Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains

Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains

DOI: 10.1111/ruso.12442

© 2022 The Authors Rural Sociology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Rural Sociological Society (RSS)

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, bution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

distri-Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities

Helen Forbes- Mewett

Sociology, School of Social Sciences 

Monash University

Kien Nguyen- Trung

School of Social Sciences 

Monash University

Abstract This paper reflects on the conditions that emerge as regional Australia becomes increasingly immersed in international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions In the Liverpool Plains region, farmers are deeply reliant on global export markets Meanwhile, global demand for Australian minerals continues to produce both economic development and environmental degradation In this con- text, farmers are drawing on transnational and national social movements to collectively construct their knowledge of risk and “organized irresponsibility” and resist environmental risk by positioning themselves as a part of a cosmo- politan public While consistently evaluating risks associated with a proposed coal mine, farmers see themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations in a precarious world These conditions are productive of new risks, identities, as well as new forms

of critical, collective practice.

Introduction

In the Liverpool Plains— “Australia’s Food Bowl”— farmers have been challenging the development of a proposed coal mine near their prop-erties for over a decade The Liverpool Plains is situated in regional Australia, which refers to the towns and areas outside the major capital cities Conditions of life on the Liverpool Plains are intimately bound up with international markets, global and local political shifts, and chang-ing environmental conditions Farms export much of their produce, competing in global markets Demand for Australian minerals to meet the energy and industrial needs of emerging economies produced local and global economic development while contributing to environmen-tal risks Mines offer the economic potential for regional Australia as well as leading to the establishment of new political alliances, both for

☆ Address correspondence to Helen Forbes- Mewett, Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Monash University Clayton Campus, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia Email: helen forbesmewett@monash.edu

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and against mineral exploration Local farmers draw on national and transnational social movements to collectively resist environmental risk and secure livelihoods deeply reliant on international export markets They organized commissioned research and used their situated under-standing of the environment to challenge state decision- making and cor-porate power These complex conditions saw the forging of new social alliances and identities Farmers also saw themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global popu-lations Therefore, in the Liverpool Plains, changing global conditions resulted in environmental and economic impacts that are both produc-tive of risk and of new forms of critical practice

In this study, we see this grassroots farmers’ movement as an example

of how everyday people are understanding and responding to a plex and interrelated set of environmental, economic, and social risks Global markets have reshaped social conditions in regional Australia, reorienting responsibility for emerging environmental risks and altering the political orientation and collective identities of local food producers

com-To understand this movement, we turn to the theory of Ulrich Beck For Beck (1992, 2006), contemporary society has become a “risk society” whose institutions and individuals spend a great deal of energy debating, managing, and preventing risks of its own making The risk society thesis

is well utilized by sociologists to understand how actors constitute their social worlds in the face of uncertainty This paper aims to extend Beck’s discussion of subpolitics to reflect local farmers’ capacity to challenge risk definitions and the organized irresponsibility imposed by the state and industry (see Pellow and Brehm 2013) Our empirical approach is qualitative, involving 23 interviews with farmers in the Liverpool Plains

We find the farmers’ position themselves as knowledgeable actors, bining “external” scientific knowledge with a situated knowledge of the environment to establish a comprehensive account of the risks posed

com-to their collective identities and livelihoods In constructing this edge, they reflect on “organized irresponsibility” that captures how risks are being produced but the responsibility was not identified or assigned

knowl-to any specific entity Farmers respond knowl-to this irresponsibility by situating themselves using a cosmopolitan identity and actively engaging in sub-political actions

Risk Society, Organized Irresponsibility, and Cosmopolitanization

The risk society thesis (Beck 1992) has been widely used by social tists to understand responses to risks associated with contemporary life The thesis belongs to a broader theory of reflexive modernization, which sits alongside the theses of individualization and multidimensional

scien-Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes- Mewett and Nguyen 3

globalization (Beck and Beck- Gernsheim 2010) Beck argues that our societies are living in late modernity in which the central feature is the production and distribution of risks rather than wealth, as in the first modernity (Beck 1992) In this epoch, risks are not external (i.e., nat-ural risks) but, instead, are “manufactured risks” produced by the “pro-gression of human development” (Giddens 1999:4) Thus, Beck defined risks as

a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself Risks, as opposed to older dangers, are consequences which relate to the threatening force of modernization and to its globalization of doubt They are politically

