In order to better understand existing inequality and injustice in our cities and spaces, and to understand how vulnerability to future impacts in the context of climate change is constructed and experienced, many scholars have noted that we need to incorporate multiple factors that shape identity and access to power and resources in our analyses, including race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Less widely acknowledged is the intersectionality of these factors; that specific combinations of these factors shape their own social position, lived experience, and thus affect access to power and experiences of oppression and vulnerability. To address emerging issues like climate change it is vital to find a way to understand and approach these multiple, intersecting axes of identity that shape how impacts will be distributed and experienced. This paper introduces intersectionality, a concept for understanding multiple, co-constituting axes of difference and identity, and kyriarchy, a theory of power that describes the power structures intersectionality produces, and offers researchers a fresh way of approaching the interactions of power in planning research and practice.
Political theorists argue that justice for cultural groups must account for socioeconomic distribution, political representation and cultural recognition. Combining this tripartite justice framework with settler colonial theory, we analyse novel data sets relating to Aboriginal peoples' water experiences in south-eastern Australia. We construe persistent injustices as 'water colonialism', showing that the development of Australia's water resources has so far delivered little economic benefit to Aboriginal peoples, who remain marginalized from decision-making. We argue that justice theories need to encompass a fourth dimension -the vitally important socio-ecological realm -if they are to serve as conceptual resources for advancing Indigenous peoples' rights and needs.
Abstract:The passage of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) brought with it much anticipation-though in reality, quite limited means-for recognizing and protecting Aboriginal peoples' rights to land and water across Australia. A further decade passed before national and State water policy acknowledged Aboriginal water rights and interests. In 2015, the native title rights of the Barkandji Aboriginal People in the Australian State of New South Wales (NSW) were recognized after an eighteen-year legal case. This legal recognition represents a significant outcome for the Barkandji People because water and, more specifically, the Darling River, or Barka, is central to their existence. However, the Barkandji confront ongoing struggles to have their common law rights recognized and accommodated within Australian water governance regimes. Informed by literature relating to the politics of recognition, we examine the outcomes of government attempts at Indigenous recognition through four Australian water regimes: national water policy; native title law; NSW water legislation; and NSW water allocation planning. Drawing from the Barkandji's experiences in engaging with water regimes, we analyze and characterize the outcomes of these recognition attempts broadly as 'misrecognition' and 'non-recognition', and describe the associated implications for Aboriginal peoples. These manifestations of colonial power relations, whether intended or not, undermine the legitimacy of state water regimes because they fail to generate recognition of, and respect for, Aboriginal water rights and to redress historical legacies of exclusion and discrimination in access to water.
We lost. Now what? "[the revolution] you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing" 1 Let us sit with the idea, for a moment, that we have lost. For every #metoo, there is a chorus of anxious necktie clutching about how things have gone too far, and the deeply misogynistic and bloodied claims of 'incels' are receiving mainstream thinkpiece consideration. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are disproportionately criminalised (Australian Law Reform Commission 2017), and significant and devastating health gaps remain (Holland 2018). The Uluru Statement From the Heart and the Makarrata Commission it proposed offered a pathway to more substantive forms of justice (Delegates at the Referendum Convention at Uluru 2017), but was rejected by the Turnbull Government (Gordon 2017). Indeed, we live in 1 From Lauren Berlant (2011, p1): "A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. It might involve food, or a kind of love; it might be a fantasy of the good life, or a political project" (emphasis added).
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