Anatomy of a Blockade. Towards an Ethnography of Environmental Dispute (Part 2), Rural New South Wales 1996

In an earlier contribution to TAJA (Peace 1996), I aimed to initiate an anthropological approach to environmentalism in Australia. I argued that the unpacking of environmental disputes was an appropriate starting point. In this paper, I develop this further by detailing the politics of a forest blockade in southern NSW in 1996. The blockade has long been an important element in environmental conflicts for it can prove an effective political manoeuvre, both symbolically and strategically. This alone makes it a worthwhile subject for ethnographic exploration. However, in this extended case study I detail how local residents, many of whom were urban refugees, developed a sense of community, an awareness of the forest's richness, and a distinctive sense of the relation between community and forest, during the course of mounting the blockade. These elements of their political discourse served them well as they negotiated with the State Government to halt logging in the old growth forest and thus preserve the area from further exploitation.