collective agency nos human causality and enviromental social movements

8/2/2019 Collective Agency Nos Human Causality and Enviromental Social Movements

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Collective agency,non-human causality

and environmental socialmovementsA case study of the Australian landcaremovement

Stewart Lockie

Centre for Social Science Research, Central Queensland University

AbstractThis article explores the implications for social movement theory of recent

work in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) that explicitly rejects

dualisms between society and nature, structure and agency, and macro and

micro-levels of analysis. In doing so it argues that SSK offers: (1) a theoretically

useful definition of collective agency as an achievement of interaction; that is

(2) sensitive to the influence of both humans and non-humans in the networks

of the social; and (3) provides practical conceptual tools with which to analyse

dynamics of power and agency in the ordering of networks. Applying this

framework to a case study of the Australian landcare movement it is argued

that a range of practices have been used to enact action at a distance over

Australian farmers and to order agricultural practices in ways that are consis-

tent with corporate interests while minimizing opposition from conservation

organizations otherwise highly critical of chemical agriculture.

Keywords: environmentalism, landcare, social movements, sociology of

scientific knowledge

The motivation for this article stems from a belief that the ways in whichsocial movements are conceptualized in both popular and academic dis-courses are of tremendous political and environmental significance. It willbe obvious to most readers that the notion of the environment movement

Journal of Sociology 2004 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 40(1): 4158

DOI:10.1177/1440783304040452 www.sagepublications.com
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is used just as frequently to stereotype and dismiss environmental activistsas extremists and outsiders as it is to rally would-be activists around a senseof common purpose and identity. In the wake of postmodern social theory,the obvious conceptual move here is to embrace a more differentiated andcontingent understanding of movements; to abandon heroic accounts oftheenvironment movement in favour of more localized explorations of themany environment movements. Indeed, as the overt focus of environmentalpolitics moves beyond wilderness preservation and pollution prevention(Di Chiro, 1998; Pepper, 1984) to embrace ideas such as environmental jus-tice, livelihood preservation, environmental racism, food safety and tradi-tional intellectual property rights (Agarwal, 1992; Faber, 1998; Low andGleeson, 1998; Novotny, 1998; Pinderhughes, 1996; Shiva, 1998), such amove seems essential. The question is, does this take us far enough? Doesan abandonment of grand narratives of universalistic movements provide

us, as sociologists, with the tools and insights to engage with contemporaryenvironmental politics?

As arguably the most prominent sociological response to environmental-ism, social movement theory has allowed sociologists to engage with con-temporary environmentalism while remaining firmly embedded in one ofthe most basic assumptions of sociology; that social facts should always beexplained by other social facts (Durkheim, 1938). Social movements havebeen conceptualized in terms of social processes and causes ranging throughmacro-social structural change, contradictions within the capitalist mode of

production, the inability of existing political institutions to adapt to change,conflict over access to resources, newly emerging political opportunities andindividual motivations. The environment figures within these explanationsas a passive entity on to which human action and conflict are superimposed.This ontological distinction, however, between human society as the centreof agency and nature as the other is fundamentally at odds with thebiopolitics of contemporary environmental conflict (Goodman, 1999).Biopolitical campaigns on issues ranging from environmental justice togenetic engineering have promoted globally the inseparability and co-

evolution of the human and non-human (Goodman, 1999; Sutton, 1999).As Goodman (1999) argues, a sociology that fails to problematize theCartesian dualism between society and nature is likely to be a sociology thatis increasingly irrelevant to biopolitical struggle.

It is not the intention of this article either to dismiss social movementtheory or to develop a new theory of social movements. Rather, it is toexplore the relevance of recent work in the sociology of scientific knowl-edge (SSK), or actor-network theory, to our understanding of those socialphenomena recognized in popular and academic discourses as social move-

ments. While SSK does not represent the only sociological attempt otherthan social movement theory to incorporate nature within social theory, itsparticular relevance here derives from the explicit attempt that is made to

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dissolve societynature dualisms. However, SSK also calls into questiondichotomies between micro and macro-levels of social action, agencyand structure, and so on. Not only does this raise the prospect of engag-ing more directly with the biopolitical struggle of contemporary environ-mental movements, it also has major implications for the attribution ofagency to a collective subject and conceptualization of collective action.This exploration will be contextualized within a case study of the Australianlandcare movement; a movement that both fails to comply with many ofthe features of social movements and conditions for mobilization identifiedin the social movement literature, and presages significant contestation andchange in the socio-environmental networks of rural Australia.

