Rethinking the building
blocks: management and indigenous epistemologies
Richard Howitt and Sandra
Suchet
Department of Human Geography,
Paper for presentation
to ‘Processes for Cross-Cultural Engagement’, a Special
Session in the Remote Regions/Northern Development Session of the Western
Regional Science Association Meeting
26-29 February 2004
Wailea Marriott Resort,
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ABSTRACT: The persistence of indigenous epistemologies rooted
in systems that predate the creation of colonial property rights and assertions
of frontier conquest and dispossession, unsettles the dominant idea in
environmentalist and developmentalist discourses that conservation and
industrialisation are unproblematic goals for communities and nations. This
paper draws on diverse indigenous knowledges in Australia, as well as Canada
and southern Africa, to argue that conceptual building blocks which render
management, be it of environments, economies or people, as unquestionably good,
need to be reconsidered in light of their hidden cultural specificity and their
implicit silencing of alternative narratives of the economic, environmental and
cultural dimensions of social life.
Australian legal, political and social institutions have come late to formal
recognition of indigenous rights. In the
In Australia, acknowledgment of indigenous Australians' rights stemming
from pre-colonial social formations and recognisable by the common law as
'native title', unsettle assumptions that underpin policy settings, community
values and perceptions, legal and regulatory infrastructure, and discursive
communities that shape development and conservation policy and practice. In
doing so, new discursive and political spaces have opened up where different
foundations for weaving social, environmental and economic justice into the
social fabric are encouraged. This paper explores some of these spaces by considering the idea of management in terms of the
assumptions and power relations that are embedded in its dominant concepts and
practices.
Using Rose’s metaphor of a hall of mirrors, the paper
exposes the circular argument which justifies and legitimates the assertion and
imposition of Eurocentric knowledges and formation of colonizing power
relations in management discourses affecting local and indigenous interests.[1]
The flaws in the circular argument are subsequently exposed through
consideration of indigenous experiences in
Management in Eurocentric
epistemologies
Wildlife management is
the process of using science to identify appropriate management principles and
practices, to develop plans of management and to implement and review these
plans.[2]
In formulating and implementing more sustainable
environmental and developmental programs, conservationists, developmentalists,
economists, scientists, bureaucrats, academics and researchers working in
Australia, Canada and southern Africa often assume that what is needed is participatory
management. To implement this management they call for plans to be developed,
community capacities to be built and the relevant institutions strengthened.
What exactly is meant by management in such circumstances?
The notion of management is intimately woven into the
oppositional binary of development and conservation. This binary reflects an
assumed separation between society and nature, and between human and non-human
animal, plant, rock, tree and so on. It assumes that society and humans are
superior to nature and animals and can thus intervene to exercise managerial
control; and it assumes there is an inevitable linear movement of progress from
an original, wild state to a developed, civilised and domesticated state.
Such assumptions about separation, hierarchy and
progress justify intervention in, control of and domination over (inferior)
nature, animal and ‘wild’ human by (superior) society and ‘Eurocentric’ human.
Nature, wildlife and ‘wild humans’ are constructed as resources and valued on
Eurocentric terms to be developed and/or conserved to serve scientific,
conservationist, developmentalist and capitalistic agendas. Conservation and
development, in other words, imposes and privileges Eurocentric epistemologies
through authorized systems of resource management, environmental management,
wildlife management and community management, often through the illusion of
removing control, intervention and management (see plate 1).
Plate 1: Wildlife at a waterhole -
Tourist
illusions of a natural, wild, uninhabited and authentic experience are
reinforced around a waterhole in southern
Irigaray argues that notions of control, domination and
intervention are integral to the history constructed by Western masculinist
thought:
… a history of enduring
violence, of appropriation, of domination, and not of contribution to what is.
Man has created, invented, and given to nature not so much because he was more
than her, but because he wished to tame her … He likes to tame the infuriated
sea, the wild animals, the unbridled passions … The being sea, the being earth,
living beings are named by him only after having been yoked by him, only after
he has interrupted all proximity and reciprocity with them, as well as
attentiveness to them.[3]
The conceptual and practical foundations for this domination
and control, this management, are internally related to historical colonizing
processes. For example, the development and conservation of resources has been
asserted and imposed through management mechanisms such as sovereignty,
ownership, laws, institutions and scientific research. This historical
assertion and imposition continues today. Concepts and practices of separation,
superiority, intervention, control and management are reimposed and reinforced
through a range of co-management, joint management and community-based
management programs focussing on the conservation and development of resources
throughout the world.
