TY - JOUR
T1 - The Great Artesian Basin
T2 - a contested resource environment of subterranean water and coal seam gas in Australia
AU - de Rijke, Kim
AU - Munro, Paul
AU - Zurita, Maria de Lourdes Melo
PY - 2016/6/2
Y1 - 2016/6/2
N2 - ABSTRACT: The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia is one of the largest subterranean aquifer systems in the world. In this article we venture into the subterranean “resource environment”’ of the Great Artesian Basin and ask whether new insights can be provided by social analyses of the “vertical third dimension” in contemporary contests over water and coal seam gas. Our analysis makes use of a large number of publicly available submissions made to recent state and federal government inquiries, augmented with data obtained through ethnographic fieldwork among landholders in the coal seam gas fields of southern Queensland. We examine the contemporary contest in terms of ontological politics, and regard the underground as a challenging “socionature hybrid” in which the material characteristics, uses, and affordances of water and coal seam gas resources in the Great Artesian Basin are entangled with broader social histories, technologies, knowledge debates, and discursive contests.
AB - ABSTRACT: The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia is one of the largest subterranean aquifer systems in the world. In this article we venture into the subterranean “resource environment”’ of the Great Artesian Basin and ask whether new insights can be provided by social analyses of the “vertical third dimension” in contemporary contests over water and coal seam gas. Our analysis makes use of a large number of publicly available submissions made to recent state and federal government inquiries, augmented with data obtained through ethnographic fieldwork among landholders in the coal seam gas fields of southern Queensland. We examine the contemporary contest in terms of ontological politics, and regard the underground as a challenging “socionature hybrid” in which the material characteristics, uses, and affordances of water and coal seam gas resources in the Great Artesian Basin are entangled with broader social histories, technologies, knowledge debates, and discursive contests.
KW - fracking
KW - great Artesian Basin
KW - natural resource extraction
KW - unconventional gas
KW - underground
KW - water
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84958037557&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/08941920.2015.1122133
DO - 10.1080/08941920.2015.1122133
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84958037557
SN - 0894-1920
VL - 29
SP - 696
EP - 710
JO - Society and Natural Resources
JF - Society and Natural Resources
IS - 6
ER -