Background: the development of the landcare

movementThere are many ways in which landcare can be defined, the most straight-forward being in terms of the National Landcare Program (NLP); a federalgovernment programme initiated in 1989 in response to a proposal fromthe National Farmers Federation (NFF) and the Australian ConservationFoundation (ACF) for a national land management programme that recog-nized what was seen as the importance of self-help action supported bylocal community groups and local, state and federal governments (Toyneand Farley, 1989). The principal thrust of the NLP was the promotion and

support of a national network of community landcare groups based onlocalized watersheds or neighbourhoods. Government support was targetedtowards activities considered likely to stimulate further spending in thenon-government sectors rather than towards the provision of either univer-sal subsidies or public goods. Landcare groups themselves consequentlytended to focus their activities on education, farm and catchment planning,tree planting, and demonstrations and trials of new practices (Campbell,1994; Curtis and De Lacy, 1997).

Participation in landcare groups has exceeded all expectations, with over

a third of all farm businesses represented in one of over 4000 groups (Mueset al., 1998). This represents profound cultural change in terms of the will-ingness of Australian farmers to publicly acknowledge the extent of envi-ronmental degradation and to expose their management practices to thescrutiny of peers (Lockie, 1998). Central to the discourses that circulatearound landcare are notions of inclusivity (anyone can take part) andautonomy (nobody, including government, can tell anybody else what todo) (Lockie, 1999a; Martin, 1997). Such discourses have been fundamentalto the enrolment of farmers who have long traditions of suspicion towards

government programmes, antagonism towards conservation organizations(Morrisey and Lawrence, 1997), and a belief that ownership conveys theright to do as one pleases on ones own property (Reeve, 2001). These

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discourses have also been fundamental to the enrolment of many groupsotherwise excluded from farming networks such as women, small land-holders, townspeople, schools and so on (Lockie, 1997b). But landcarehas come to mean many things besides the NLP and formal landcaregroups. The term landcare has come to embrace almost anything relatedto the idea of sustainable natural resource management, while the assem-blage of people and institutions involved are referred to in popular dis-course as the landcare movement. The terminology of the landcaremovement clearly implies that something is going on that extends beyondthe formalized institutions of the NLP. According to former NationalLandcare Facilitator, Helen Alexander (1995), landcare is part of a globalshift away from government regulation and towards participatory democ-racy. Former NFF Executive Director Rick Farley (1994) argues that notonly does the landcare movement extend beyond the boundaries of the

NLP, but neither governments nor farming organizations fully appreciatewhat it is they have helped to create.

It is hard to be critical of such positive social change and, not surpris-ingly, landcare has achieved almost universal political support. Criticismsthat government agencies have used the terminology of the landcare move-ment to redefine their own activities under a more politically fashionablebanner and to channel funds away from community groups and on-groundworks (Lockie, 1992) have been accommodated through devolution offunding to regional catchment management groups (Lockie, 1997c).

Criticisms that discourses of participatory democracy and the landcaremovement overstate the degree to which governments have historicallyintervened in rural environmental management and obscure ongoing powerrelations have been relatively ignored (Lockie, 2000; Martin, 1997).Clearly, there is more at stake here than a matter of definition.

Contemporary social movement theoryThe objects of concern to social movement theory are the generalizations

that can be drawn across social movements. At face value, therefore, socialmovement theory may offer both theoretical and practical insight into themobilization of people around the landcare movement irrespective of howdivergent its objects of concern are from other environmental movements.Della Porta and Diani (1999) identify four dominant theoretical perspec-tives in social movement research that will be outlined in this section, beforeturning to some recent criticisms and attempts at synthesis across theseperspectives.

