This is
made clear in the explicit engagement with
policy matters undertaken by contributors to this
issue.
Frasers purpose in discussing identity
politics was to put forward an agenda for the
integration of recognition politics with that of
socialism, something she considered as essential
in the face of resurgent conservatism. One of the
major theoretical issues within human
geography remains the question of whether the
cultural turn and political economy can come
to some acceptable conceptual reconciliation. In
their review of British geography, Richards and
Wrigley (1996:54) assert that such an interface
is crucial. They point to the attempts to sex the
economy, and investigations of the culture of
the firm, as examples of innovative routes for
tying these two research trajectories. However,
the integration plans offered from the political
economists appear more like co-options. For
instance, Peets plea was for only a limited
adoption of discursive approaches within an
established Marxist tradition, focussed narrowly
on the way [t]ext-like qualities are "written"
into landscapes by labor operating within power
relations (1996:97). Harveys (1989:355)
version of integration was to recuperate other
progressive movements within the overall
frame of historical materialist inquiry (see
Massey, 1991:546). Badcocks (1996:96)
prophecy is of a defeated interpretive turn,
subsequently providing the academic space in
which the full potential of political economy can
be realised! Under these schema cultural
geographers are offered the straight-jacket of a
largely unreconstructed political economy.
However, the response of political economists
in Australian geography to this cultural /
interpretive / discursive turn has been much
more encouraging than the above statements
belie (Fagan, 1995). This integration has been
artfully carried out by Gibson-Graham
(1996:2601), they have subjected constructs
like capitalism, globalisation and class to
the same sorts of radical rethinking and
troubling which has occured with regard to
gender, sexuality and race. The potential for an
enriching interface, between the cultural turn,
6 Australian Geographical Studies
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with the focus upon discourse and the power of
definition, and the redistributive goals of radical
political economy, appear bright in Australian
human geography.
Policy placed: Australian cultural geography
In recent years the cognate (trans)discipline of
cultural studies has experienced an interesting
debate on the desirability of integrating a policy
focus into research agendas. Much of the
advocacy of a central place for policy
considerations in Australia has come from Tony
Bennett and Stuart Cunningham and other
cultural technicians affiliated with Griffith
University in Brisbane (Bennett, 1992a;
1992b). Bennett argued that the field of culture
needs to be thought of as constitutively
governmental, and that research should be
directed to concretely influence the agendas,
calculations, and procedures of those entities
which can be thought of as agents operating
within, or in relation to, the fields of culture
(Bennett, 1992b:32). One of the benefits of
cultural theorists entering into policy debates,
and being actively involved in the assessment of
government initiatives and programs, has been
that progressive voices have begun to be heard
in arenas previously dominated by the advice of
neo-conservatives (During, 1993:20; ORegan,
1993:2023). The call for policy engagement is
laudable, providing that the definition of policy
is not a narrow one centred only around policy
development, government process and
consultancies (ORegan, 1993:203). As one
aspect of cultural research, policy should
include a focus upon power, upon the forces
of oppression and strategies of resistance. If
policy includes those matters, as well as
government actions and plans, then cultural
geographers will continue to be engaged in
policy matters. Cultural geographers bring
specific insights to assessments of cultural
policy, stressing the role of everyday places,
of landscapes, in the formation of culture and
identity (Dowling; Pulvirenti, both in this issue).
One of the clear themes which emerges from
the papers in this issue is the unsatisfactory way
in which culture is conceptualised in much of
cultural policy in Australia. Firstly, in both
national and local cultural policies there are
disturbing remnants of elitism. In national
policies culture has been thought of as the
product of talented individuals, manifest in
symphony orchestras, opera and ballet
(McLeay, in this issue). In local cultural plans
the aim is to create places using everyday
cultural forms, however the practice has had an
artifactual tendency which valorises local
museums, art galleries, monuments and theatres,
and has been unable to recognise the everyday
culture in places (Dowling, in this issue).
Cultural geographers have long expressed
their dissatisfaction for policies which treat
culture narrowly, as only race or ethnicity.