Management is not only problematic, but is virtually an invisible
foundational concept in developmentalist and conservationist projects. Its absence
from 'The Development Dictionary' suggests that this particular technology for
disciplining populations is invisible even in many critical discourses.[4] Even
efforts to liberate the objects of injustice and oppression are often harnessed
by management thinking and practices to regressive structures of discipline.
For example, indigenous self-determination is reconstituted by the Aboriginal
affairs industry as 'community management'. In doing so, processes of
dispossession, theft and genocide that produced those 'communities', as well as
assertions of sovereignty and identity, and aspirations of being-in-place on
one's own terms, are all rendered invisible.
In mission settlements and government reserves around
A ‘hall of mirrors’: Eurocentric epistemologies as
colonizing knowledges
Not only do assumptions
about separation, hierarchy and progress underpin concepts and practices of
management, but the dominant discourses of management also assume their own
universal legitimacy. This constructs a circular argument which legitimates and
justifies colonizing relationships. D Rose’s metaphor of the Eurocentric self,
positioned within a hall of mirrors, justifying and legitimating one’s own
reflections, illustrates this argument.[5] In the case of
wildlife management, the dominant management discourse assumes that management
is a universal concept and practice, and that it is justifiable to assert and
impose it.[6] This
silences, ignores, devalues and undermines multiple knowledges. With these
knowledges blocked out and made invisible, the assumption that management is a
universal concept and practice is legitimated. Thus, even when wildlife
management is conceived of with the best of intentions and implemented as
effectively as possible, the fundamental and generally hidden assumptions
reinforce colonizing power relationships.
Shattering mirrors with situated glimpses
Clearly, for diverse local and indigenous epistemologies
disciplined and devalued by the dominant discourse, the challenge is to
‘shatter the mirrors’, or challenge the power relations formed by this circular
argument. One approach is to draw upon situated knowledges which do not
subscribe to the same beliefs as Eurocentric knowledges and to use them to
unsettle the assumption of universality. It has been shown that management is
clearly about active human control and intervention. However, people interact
with complex ‘worlds’ very differently and intervention can be seen as an
anathema rather than a solution:
... we might note that
for many people non-intervention is frequently a virtue. The positive valuation
of non-intervention rests on several assumptions:
· that the
results of actions cannot be accurately predicted, therefore there are times when
it may be better to do less than more;
· that
information from complex systems is never complete, therefore the process of
determining exactly what sorts of interventions would be best is one that
requires much time and many observations;
· in a more
pragmatic vein, that the system which is producing our current problems is not
the system we ought reasonably to reply on to get us out of it.
These point a long way
to explaining why, in
A survey of Aboriginal perceptions of land management in
Many people expressed a
sense of loss that the [locally extinct ‘native’] animals were no longer around
but there was also a pervading sense of passive acceptance about what had
happened. Rather than question why the animals had gone and then attempt to act
to bring them back, Aboriginal people accept what they perceive as a change in
circumstances which is beyond their control.[8]
In
Elders say that any
kind of animal moves away for a while but, according to the government, animals
are in decline. To the Inuit, they have moved, but not declined ..…[9]
Notzke describes the sense of discomfort the term management conjures up
for many indigenous people in
Indigenous ways of knowing and doing can be fundamentally different to
dominant Eurocentric knowledges and practices. For example, many Aboriginal
people in central
… many Inuit do not
believe that “wildlife” can be “harvested”, “managed” or “conserved” as
“stocks” or “populations”. Many of these concepts have no basis in Inuit
reality.[13]
Assumptions about the universal desire to understand, intervene in,
control and manage wildlife resources so they can be conserved or developed
according to human priorities, as well as stereotypes about indigenous peoples
living in harmony with nature or being inferior wild humans, cannot be
sustained when glimpses into specific situations offer alternative knowledges.