Collective behaviour

Examination of social movements as a form of collective behaviour can bebroken down into two distinct approaches; structural-functionalism and



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symbolic interactionism (Della Porta and Diani, 1999). Functionalists haveinterpreted social movements as examples of crisis behaviour; short-termresponses to social change that are likely to dissipate as new equilibriadevelop. At times of rapid change, it is argued, social movements reflectboth the inability of existing sub-systems to absorb tensions and a collec-tive search for new beliefs on which to found solidarity. However, thelongevity of contemporary social movements, the complexity of their net-works, and the sophistication of their political action all suggest that theyare anything but short-term adaptive mechanisms (Della Porta and Diani,1999). Taking movements as engines of change in the normal functioningof society, symbolic interactionists have emphasized the actual activitiesundertaken collectively to produce new norms and solidarities. Symbolicproduction and collective identity are seen as essential components of col-lective behaviour that challenge the existing social order through various

forms of non-conformity. Della Porta and Diani (1999) argue, however,that adherents to this perspective tend to ignore the detailed strategy ofsocial movements by focusing on unusual events, and can be descriptivewithout accounting for what they identify as the structural origins ofconflicts.

Resource mobilization

The resource mobilization perspective focuses analysis on the processesthrough which resources for collective action are mobilized, conceptualiz-

ing these as an extension of conventional forms of political action (DellaPorta and Diani, 1999). It argues that it is not enough to identify structuralcrises or conflicts from which social movements emerge; it is necessary alsoto examine the conditions under which discontent may be transformed intopolitical action/mobilization. Participants, it is argued, weigh up the costsand benefits of organization and strategic interaction before committingthemselves to collective action. The ability of activists to access resources,organize discontent, reduce the costs of action, create and use solidaritynetworks, share incentives and achieve consensus has all been found to

influence the type and extent of mobilization. According to Della Porta andDiani (1999), however, this approach remains indifferent to structuralsources of conflict (the why of mobilization according to Scott, 1990);pays insufficient attention to the organizational potential of most dispos-sessed groups; and over-emphasizes the rationality of collective action whileignoring emotional stimuli.

Political process

The political process perspective focuses on the relationship between

protest-based social movements and institutionalized political actors (DellaPorta and Diani, 1999). Features of the political opportunity structureinfluencing the mobilization and success of movements include: the relative



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openness or closedness of political systems; electoral stability or instability;availability of allies; and tolerance of protest by elites (see also McAdamet al., 1996). The institutional conditions regulating agenda-setting anddecision-making, the functional division of power and geographical decen-tralization have also been found to influence political opportunity. Theexamination of interactions between new and established political actors,and between less conventional forms of action and institutionalized sys-tems of interest representation (Della Porta and Diani, 1999: 10) hasshown social movements to be anything but marginal political actors. Theweaknesses identified in this approach by Della Porta and Diani (1999)include its extremely narrow conceptualization of the realm of politics,power and decision-making; its related neglect of cultural innovation; igno-rance of the structural origins of protest; and over-rationalization.

New Social Movements (NSMs)

Reflecting its origins in neo-Marxist critical theory, NSM theorists havesought to identify the central conflict characterizing the emerging post-industrial, post-Fordist, technocratic or programmed society (see alsoScott, 1990). Although each of those movements that were commonlygrouped together within NSMs environment, womens and peace move-ments had historical antecedents preceding their emergence as massmovements in the 1960s and 1970s, their status as new social movementswas justified: (1) by their increasing importance as sources of innovation

and change; (2) their focus, in contrast with old social movements, on non-material goals; and (3) a self-limiting radicalism that abandoned revolu-tionary change in favour of structural reform to preserve autonomousspaces (see Cohen, 1985; Habermas, 1981). NSMs resisted the intrusion ofthe state and the market into the social and personal, seeking to defend indi-vidual identity against the manipulation of the system (Della Porta andDiani, 1999: 1213). NSM analysis focused on the challenge of NSMs toconventional representative democracy and bureaucratization, and theiradvocacy of decentralized and participatory organizational structures and

interpersonal solidarity (Offe, 1985). NSM theory, according to Della Portaand Diani (1999), thus managed to attribute importance to the actor whileidentifying structural sources of conflict, but contributed little to under-standing how conflict is translated into action. The search for the source ofconflict resulted in the treatment of potentially coincidental common fea-tures among movements as absolutes (Della Porta and Diani, 1999; Scott,1990) and a failure to adapt to the increasing global importance of identitypolitics (Lentin, 1999).