As a part of reflexive modernity, the theory of risk society refers to how humans have to face the unexpected consequences of their own activities, including overproduction, consumerism, and the adoption

of technological advancements This does not necessarily mean, as Giddens  (1999:3) comments, that contemporary societies are riskier than traditional or industrial ones Rather, its defining feature is an in-creasing preoccupation with the future, and the aspiration to normalize and control it in the face of uncertainty and insecurity Risk is now cru-cial to the way people live, make sense of, and organize their social world (Beck 2006; Giddens 1990) In other words, risks have gained political potency in the contemporary world (Beck 2009)

The rise of manufactured risks raises the question of social sibility (Beck 2006) Answering the question, “who is responsible?” is not easy in the context of manufactured risks since it is difficult “if not impossible to trace any specific social damages to any specific indi-viduals” (Curran 2015:5; see also Giddens 1999) Beck (2009:8) cap-tures this feature of contemporary life with his concept of “organized irresponsibility,” suggesting that irresponsibility is organized or insti-tutionalized so that responsibility can be assigned, but punishment is not likely to be given to any specific individuals (Beck 2009:8) There

respon-is “the coexrespon-istence of responsibility [Zust¨andigkeit] and impunity [Unzurechenbarkeit]” (Beck 2009:8) This is because risks are copro-duced by many actors (e.g., science, politics, the economy, media), and

it is not possible to cast blame on any one of these alone (Beck 2009:8) This coproduction makes it unreliable to clearly identify the causes and consequences of specific threats Risks have now become imper-ceptible, noncalculable, invisible, and uninsurable (Beck 1992) In other words, it is impracticable for laypeople to directly perceive and

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explain risks through their own senses; instead, they rely on their sonal experience to make sense of risks Testing this thesis empirically, Marks, Martin, and Zadoroznyj (2008) point out that because of their concern with industrial factors (for instance, the use of chemicals), most participants expressed their hesitance toward using recycling water for drinking than other sources of water such as treated rainwa-ter In making sense of risk, laypeople are dependent on the scientific and technical knowledge supplied by powerful institutions such as science, politics, or corporations or media (Beck 1992) Given risk is fundamentally about the production and authorization of knowledge,

per-these institutions are seen to be both “instruments of risk management”

and a “source of risk” itself (Beck 2006:336, original emphasis) The focus on technical expertise and institutional actors is where Beck’s theory receives its criticism; his emphasis on expert systems leads to the neglect of laypeople’s knowledge (Lash 1994) This argument is part of a long tradition of critiquing early conceptualizations of risk

by Beck (1992; also Giddens 1991), where the theory is seen to lack relevance in the actual processes of institutional and everyday life (Alexander 1996) While not entirely dismissed as another “grand theory,” the “risk society” thesis has been rigorously critiqued for its universalizing and totalizing assumptions (Dean 1999; Mythen 2004) along with its apparent ahistoricism (Zinn 2008b)

Beck rejects the notion of methodological nationalism while ing the rise of methodological cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanization has opened a “global space of responsibility of global risks” in which people living distant from each other must face the unexpected con-sequences of others’ decisions and actions (Beck 2009:6) Risks cannot

support-be contained in national– territorial borders nor in the present time (Beck 2006) Global market risks demonstrate this type of irresponsibility because they are not controlled by— and cannot be restrained within— the national market (Beck 2009) Facing global threats has led to the formation of “cosmopolitan ‘collective consciousness’,” where global cit-izens must acknowledge themselves as a part of the global public in fac-ing the shared problem (Beck 2009) In his final book, Beck (2016:26) extends the risk society theory to the theory of metamorphosis of the world where “the nation is not the center of the world… but the nations

are circulating ‘around the new fixed stars: world and humanity’ that

are at risk As such, people’s everyday life reality is shaped by the mopolitized reality’” (Beck 2016:30– 31) In this context, Beck promotes the idea of individualization in which individuals now must live a life of their own, moving from building their biographies based on the insti-tutional and structural rules, regulations and supports to constructing

‘cos-Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes- Mewett and Nguyen 5

“elective biographies, ‘do- it- yourself biographies’, risk biographies, ken or broken- down biographies” (Beck and Beck- Gernsheim 2002:24) Because of their choices, individuals must be responsible for their own “personal misfortunes and unanticipated events” (Beck and Beck- Gernsheim 2002:24) Indeed, this individualization thesis has been confirmed by some studies In their study of how Australians perceive risk, for instance, Lupton and Tulloch (2002) found little awareness of external forces that cause risk Rather, these Australians tended to indi-vidualize their ability to manage the complexities of social life While individualizing a sense of social responsibility, the authors suggest that

bro-“laypeople” remain keenly involved in the able navigation of risk

Traditionally underwritten by the nation- state, political power is now dispersed across a broader array of social constellations Beck (1992:183– 5) argues that in the age of reflexive modernity, the formal politics based

