149 - Tim Neale

Cultures of Energy

Dominic tries to sing Ted Cruz out of office on this week’s podcast and retells a story about the senator’s dirty shirt. Then (14:59) fellow anthropologist and environmental humanities podcaster Tim Neale (of Deakin University) joins us from the future in Melbourne. With him we review their very successful recent Anthropocene Campus and its effort to think deep thoughts and deep time through the lens of the elements while visiting exotic local Anthropocene sites like Melbourne’s “poo farm.” We then return to Tim’s own work and talk through his recent book, Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia (U Hawaii Press, 2017) which traces the rise and fall of Australia’s Wild Rivers Act and the ways in which the aestheticization of environment can contribute to the dispossession of indigenous peoples. We talk about effort to include and exclude rivers and aboriginal peoples from settler liberal politics, the impact of the 1992 Mabo Decision and the negotiation of usufructuary rights, why the Wild Rivers Act was eventually repealed and with what legacy. We then turn to Tim’s new research on fire management, carbon storage and risk modeling in Australia and close by plugging Tim’s own excellent podcast, anthropology@deakin, which you can find at https://soundcloud.com/user-910866758 PS American citizens, please don’t forget to vote!!