Synthetic approaches to social movement theory

McAdam et al. (1996) argue that despite the diversity of perspectives out-lined above, something of a consensus has emerged among social movement



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theorists that: (1) political opportunities; (2) mobilizing structures (in termsof collective vehicles for action such as movement organizations); and (3)framing processes (in terms of the construction of issues, access to mediaand cultural impact) are all crucial to the emergence and development ofsocial movements. Social movement research must study the relationshipsbetween these factors because, while political opportunities are a necessaryprerequisite to action, they will not lead to anything in the absence of orga-nization and shared definitions of the situation among actors.Unfortunately, the comparative method that is advocated for this analysis isguilty of the same political reductionism with which Della Porta and Diani(1999) charge the political process perspective. By focusing on the interac-tion between social movements and established political institutionsMcAdam et al. not only narrow the scope of politics and conflict to thatengaged in by centralized state agencies, they also reduce it to the interac-tions of those agencies with formalized social movement organizations (seealso Meyer and Tarrow, 1998; Smith, 1999). A broader understanding ofsocial movements, according to Della Porta and Diani (1999), may alsoemerge from a synthesis of the various theoretical perspectives. They definesocial movements as:

(1) informal networks, (2) based on shared beliefs and solidarity, which mobiliseout of (3) conflictual issues, through (4) the frequent use of various forms ofprotest. (Della Porta and Diani, 1999: 16; see also Diani, 1992)

Despite this emphasis on networks and action, Della Porta and Diani(1999) focus their analysis of specific movements on the structural analysisof macro-level contradictions and conflicts (the why of mobilization).Embracing a dualistic conception of agency and structure, and micro andmacro-levels of analysis, they argue that social conflict arises from:

... the interaction between structural tensions and the emergence of a collectivesubject which can see itself as the bearer of certain values and interests, anddefine its adversaries on the basis of these. (Della Porta and Diani, 1999: 87)

Structural conditions are held to exist independently of collective subjectsand the definitions of conflicts, values and interests around which theymobilize. Structural tensions are attributed a causal role in the emergenceof movements that calls into question the extent to which social innovationand change can be attributed to movements themselves, rather than to theconditions that foster them.

Melucci (1985, 1995, 1996) criticizes this dualistic approach by arguingthat neither structural preconditions for action nor individual motivationscan be said to lead directly to collective action. Nor can they be said to

answer the question of how actors come to define a collective identity andundertake the collective action needed to fill the gap between objectiveconditions and subjective motivations. Unless greater clarity can be



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provided over what it means to attribute agency to a collective subject theconcept of social movement may easily be reduced either to a reified cate-gory of structural analysis or a voluntaristic outcome of individual motiva-tion (Melucci, 1995). Melucci argues that part of the solution is to rethinkthe concept of collective identity as a process through which collectives aredefined; through which participants come to understand themselves as awe (see also Eyerman and Jamison, 1991). Identity and action are collec-tively constructed, he argues, through organized investments throughwhich participants define the means, ends and opportunities and con-straints for action while pursuing the relationships that make sense of thiscollective endeavour. This construction takes place through interaction,negotiation and conflict with opposing viewpoints (see also Touraine,1985). The unity of a social movement is thus a hard-won achievement; itis a result to be explained, not a starting point for evidence of structural

change. Further, conceiving of collective identity as an achievement of inter-action within solidarity networks requires a re-thinking of concepts likestate and civil society, private and public, expressive and instrumen-tal that rids them of their dualistic, monolithic and structuralist overtones(Melucci, 1995). However, Melucci does not provide the analytical toolswith which to do this; his empirical location of the conflicts in which soli-darity networks are engaged at different levels within a highly differentiatedsocial system implicitly holding to a dualism between micro and macro-levels of the social.

The analytical dualisms that dominate social movement theory leave uswith two fundamental problems. The first relates to the question of what itmeans to attribute agency to a collective subject while avoiding, as Melucci(1995) argues, structuralism and voluntarism. The second relates to theability of social movement theory to account for empirical changes inthe action orientations and goals of contemporary social movements wherethese increasingly call into question the ontological separation of societyand nature. Before exploring the potential contribution of SSK to thesechallenges this article will examine some of the implications for landcare

that may be drawn from the social movement literature.