This narrow treatment is the second limitation in
the official defintions of culture. Multicultural
policies, such as the Community Relations
Strategy, have used categories of race and
ethnicity unproblematically (Anderson, 1993).
The conceptualisations of culture involved are
usually superorganic, treating culture as fixed
and bounded (Duncan, 1980). Anderson and
Jacobs outline the limitations of this older
approach. They demonstrate how cultures, such
as Aboriginality, are articulated in the spaces of
cities. Pulvirenti picks up on Fincher et al.s
(1993) critiques of multicultural policies in this
respect. The home ownership experiences of
Italian Australians reveals that the version of
culture deployed in multiculturalism policy
static homogenised and essentialised is
untenable. Incredibly for a settler nation, this
policy holds that culture is internationally
transported, that it is hermetically sealed-off
(wrapped) from the migration and settlement
process, and is relocated intact. Cultural policies
must be able to recognise, and embrace, the
dynamic nature of culture. The elitism of some
cultural policy is a significant problem,
reinforcing disenfranchisements in which
people are made non-citizens within the spaces
they inhabit. Baker warns of the dangers of
policy instruments which work from above. The
local knowledges and actions of Landcare
Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy 7
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groups hold out great potential for redressing
ecological damage. Dowling argues that local
cultural planning has similar potential; to
valorise everyday cultural forms, to be a force
for wider citizenry and empowerment.
Australian cultural geographers can no longer
settle for static and narrow conceptualisations of
culture, and such limiting articulations in policy
will be the targets of critique. Culture is fluid
and intersubjective. Waitt shows how it is also
structured by dominant ideologies, as
demonstrated in dominant cultural forms such
as Australian Tourist Commission advertising.
Waitt highlights the contradictory versions of
national identity constructed by different
institutions in Australia. Ostensibly progressive
encapsulations of Australia, as a diverse and
dynamic entity, have been constructed by the
Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) and the
Department of Communication and the Arts
(OMA 1989; Commonwealth of Australia,
1994). However, these are undermined by other
federal government agencies including the
Australian Tourist Commission (ATC). The
ATC version draws heavily upon Australians
who are Anglo/hetero/male/bushies, with a
smattering of indigenous people for exotic
effect, and an objectification of women for
erotic effect (Waitt, in this issue). McLeay notes
the insular and defensive motives behind the
previous and the present federal government
policies on national identity. Fear of the entry
and spread of homogenous (American) culture
is the premise for these recent confused
articulations of national identity. Issues of
national identity are crucial in that they
determine who has access to citizenry, rights
of participation, access to services, and the
ability to utilise institutions. The previous Labor
governments dynamic and heterogeneous
official construction of nationhood, and its
inclusive model of citizenship had provided a
base upon which to chart the rights and
responsibilities of citizens in a multicultural
society (OMA, 1989). However, there has been
a less than satisfactory application of the
Multicultural Project, and crucial areas of policy
such as anti-racism programs remain in their
infancy. McLeay expresses concern that the
election of the conservative Howard Coalition
government in March of 1996 has ended the
official embrace of cultural difference. The
politics of sameness now have the ascendancy
and inclusive citizenry seems further imperilled.
Once again, the definitions of Australian
national identity are being constructed out of
what we are not (not Asian, not Aboriginal),
rather than what we are (diverse,
heterogenous, dynamic). Once again, the
citizenship of indigenous and Asian Australians
is being publicly questioned (Hanson, 1996a,b).
Richard Baker shows how communities, with
their shared understandings and affiliations are
being tapped as a resource to address
environmental degradation. He has taken up
the Matless gauntlet (1996:380 citing Latour,
1993); Landcare is treated as simultaneously
naturalized, sociologized and deconstructed.
Landcare groups are culturally and physically
defined local environmentalisms, which
represent great potential, however, they are
clearly under-resourced. Baker advocates a
stronger commitment from central government
to the landcare social-environmental movement.
However, this assistance has to occur without
the stifling influence that such top-down actions
usually entail. Landcare bureaucracies need to
recognise, valorise and nurture the Landcare
communities without controlling them; such
control would be resisted, and the potential of
Landcare would be lost. This movement has
been ostensibly a cultural one, a diverse and
locally specific phenomenon, which holds the
possibility of profound transformative impacts:
the remedying of Australias extensive
environmental degradation.
