Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
elements through which discourses construct stories. First the basic enti-
ties whose existence is recognized or contrasted must be identii ed. Dryzek
refers to this as the 'ontology' of a discourse. Second, assumptions held
about natural relationships, such as Darwinian struggle or cooperation,
should be explored. This includes hierarchies of gender, expertise, political
power, intellect, race, and so on. Propositions about agency and motiva-
tion constitute the third area of investigation. Agents may, for example,
be seen as benign, public-spirited administrators or seli sh bureaucrats.
They could include enlightened citizens, rational consumers, ignorant and
short-sighted populations, and so on. Finally, the key metaphors and rhe-
torical devices that a discourse invokes should be scrutinized. This might
include, for example, metaphors such as spaceships (Boulding, 1966) that
may act as rhetorical devices to convince listeners or readers. It may also
include other devices like an appeal to widely accepted institutions or
practices such as established rights. A discourse could also accentuate
negatives such as horror stories regarding government mistakes.
In order to demonstrate the nature of the insights that Hajer and
Dryzek's approaches facilitate and to explore the methodological dii cul-
ties and practicalities of such analysis, we now apply them to a case study
of environmental policy governing anthropogenic burning in Cape York
Peninsula (Cape York), Queensland, Australia.
Discourse analysis in practice - a case study
1
Cape York is situated at the north-eastern tip of Queensland, Australia
(Figure 6.1). Covering an area roughly equivalent in size to England, Cape
York has a low population density of just 18 000 people mostly concen-
trated in a few mining towns and Aboriginal reserves as well as scattered
cattle stations. Northern Australia, including Cape York, is thought to
have a long history of anthropogenic burning stretching back at least
40 000 years (some estimates date it as far back as 70 000 years), coincid-
ing with the arrival of the i rst Aborigines (Stocking and Mott, 1981).
The idea of 'i re-stick' farming was popularized by Rhys Jones (1969)
to describe the practices of indigenous land users where low-intensity,
early dry-season burning across small areas was used to drive game into
hunting grounds and increase the productivity of resource-rich areas such
as monsoon forests.
2
There has been considerable controversy over the impact of Aboriginal
use of i re on the ecology of Australia. Most prominent is the debate
around whether, in tropical northern Australia, Aboriginal burning
caused the recession of earlier rainforest in favour of savanna or whether
the recession of the rainforest was in fact the result of climate change
(Flannery, 1994; Rose, 1996; Bowman, 1998, 2000; Hill, 2003). Bowman