Social movement theory and the landcaremovementThe most obvious thing to say about landcare is that despite being identi-fied in popular discourse as a movement, it fails to satisfy the definition ofsocial movements offered by Della Porta and Diani (1999) on the basisof their synthesis of social movement theory. Landcare has clear institutional

antecedents and is more characterized by consensus and partnership than byconflict and protest. While this makes the application of explanatory theoriesproblematic (since one cannot explain a phenomenon without being quite



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clear about what exactly it is), it is of little consequence to those more inter-ested in exploring collective action in whatever form it takes (Melucci, 1996).

Nevertheless, it is certainly possible drawing on the perspectives out-lined above to argue that contradictions within the capitalist mode of pro-duction that characterizes Australian agriculture established structuralcrisis conditions generating environmental and social externalities withthe potential to undermine capital accumulation (Lockie, 2001) thatnecessitated the emergence of some sort of collective subject embodiedeither in the state, a social movement or, perhaps in this case, a hybrid ofthe two. The coalition of traditional political foes represented by theAustralian Conservation Foundation and National Farmers Federationcombined with discourses of self-reliance and participation to provide apolitically acceptable framing of the issue, while the provision of resourcesto assist in group coordination lowered the transaction costs of mobiliza-

tion for community landcare group members. Indeed, if conflict is reclassi-fied as a common, rather than defining, feature of social movements thatmay or may not contribute to the framing of issues, structure of politicalopportunities and so on, the ontological status of landcare as a movementseems rather less controversial. However, this is not to say that landcarerepresents the participatory democratic challenge to centralized governmentthat many commentators envision (Alexander, 1995; Farley, 1994). It is alsopossible to argue that devolution of responsibility to actually do somethingabout environmental degradation to a loosely defined landcare movement

is actually a triumph of state legitimation and the capture of traditionallycritical social movement organizations (Lockie, 2000; see also Hay, 1994;OConnor, 1998).

But what does this explanation really tell us? It is true that the discourseof the landcare movement obscures power relations, but this does not sup-port a monolithic theory of state domination. Opportunities for state actionare circumscribed by constructions of the scope, form and objects of legiti-mate authority (Foucault, 1991). In the case of landcare, we find a pro-gramme that is consistent with a range of pre-existing political discourses

and, therefore, likely to be seen as a legitimate state intervention butthrough which these discourses are applied to new contexts and developedin novel ways. The remainder of this article will explore the potential of anexplicitly non-dualistic theoretical perspective to contribute to our under-standing of mobilization around landcare and to the material and discur-sive impacts of this mobilization.

Admitting non-human actants in the constructionof environmental social movementsMost attempts to bring nature into social theory including ecologicalMarxism, environmental history, co-evolutionism and societal metabolism



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may be characterized as dialectical; attributing nature a capacity to actindependently of, and interdependently with, humans. However, byattempting to balance on both poles of social and natural determinism atonce, dialectical approaches risk the articulation of reified and monolithicvisions of society and nature (FitzSimmons and Goodman, 1998;Haraway, 1991). This article draws more heavily, therefore, on recent workin the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), or actor-network theory, thattakes the seemingly more radical step of dissolving altogether the distinc-tions between society and nature; arguing that the networks of the socialcomprise a diverse assemblage of humans and non-humans (Latour, 1993).The resulting partnerships cyborgs (Haraway, 1991), quasi-objects/quasi-subjects (Latour, 1993) or hybrid collectifs (Callon andLaw, 1995) are simultaneously real, discursive and social (Latour, 1993:64). The social is conceived from this perspective as radically relational.

Action, intentionality, consciousness, subjectivity and morality all derivefrom relations between entities rather than from either individuals ortotalities. Questions of what agency is and whether it may be attributed tonon-humans are seen as irrelevant since agency and power are themselvesrelational effects. They are not defined a priori but treated as research ques-tions (Callon and Law, 1995; Latour, 1999), as phenomena that maytake many forms, at times concentrated and at times dispersed (Hindess,1996).