Traditional owners from Napranum on
Economic relations in Australian indigenous societies have always defied
the conventional categories of economic management. Where social (people-to-people)
relations, are ontologically embedded in ecological-economic
(people-to-environment) relations, categories such as 'economic base' and
'ideological superstructure' are unhelpful. And where the foundational concepts
of 'Dreaming' can best be characterised as 'everywhere' and 'everywhen',
categories such as 'growth' and 'private profit' are difficult to grasp and
operationalise.[15]
Gibson-Graham challenges the extent to which capitalist epistemology is
embedded within the categories used to describe and analyse economic relations
and economic processes.[16] For
indigenous peoples, the failure to incorporate even such basic elements as
subsistence production into national economic statistics, or to see 'caring for
country' and maintenance of indigenous cultural capital as 'productive
activity' reinforces their economic and social marginalisation. The political
declaration of profit, growth and development as privileged measures of
economic success entrenches environmental exploitation and cultural alienation
as the fundamental basis for indigenous participation in what is widely-admired
as western pluralist democracy - what Cramér refers to as the 'cleptocracy -
extractive exploitation'.[17]
For many indigenous peoples, diverse elements of their society, economy
and ecology continue to shape everyday life. Yet the invisibility of management
as an ideological and practical tool that constrains and disciplines both the
realities and imaginaries of being-in-place makes it difficult
to challenge. An alternative vision can be built, however, if one considers the
difference between 'co-management' arrangements for national parks or other
areas, and what arrangements for organizing land use, resource use and social
relations might be developed by sovereign indigenous nations within wider
processes of national governance.[18] Cooperation
between indigenous landowners and scientists or other experts would not be
precluded by indigenous sovereignty - but the terms of engagement are likely to
be extremely different to the paternalistic arrangements that typify many
co-management arrangements.
The ontological primacy of the human domain at the top of the
hierarchical chain of being is surreptitiously embedded in the 'management
systems' that are put in place to implement 'management plans'. The idea of
people as kin to other species, as co-equal occupants of places, as embedded in
rather than outside and above ecological relations are not just marginalised in
the process by actually overruled and reconstituted. Good management gets
constructed as the unquestionable goal of development and environmental
planning. Yet, in radically ex-centric Aboriginal epistemological structures,
where human affairs are contextualised in sentient landscapes, management as a
deliberate intervention into human-environmental relations towards specific
goals is almost literally unthinkable. Clearly, to displace the managerial
dominance of the self-referencing western self, we need to render visible and
challengeable the hidden privilege of Eurocentric knowledge in other common
concepts.
Rethinking
related building blocks
It is important to scrutinise every concept and practice in
environmentalist and developmentalist systems for similar assumptions and
implications. Much development and environmental policy aimed at nurturing practical
improvements in outcomes for indigenous Australians emphasises strategies such
as planning, institutional strengthening and capacity building as fundamental.
Not questioning such concepts leaves the epistemological dominance of western
liberalism (Cramér's cleptocracy) not just unchallenged, but virtually
invisible. In co-constructing conceptual building blocks that indigenous
peoples might use in shaping alternative futures, serious and careful
interrogation of the terms of engagement that set the parameters of action and
debate is imperative. Strategically, in seeking to decolonise the realities and
imaginaries in which indigenous peoples are implicated, conceptual building
blocks used in critique and reconstruction need to mean something to people on
the ground. Such concepts need to be re-thought. They need to be
reconceptualised, indigenised and continually interrogated for deeply-embedded
colonizing effects.
Planning
Community, regional and environmental planning exercises are entrenched
in many government, non-government agency and community association procedures.
On all 'sides' of the political spectrum, planning is accepted as a fundamental
strategic tool for achieving goals. Escobar argues that 'no other concept has
been so insidious [nor] … gone so unchallenged'.[19] Some
literature exists on the role planning plays in disciplining space and
controlling people to rationalist visions of the future,[20] and some
efforts have been made to connect planning theory to theoretical debates about
marginality, identity and difference.[21] However,
this critique is oriented more towards how to include those that planning has
conventionally excluded. Our assertion, however, is that the imperative is to
challenge the epistemological foundations of planning and how this constitutes
as irrational and illegitimate non-Eurocentric ways of thinking and
being-in-place.