on nation- state’s institutions of representative democracy such as parties, parliaments has lost its power of structuration and legitimation, giving rise to subpolitics, “a new political culture (citizen’s initiative groups and social movement).” In this movement, citizens do not need to rely

on democratic control to legitimize their actions but actively use all the available tools including media, legal control, and consultation to pur-sue their goals and interest (Beck, 1992, 1996) They aim to confront their own problems from “outside formal politics,” in areas such as sci-ences and professions; green, ethical, and political consumption; and corporations (Holzer and Sørensen 2003:79) or climate governance (Acuto 2013) The subpoliticization is also portrayed in the emergence

of new environmental movements such as the environmental justice movement, the grassroots environmental movement, and radical eco-logical resistance (Buttel 2003; White 2009) The environmental justice movement from 1980 to 1990s, for instance, has shown that local peo-ple cannot be perceived merely as a subject of study but rather should

be deemed an active knowledge producer who can oppose and change projects that harm their locality (Martinez- Alier et al. 2016)

Despite recent developments adding a much needed “bottom up” perspective to Beck’s theory, there remains a need to explore how social actors understand and respond to the environmental risks associated with the combination of a changing economy and climate (Austen 2009; Henwood et al. 2008; Lupton and Tulloch 2002; Wall and Olofsson 2008) In other words, how social actors would form their definition of risks and cope with the effects of organized irre-sponsibility so as to protect their interests in the context of a global-ized world In a convincing critique, Anderson  (2019) has recently suggested that risk is both constraining and enabling critical practice

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to manage the complexities of social life Anderson  (2019:501, inal emphasis) challenges the limitations of the risk society thesis,

orig-noting how risk “is a way of governing ourselves that works both with and against contemporary forms of individualizing power.” As such,

it is worth considering the resources of resistance made possible by the accumulation of risks This account suggests that individuals are increasingly expected to manage and mitigate risks in their lives in

a way that extends beyond Beck’s  (2006) suggestion of three ble reactions to such conditions: denial, apathy, and transformation Specifically, we need to take seriously Anderson’s (2019) contention that “risk” produces new and unexpected sites of collective resis-tance as well as reproducing patterns of individualization Regional Australia has been hit particularly hard by the conditions of a chang-ing economy and climate, yet there is a need to develop knowledge of how communities perceive and respond to these challenges As such, this paper takes Beck’s thesis to the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales, Australia, where farmers are active in debating, managing, and responding to the risks associated with a proposed coal mine near their properties This case study explores how these food producers make sense of a looming coal mine they see as threatening their collective livelihoods and identities In it, we find farmers construct knowledge

possi-of the complex environmental risks caused by the prospective mine that is then used as a form of resistance to organized irresponsibility Denial, apathy, and transformation (Beck 2006) are not mutually con-stitutive in this context: they are overlapping and experienced in dif-ferent ways by our informants through time We consider the role of local food producers in navigating a “risk society,” therefore, ground-ing Beck’s thesis in everyday lives, where “lay knowledge” and “expert knowledge” are combined in novel ways to formulate new collective identities and social movements

Data and Methods

This paper is a qualitative case study conducted in January 2016, centrating on responses to a proposal from a multinational company (“the Company”) to mine for coal in the Gunnedah Basin in New South Wales, Australia The expansive Gunnedah is one of many min-eral basins in the Liverpool Plains (Franks et al. 2010) The Liverpool Plains covers a large area of the North West Slopes region and is one

con-of the most productive farming regions in Australia, with the tion of winter and summer crops practiced since the 1970s (Sun and Cornish 2006) The favorable conditions are the result of rich aquifers, high- quality black soil, and historically high rainfall in both summer

rota-Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes- Mewett and Nguyen 7

and winter This allows farmers to cultivate diverse crops throughout the year The region produces around 40 percent of the national agri-cultural output and is therefore often considered to be “Australia’s Food Bowl.”

While occupying a more divisive position in the political life of the country, mining is central to the Australian economy Its economic might

is certainly indisputable; mineral exports generated AU$278 billion in

2019 with a large proportion of all exports (Department of Industry Innovation and Science 2019) Of total export earnings, coal exports contributed AU$57 billion, second only to iron ore (Britt et al. 2018) Its environmental impact is, however, hotly debated Most coal mines are spread across the states of New South Wales and Queensland, with a particularly high density in the Hunter Valley, northwest of Sydney The