Accompanying this ontological shift is a parallel dissolution of dualisms

between structure and agency and between macro and micro-levels ofanalysis. The focus on relationality implies that there is no change of scalein the social domain between the micro/actor and the macro/structural(Latour, 1999: 18). These dichotomies fail to recognize that what appear asmacro-level social phenomena are, in fact, attempts to sum up interactionsthrough various kinds of devices, inscriptions, forms and formulae, into avery local, very practical, very tiny locus (Latour, 1999: 17). This does notmean that the patterns so often identified as social structures are mere fig-ments of the sociological imagination, but that such patterns are the gener-

ative outcome of network interactions and not their cause. Law (1994: 109)conceptualizes such coherences as modes of ordering that speak through,act on, and recursively organize the full range of social materials. As a con-cept that is somewhat analogous with the Foucauldian notion of discourse,this stresses the ways in which patterns of relationships are made durable and hence made to appear inevitable through the counting, recording andsorting of materials and knowledge, as well as the speaking, writing, broad-casting, packaging, building and so on.

The relational perspective of SSK has clear implications for the attribu-

tion of agency to a collective subject such as a social movement. Both theself and the collective are decentred as the focus of strategic intention and in a manner that recalls Meluccis notion of collective identity as process



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agency and power conceptualized as emergent and variable outcomes ofrelationships within networks (Callon, 1991; Callon and Law, 1995; Law,1991). A number of conceptual tools have been put forward by contribu-tors to SSK to interrogate the processes through which networks expresspower and agency. Translation, for example, refers to the process of align-ing the properties, actions, interests or concerns of actants to enrol them innetworks. Translation involves the displacement of others and the expres-sion in ones own language of what others say and want, why they act inthe way they do and how they associate with each other (Callon, 1986:223). Attempts at network construction and stabilization are thus politi-cally charged processes often involving exclusion, redefinitions of theself and denial of the contributions of subservient actants (Leigh Star,1991), and networks themselves are often marked by fluidity, instabilityand dissidence (Callon, 1986).

It is those concepts developed to understand how translation is affectedacross spatially and temporally extensive networks that are particularly use-ful in the understanding of apparently mass social movements. The conceptof action at a distance was developed by Latour (1987) to articulate themanner in which localized scientific practices (conducted in the laboratoryor at sampling sites) assume an air of universal applicability via their exten-sion in space and time. While no more universal than any other form ofknowledge, scientific knowledge is used to order the world outside the lab-oratory and thus to render it knowable and manipulable. But, of course, sci-

ence is not a unified and monolithic entity despite its frequentrepresentation as such. Even though the natural sciences have establishedthemselves as obligatory points of passage (Callon, 1986), or centres ofcalculation, in the networks of natural resource management, environ-mental disputes are seldom straightforward conflicts between technocentricscience and romantic environmentalism. Rather, they are conflicts overwhose science, and the ends to which it is to be applied, are to prevail (Beck,1992). The expression of agency in such situations is highly dependent onthe ability to open the black box of science and to enrol its actants in ones

own networks. Environmental controversies are often, as much as anythingelse, conflicts over who may speak on behalf of non-humans birds,machines, frogs, chemicals, dams, sediments, livestock, crops, trees, etc. and how they might respond to attempts to enrol them in proposed actions.

The theoretical propositions outlined in this section do not offer thebasis for a new explanatory theory of social movements. In fact, they sug-gest there should be no such theory, nor an explicit theoretical attempt evento define movements. The question facing sociologists in relation to collec-tive action is directed away from established macro and micro-sociological

approaches (in terms of what social processes or contradictions cause socialmovements on the one hand, and what motivates individuals to join on theother) and towards the ways in which localized practices that sum up and



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order interactions across space and time are implemented and sustained;in other words, towards how networks perform social movements.

SSK perspectives and the landcare movementWhile many of the foundation stories constructed around landcare point tothe political opportunities that were opened up by the broad electoralappeal of the alliance between farmers and conservationists (Campbell,1994), and by the consistency of landcare with the often competing dis-courses of economic rationalism, environmental protection and communityempowerment (Lockie, 1997a, 1999b), it cannot be overlooked that par-ticipation in landcare groups is highest in those agricultural regions that aremost intensively degraded (Mues et al., 1998). It is quite obvious that acombination of material changes in agro-ecosystems combined with the

summing up and representation of those changes through scientific andlocal knowledge claims, forecasts, testimonials, reports and mass media hasbeen fundamental to the mobilization of people in community landcaregroups. In fact, this is so obvious that proponents of conventional socialmovement perspectives may argue it to be trivial, and to ignore the reallyinteresting questions about why mobilization has occurred around theseparticular issues and not others, why it has taken this particular form andso on. While the relational perspective of SSK may encourage us to be sus-picious of attempts to develop more foundation stories with which to

answer these questions, it does enable us to explore in more depth the prac-tices of power-knowledge that are used to order landcare networks and thematerial-discursive impacts of these practices.