Planning is predicated ontologically on a linear, progressivist view of
time and a bounded, static notion of space. A future is envisioned, one which
is open to deliberate human intervention prioritizing becoming, moving towards,
achieving and goal setting. Change and dynamism are disciplined to a static,
singular view of what is worthwhile, valued and desirable - firmly situating
planning within the hall of mirrors and constantly mistaking 'its reflection
for the world'.[22] Christie
and Perrett offer an insight into the ontological constraints facing an
application of 'planning' in other social systems. In exploring Yolngu approaches
to resource negotiations they argue that through the Dreaming it is time's
circle rather than time's arrow that provides the fundamental metaphor of
change over time.[23] In
responding to this challenge to linear thinking 'categories and meanings have
to be redefined'.[24]
For indigenous people in
Institutional
strengthening
Institutional strengthening is seen as a key issue for
empowering local communities and assisting with their participation in
developmental and environmental processes. However, institutions are not
neutral entities, and notions of strengthening bring with them questions of
whose institutions are recognised on what grounds, why do they need
strengthening and how are they to be strengthened?
Systems with unruly institutional arrangements are difficult to manage.
The recognition space created by the common law's acknowledgment of native
title does not extend to indigenous institutions unless they can be transformed
to conform to the legal requirements of 'good governance' (eg accountability,
transparency, efficiency etc). In developing institutional arrangements to
advance recognition of indigenous rights, the dominant developmentalist and
environmentalist discourses strengthen institutions that they recognise. They
seek to reproduce within indigenous institutions those relationships and
processes that characterise their own institutional forms. To return to the
image of a hall of mirrors, much institutional strengthening is 'monologue
masquerading as conversation; masturbation posing as productive interaction'.[26]
Eurocentric institutions are fundamental mechanisms through
which Eurocentric powers and epistemologies are asserted, imposed and
legitimated:
Today Nature
Conservation [the state agency given responsibility for wildlife in
pre-independence
Institutions and organisations are deeply rooted in specific
Eurocentric ways of formalising and rationalising decision-making and
implementation processes. As their defined role is to govern and manage, both
people and resources, intervention, control and rationality are fundamental
beliefs embedded in the notion of an institution. Institutions and organisations
become further embedded in Eurocentric epistemologies as their particular
responsibilities are categorically separated and valued on Eurocentric terms of
reference for example, economic agencies, environmental agencies and so on.
By assuming that institutions and institutional systems are neutral entities,
interest groups can set about to form and strengthen these institutions without
challenging the stereotypes and assumptions on which they are based. This
includes unproblematically accepting concepts which have only recently been
included as pre-requisites for Eurocentric institutions, such as democracy,
representation and gender equality.
It is important to remember that this is only one way of
looking at things. For example, democracy is a specific Eurocentric
conceptualisation of governance and other groups have multiple
conceptualisations of their relationships with ‘worlds’:
When someone says, “you
Bushmen have no government,” we’ll say that our old, old people, long ago had a
government, and it was a glowing coal from the fire where we last lived, which
we used to light the fire at the new place where we were going. So I say,
“Don’t hold us back, we want to move forward, we have our own talk”.[28]
Local structures and systems may be recognisable as
institutions in Eurocentric frameworks or they may need clear and careful
‘translation’ so that people from international, national and private agencies
can recognise and understand what they are, and are not, how they work and what
their motives are. Outside interest groups need to respect existing structures
and systems without judging them on inappropriate terms.
Have to start looking
at how things will work for us and not how they will work for the
rest of
It is important to make clear that this critique of the epistemological
constraints imposed by Eurocentric terms and categories will not be adequately
addressed by overthrowing one set of universals for another and romancing the local by trying to return to some naive,
unobtainable, romantic vision of what things ‘once were’. Marginalised,
traumatised, dispossessed and often dysfunctional indigenous societies are no
more a source of universal truth than the flawed, dehumanised and dysfunctional
systems whose smoke-and-mirrors approach to being-in-place has entrenched
economic, social and environmental injustice as characterizing contemporary
social relations. In rethinking the building blocks in ways that might entrench
economic, social and environmental justice in the social fabric, we are
unlikely to find concepts, categories and exemplars of what might be. Where
even imaginaries have been deeply colonised by dominant discourses of
liberalism and development, it is not just the relationships of power that need
to be reshaped, but also the concepts, language and images used to describe,
analyse and address the processes. Building blocks that come in the form of
words, ideas and propositions need to be re-thought, as well as applying new
analytical tools to the material relationships and processes. This presents
multi-dimensional challenges as much to indigenous groups as to mainstream or
progressive development agencies.