“politics of coal” are prominent in feeding divisive debates ing Australia’s future economy, environment, and energy mix that are decades- old and continuing Meanwhile, in 2006, the Gunnedah Basin

surround-in the Liverpool Plasurround-ins was surround-initially a prospective resource region (Franks

et al. 2010) Within a space of a few years, a major mining company was granted an exploration license to construct underground mines, fol-lowed by another for a subsidiary of a second multinational, which forms the subject of this paper In the years preceding 2012, the Company com-pleted exploration and submitted a contentious Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) claiming that the project would have minimal impact

on groundwater and agricultural production The claim was challenged

by Caroona Coal Action Group (CCAG), an activist group of farmers who had established themselves to campaign against the earlier develop-ment This is the context in which we undertake our exploration of how farmers produce knowledge of “risk” and the actions taken under these conditions

Contesting the claims of the Company, CCAG hired an independent consultant from a large research university to conduct an independent peer review of the watermark coal project’s groundwater modeling report The review raised major concerns regarding the conclusions reached in the EIS submitted by the Company After the Company revised its modeling, the state government granted conditional approval for the project Immense pressure from local farmers and CCAG resulted in the government buying back half of the Company’s exploration license (Murphy  2017) Nevertheless, the Company progressed with plans for the watermark coal mine, although with a reduction in size The approvals of the state government caused great concern for many local farmers, fearing further rubber- stamping from the government The farmers’ construction of knowledge of the complex and interconnected

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environmental, economic, and social impacts of this proposal is the ject of this paper

sub-This paper draws on interviews the lead author conducted in January

2016 with 23 farmers The sample encompasses 13 males and 10 females (see Forbes- Mewett 2019) The participants were aged between 18 and

85 years, of which four were under 40, 11 over 55, and the remaining from 40 to 55 This broad age range loosely reflects the average age

of Australian farmers, which was reported to be 57 as of 2017– 2018 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2019) All participants relied on farm-ing as their main livelihood and all were members of the activist group CCAG mentioned above, who assisted with organizing interviewees Individuals in the group described themselves as generally not antimin-ing, but driven by the threat to their livelihoods, identities, and commu-nities they saw posed by the Company’s proposal

The interviews were approximately 1 h in duration and took place

in situ (on the participants’ farms) The interviewer drove to the ticipants’ farms aided by the provision of “mudmaps.” These detailed, hand- drawn maps provided by each farmer enabled the interviewer to find the next interview site Each participant was allocated a pseudonym

par-to ensure anonymity These efforts were undertaken so participants would feel comfortable in their familiar environment and there would

be minimal disruption to their daily work routine The interviews have conducted either one- on- one, in pairs, or in threes Interview questions related to agricultural produce, distribution, exports, and the perceived threat of mining to food security in Australia and beyond Farmers were asked about their crops, where the produce was destined and how they responded collectively to the risk of the mining proposal They were also asked if they considered themselves as a national or a global supplier, and how farming in the area benefitted or was impacted by being in the Liverpool Plains, an area that was also home to significant mining After being transcribed, data were analyzed by using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) This analytical approach helped the authors develop familiarity with the data set; generate initial codes; form, review, and name emerging themes and subthemes relating to how farmers per-ceived and responded to the risks from the coal mining proposal.After reading and becoming familiar with the data, the authors gener-ated initial codes from the interview manuscripts and gradually formed the coding scheme As such, codes generated were related to the three domains of knowledge of “risk,” “organized irresponsibility,” and “cos-mopolitan identity.” In accordance with each of these domains, themes were formed based on similar codes As Braun and Clarke (2019) pointed out, these domains are predetermined in the process of formulating

Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes- Mewett and Nguyen 9

research questions, while themes were what arose within data through

a process of data analysis Eventually, in response to risk, there were three themes: “unpredictability, unmanageability, uncertainty of risk”;

“transcending temporal, spatial boundaries”; and “questioning expert definition of risks.” In response to “organized irresponsibility,” there were three themes “the project’s risk representing the threat of the whole mining culture in Australia,” “questioning the role of the govern-ment,” and “CCAG and collective resistance to organised responsibility.”

In response to “cosmopolitan identity,” there were two themes “playing

a role of global food producer” and “representing the environmental movements.” In the final step, themes were connected to produce a convincing story As suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006:93), the data extract presented in this paper is relevant, essential, “concise, coherent, logical, nonrepetitive, and interesting,” thus helping to illustrate the arguments relating to the research questions

The involvement of CCAG was a limitation of this study, as it restricted the opportunity for more diverse opinions regarding the coal mining proposal Nonetheless, the method offered a way to examine how local food producers made sense of risks in a changing economy and environ-ment At the time the fieldwork was conducted, the Company’s project was still in a process of gaining approval to start construction and opera-tion By this stage, the campaign against the proposal had lasted almost