The links between the discursive and non-
discursive construction of environmental
damage, and the outcomes in terms of who
pays for that damage, await more attention from
Australian geographers (Fagan, 1995:5).
Burgess has outlined the utility of examining
the processes and outcomes of environmental
battles (1992). Barkleys (1995) decon-
8 Australian Geographical Studies
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struction of a local land-use dispute in northern
NSW demonstrated how the rhetoric of
sustainable development is deployed by
protagonists as a source of legitimation. Alviano
and Mercer have recently warned that in
Australia we shall almost certainly see a greatly
increased polarisation between the haves and
the have-nots, both in terms of access to
economic resources and environmental goods
like clean air, water, space, and the absence of
noise (1996:113). The less powerful will be
required to suffer the ecological consequences
of others actions (Harvey, 1993:56). Forster
wrote that it will be the affluent communities in
Australia who are able to insulate themselves
from negative externalities, leaving low-
income communities in charge of their own
problems but without enough resources to tackle
them (1995:126). Cultural geographers in
Australia are appropriately tooled to engage
with these issues.
Not mentioned here has been the work with
groups whose oppressions are only recently
coming to light, such as the disabled and others
who are in care (Gleeson, 1996a). As Gleeson
demonstrates their plight is becoming visible as
a result of both deinstitutionalisation and
institutional neglect, but it is exposing a deeper
problem which is traceable to the way these
people have been labelled or constructed
(Gleeson, 1996b; contra Badcock, 1996:92).
There is also a committed stream of research
on the disempowerment of indigenous people,
and there has been a critical assessment of the
reticence of public and private institutions to
recognise their rights and traditions (Anderson
and Jacobs, in this issue; Jackson, 1995; Jacobs,
1993). The oppression of dissident sexualities,
and the unquestioned assumptions in our built
form of heterosexuality, have come under the
scrutiny of cultural geographers (Hodge, 1995;
Johnson, 1993). Tasmanias repressive anti-gay
laws, which encourage intolerances and
violence, were critically examined at the IAG
Conference in Hobart in January 1997. The
wider issue of the construction of gender
remains central to the research agendas of many
Australian geographers. These include critiques
of dominant and problematic versions of
masculinity (Winchester, forthcoming), of
femininity (Mee, 1994), and of the subjugation
of subordinate constructions of gender.
Conclusion
By way of summary, and without being
prescriptive, the papers in this issue demonstrate
three ways in which cultural geographers are
engaged in progressive transformative projects.
Firstly, they have embraced critically reflexive
approaches in which conceptual orderings and
categorisations are considered to be contingent
and political. Secondly, they are focussed upon
exposing and unsettling problematic ideologies,
particularly those which are not normally
questioned or which are taken for granted. This
requires constant surveillance of the powerful
ideas and instruments which emanate from the
regulatory frameworks of hetero-patriarchy,
colonialism and capitalism. The politics of
resistance is given theoretical recognition and
encouraged at systemic, individual, household
and local scales. Cultural geographers attempt to
voice the concerns of the less powerful and
marginalised. They do this, as best can be done
by utilising a range of methodologies and
writing techniques. Thirdly, as is obvious from
the papers in this issue, they make
recommendations, and more direct
interventions, on the formulation of more
appropriate institutional structures for post-
colonial and culturally diverse society. They
monitor and scrutinise governmental responses
to, and remedies for, oppressions. The research
reviewed above should be enough to justify the
claim that Australian cultural geography is
overtly critically reflexive, has a constant and
wary eye focused upon the forces of oppression,
and is often policy engaged.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This special issue owes much to the constructive comments
of the referees and the general guidance of Kay Anderson.
The issue would have been of a fundamentally lesser quality
without her asssitance. Gratitude is also due to Robyn
Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy 9
Institute of Australian Geographers 1997
Dowling, who has also contributed editorial advice. Thanks
also to Murray M
c
Caskill, Pauline M
c
Guirk and Richard
Baker for comments on manuscripts, and to the various
contributors to this special issue.
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