There is insufficient space to explore here the full range of ordering prac-tices relevant to the landcare movement. However, if we explore the dis-course of inclusiveness in a little more detail it is possible to identify anumber of practices that are used to exert action at a distance overAustralian farmers and to engender significant material effects on theAustralian landscape. The discourse of inclusiveness has concretely been

manifested in sponsorship and award programmes that enable agribusinessfirms and other large companies to associate themselves with landcaressocially and environmentally positive image (Lockie, 1999a). For manycompanies, the objective is simply to improve their environmental credibil-ity and boost sales without actually doing anything about their own envi-ronmental practice. For others, the objective is to associate the use of theparticular products or services they sell with more sustainable agriculture.Agri-chemical companies including Dow and Monsanto have sponsoredlandcare groups through, among other means, the supply of chemicals for

use in tree-planting and pasture establishment. This is not the place todebate the particular environmental claims of agri-chemicals (see Lockie,1997d). The point is, rather, that inclusivity has been used, ironically, to



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promote particular approaches to agriculture and environmental manage-ment rather than to encourage debate over these approaches and alterna-tives such as organic (chemical-free) agriculture.

By itself, the discourse of inclusivity may not have been sufficient tosilence critics and create positive associations between landcare, sustain-ability and chemical agriculture. However, many of the seemingly neutralactivities in which community landcare groups typically engage rely ontechnologies of power-knowledge that effectively black box chemical use making its use appear normal and inevitable. Involvement in farm andcatchment planning, for example, was demonstrated in one study (seeLockie, 1997d) to lead to increased rates of synthetic input use. While thereis no necessary connection between planning and chemical use, the collec-tion and organization of data (through soil tests, pasture monitoring, finan-cial record-keeping, etc.) can only inform planning following the

application of some sort of interpretive frame. In the case of agriculture,most of these frames are constructed through the field trials of departmentsof agriculture and agribusiness agencies. These trials are not, on the whole,fertility or pest management trials but fertilizer and pesticide applicationtrials (Lockie, 1999b). When confronted by the question of how to inter-pret apparently objective information collected during farm planning, it isno great surprise that increased input use appears the most rational courseof action. Rejecting this interpretive frame is a risky step, separating theindividual farmer from the support of peers, government and industry

advisers, and billions of dollars in research and development.The provision of sponsorship, materials, information, technical support,

etc. has been used to enact action at a distance in a situation where agri-chemical companies have no direct means of control. The landcare move-ment is not only performed when members attend community groupmeetings, but when they spray weeds and spread fertilizer. This has con-tributed to an ordering of agricultural practices in ways that are consistentwith corporate interests while minimizing opposition from conservationorganizations otherwise highly critical of chemical agriculture.

Conclusion: relational-materialism and socialmovementsRejection of the society/nature dualism challenges contemporary socialmovement theory on two fronts. First, the radically relational conceptual-ization of the social that theoretically follows from such a rejection callsinto question a number of the analytical concepts used in contemporarysocial movement theory; especially those related to the structural precondi-

tions for mobilization or action and to disembodied notions of collectivesubjects. Second, the mobilization of activist networks around concepts ofenvironmental justice and biopolitics, who themselves reject the



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Biographical noteStewart Lockie is Director of the Centre for Social Science Research atCentral Queensland University. His research interests lie in the sociology offood and agriculture, natural resource management and social impactassessment. Associate Professor Lockie is co-editor of a number of recentbooks including Rurality Bites: The Social and EnvironmentalTransformation of Rural Australia (Sydney: Pluto Press), ConsumingFoods, Sustaining Environments (Brisbane: Australian Academic Press) andEnvironment, Society and Natural Resource Management (Cheltenham,UK: Edward Elgar). With Professor Geoffrey Lawrence and Dr KristenLyons he is currently preparing a book based on the outcomes of theirARC-funded research into the greening of food networks. Address: Centrefor Social Science Research, Central Queensland University, RockhamptonQLD 4702, Australia. [email: [email protected]]


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