10 years This context provides a valuable opportunity to assess how local farmers, both individually and collectively, perceive and challenge risks associated with the proposed coal mine near their properties

10

Table 1. Themes Summary

unmanage-ability, uncertainty of risk

If it was only one football field it probably might only have a minor impact but we’re ing about 4,620 football fields, that’s 38 km 2 That’s a massive hole in the ground which will impact everything around it and that’s our aquifers (Wendy)

talk-Transcending temporal and

spatial boundaries

But the whole story isn’t being told [in the Company’s proposed plan and EIS] [The pact the EIS assessed] only focused on the top one third of the resource The other two- thirds of the resource is underground… that is up to 600 m deep… So where we think we’ve got a 30- year mine, this could end up a 100- year mine…So that is Russian Roulette [a potentially deadly game] this government is prepared to take (Malcolm)

im-Questioning expert

defini-tion of risks

With the Company, it wouldn’t matter what mining company it was, and what I’ve learned since I’ve been involved with the group [CCAG] is that everything they present in their EIS… are all assumptions… Well, they [consultants] say they present themselves as independent consultants However, they are paid by the proponent [the Company]

(Meghan) Organized

irresponsi-bility

The project’s risk

repre-senting the threat of the whole mining culture in Australia

Looking at the activities by BHP [another mining company], farmers saw the unsure future with the company’s changing their mining plan The fight [of CCAG and farmers in gen- eral] was not against just the Company’s proposed project but also the mining culture (Don)

Questioning the role of the

government

Every person you talk to in the government all say now it was a bad decision to release the land for mining, they will admit that privately The problem they have now is that it’s that far down the track it’s very hard to undo and it’s not Labor, it’s not Liberal, it’s not National, they’re all complicit in allowing a bad decision to continue (Joe)

CCAG and collective

resistance to organized responsibility

When the EIS was first published, we had six weeks to respond So, we did individual missions as well as we employed consultants to do submissions as well And I went over to the Breeza Hall and I interviewed the locals, and I typed up their submissions for them because a lot of them didn’t know where to start… (Meghan)

Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-

urbaniza-Representing the

environ-mental movements

We’ve seen, right round the world, how multinationals have destroyed, or are destroying, many of the nations in Africa, South America, certainly in Indonesia with the Java mud flow and that was Santos, the local company that created the biggest environmental disaster the world has ever seen We’ve seen it in New Guinea where the Ok Tedi River was destroyed and we’ve just got to take every measure to see that that doesn’t happen in Australia (Maurie)

Source: Consolidated from interviews with farmers.

Table 1 Continued

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Reflecting on Risk in the Liverpool Plains

In our discussions with farmers in the Liverpool Plains, an aptitude for incorporating various modes of expertise was clearly demonstrated Our informants drew on scientific expertise to support their claims, while their lived experience as food producers gave their accounts collective legiti-macy, producing a comprehensive account of risks that were locally felt When asked about the risk of open- cut mining, Malcolm framed his under-standing of various risks within his experience of agricultural production, the dispersal of scientific thought based on environmental regulation, and his cumulative expertise in sustainable food production based on decades

of farming in the region He explained that two decades ago, farmers in the region had voluntarily come to an agreement with the State to reduce their water use by two- thirds to protect the groundwater in the interests of long- term environmental sustainability Farmers did this because they were well aware that if they continued to use irrigation systems to extract water from the aquifers at the rate they had been used to, the groundwater would gradually decrease and not be sustainable However, their water plan was unseated by an international company’s proposed coal mine:

Now we have a new player (the Company) that could cause serious disruption to that science that says it’s sustainable at the moment… What happens when [the Company] starts blasting for that 300 m hole? No one can tell us what’s going to happen when you blast five

The Company released an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) ing that there would be no risk from the proposed mine However, the CCAG, an activist group of farmers opposed to the Company’s proposal suggesting no risk, hired an independent review of the EIS As the indepen-dent review revealed, the modeling used in the EIS was flawed because it did not consider the impact of the proposed project on underground water that could extend further beyond the project’s area Thus, for farmers, if the local irrigation system extracting water at 30– 70 m below the ground could affect the aquifers, a massive hole of 300- m depth would definitely destroy them In normal conditions, the aquifers bear water that is replen-ished by rainfall However, if the proposed mine damaged the aquifers they would no longer be able to hold groundwater, and eventually be unable to provide water for crop plantation and daily consumption For Wendy, “you don’t have to be Einstein” to see such a possibly devastating impact of the proposed open- cut mining on local aquifers and food production

persuad-For our informants, their understanding extended beyond their concern

of risks to their own farming so as to care for the farmers in general and