Jacobs and Mulvihill coin the term 'viable interdependence' as a way of
focusing on the task.[30] They
provide an account of the need to problematise not just the institutions that
derive from colonial circumstances, but also to recognise that decolonisation
is an ongoing process that demands ongoing institutional change.[31]
Institutional infrastructures that were once part of a solution can become
entrenched and insulated surprisingly quickly, to emerge as part of the problem
of achieving further steps along paths of change. Similarly, it is easy to
mistake the employment of indigenous people within institutional structures as
the transformation of such structures into indigenous institutions, ignoring
any absence of indigenous epistemological foundations.[32]
Strengthening oppressive institutions, whether colonial or indigenous, is
unlikely to provide a strong foundation for entrenching justice within
environmental, social and economic relations.
Capacity
building
The strategic partner of institutional strengthening in development and
environment discourses is capacity building. Capacity
building is another concept drawn upon often without any in-depth consideration
of what it means. It is predominantly associated with building up the capacity
of local people and communities to meet criteria of successful management
imposed by Eurocentric developmentalism and/or environmentalism. Therefore it
is seen as something that those with ‘the’ capacity (the teachers, educators,
trainers those equipped with Eurocentric knowledges and skills) do to those
without ‘the’ capacity (the students local and indigenous people who are
perceived as uneducated, ignorant and illiterate on Eurocentric terms). Again,
the embeddedness of profoundly powerful epistemological assumptions is
difficult to escape. It is often people's capacity to plan, to manage, to
participate in development and conservation opportunities, to conform to the
linear trajectory of rationalist development and conservation narratives that
is being built. And like so much developmentalist and environmentalist
construction, this building is predicated on the demolition (or rejection) of
the value of existing capacities. That unruly pluralism of cultural diversity
is disciplined to conform to tightly controlled agendas of production,
education, performance and good governance and thus
local and indigenous knowledges and skills that fall outside of these
parameters are ignored, devalued, silenced, denigrated and undermined.
In achieving ownership of land or resources, in succeeding in setting up
community-based enterprises, or managing community development employment
programs, indigenous communities are often set up to fail. Resources are
withheld, delayed, or offered under strict and inappropriate guidelines and
conditions. Responsibilities are imposed without concomitant rights being
recognised. Accountability is reconstituted in financial rather than political
terms, and the intended beneficiaries of capacity building exercises are
alienated from them. Again, the terms of engagement are set externally to
conform to the dominant verities of development and environment discourse.
By engaging with specific experiences and situations the
notion of capacity is unsettled and multiple capacities, knowledges and skills
become visible, touchable, smellable etc. The implementation of capacity
building then shifts so that local and indigenous groups are also seen as
sources of capacities. Similarly, power relations shift as Eurocentric
‘capacity builders’ become accountable to the local in terms of recognizing
their own deficiencies (and their own need to have their capacity built), the
impacts of their work (often colonizing in effect) as well as the strength of
their work in delivering new capacities and skills in changing circumstances.
If coming from Eurocentric epistemological bases, capacity builders need to be
aware of their own biases, especially in regard to taken-for-granted concepts
such as conservation, management, wildlife, development, democracy,
representation, gender and education.
Metaphors of change
In
Recognition of indigenous rights opens up opportunities for
decolonisation of indigenous spaces.[33] Rose points
out that most efforts at 'decolonisation' are problematic, having embedded
within them tendencies toward what she terms 'deep colonization'.[34] The tension
between these possibilities may well be an ever-present, irresolvable reality,[35] but many
strategists (both conservative and progressive) seek to establish certainty by
reducing the dialectical complexities of new, open-ended discourses to
unambiguous and singular closures. If the metaphors of reconciliation and
coexistence are to offer a basis for building more equitable, just and
sustainable relations in remote and rural communities around Australia,
consideration of how indigenous and Western epistemologies might differ, and
what might be involved in co-constructing new relations on the ground, is
imperative.
Situated engagement: transforming the mirrors
The intense localism of much of the political domain in indigenous affairs
represents another challenge to the far-reaching rethinking of conceptual and
political building blocks of just and sustainable societies. There is a scale
politics to be considered. Remote indigenous areas are no more isolated from
globalizing relations than rustbelt and sunbelt economic regions typically seen
as characterizing the postmodern global economy. Taking local indigenous
epistemologies seriously does not require denial of wider scale political
processes. Indeed, the key challenges to remote and rural community leaders
involve coming to terms with complex material and ideological conditions as a
basis for self-determination. There is no point trying to build a socialist
republic in isolated indigenous reservations when the areas involved are deeply
embedded within global relations in mining, tourism and conservation
industries. But neither can we pretend that the Dreaming is 'just cultural' and
without relevance and meaning in economic, political and environmental aspects
of life.
In exploring new models of regional governance, indigenous groups and
their supporters (including those non-indigenous people whose rights co-exist
with indigenous rights such as native title) must construct approaches that are
capable not only of challenging the dominant terms of engagement that are
derived from the operations of institutions, processes and relations that were
predicated upon terra nullius, but
also of encompassing epistemic diversity. There is no epistemic community that
bridges indigenous, capitalist, and socialist epistemologies. Naïve or
simplistic accommodation of diversity in ways that deny the embeddedness of
power and privilege in social, economic and environmental relations at all
scales will reproduce the problems in new forms rather than open new
possibilities.
In re-membering these reconceptualised building blocks into more just,
equitable and sustainable communities, the issue of multiple axes of identity,
sovereignty and rights must be addressed. If we consider the metaphor of
reconciliation, the effort we engage in is not an accountancy-style
reconciliation, of bringing two sides together and balancing the accounts.
Imagining, building, and refining landscapes in which multiple sovereignties,
epistemological diversity, and shifting identities coexist without descent into
human rights abuse and environmental or social vandalism is the hard work of
reconciliation. It is not the imposition of another externally imposed (or even
internally generated) 'correct line' or 'shining path' to liberation. It is not
the devaluation of people of any description, but the hard work of working with
those who are the stakeholders, in the contexts that shape being-in-place. This
requires consideration of multiple scales as well as multiple stakeholders, and
organizing, analyzing and refining engagement rather than strategic
isolationism. This is about a contextualisation that is simultaneously
cultural, environmental, economic, political and philosophical.
This multi-scale, multi-dimensional openness is what underpins the
viable interdependence that Jacobs and Mulvihill refer to.[36] In a
similar vein Rose advocates situated availability[37] and Suchet
discusses situated engagement.[38] Situated engagement is described as a means of approaching
interactions in which engagement between people has to occur in situated
places. This means that any understandings and interactions are based on
contextualised and locally relevant knowledges and terms of reference. In
engaging in situated places, the mirrors of the hall are transformed into
windows. In looking through, opening and reaching through the windows, it is
possible to recognise and engage with multiple knowledges. This recognition
does not mean disposing of Eurocentric knowledges, but acknowledging their
positionality. This means that concepts and practices become reliant on
situated circumstances for their relevance and meaning. As universal
assumptions are revealed as flawed and dangerous, engaging with and between
knowledges can open up possibilities that are unimaginable from within the hall
of mirrors.
Conclusion: dancing at the edge of the world
Developmentalist and environmentalist projects have long sought to
discipline indigenous peoples' domains within the compass of mainstream
relations. The temptation is to rise to the challenge of securing sustainable
outcomes by harnessing the tools of developmentalism and environmentalism to
indigenous goals. In framing a conclusion to this paper, a heading such as
'moving towards social, environmental and economic justice' is just as
tantalising. However, this would subtly reinforce the almost invisible
epistemology of developmentalism and environmentalism. It would orientate
thinking towards a linear narrative - with a unidirectional, progressive,
controlled movement towards a coherent strategic target presumed desirable.
This is exactly the kind of arrogant assumption which this paper seeks to
challenge and unsettle. Le Guin similarly attempts to unsettle such assumptions
in her fine collection of essays on writing science fiction.[39] Under her
title 'dancing at the edge of the world', she sets about unsettling the smug
assumption that in managing the political, geographical, religious and artistic
imagination, we can simply make the world as we wish it to be. In the idea of
dancing, one can see the embeddeness of one set of relationships and processes
(the dance) in others (the music, the culture, the community); in her
localisation at 'the edge of the world' one can begin to see that every edge is
simultaneously a centre; and in her whole image, one can begin to escape the
tyranny of the linear narratives of developmentalism, to glimpse the patterns
of time's circle as embedded in these relationships and processes, alongside
time's arrow.
A living mirror cannot
reflect back to the subject without adding something of its own to that image.
In the process, such mirroring inevitably becomes a dance in which both subject
are transformed.[40]
In such images, there are opportunities to rethink the building blocks
that are conventionally used to shape and reshape landscapes so that their
social fabric may be woven in ways that acknowledge and include those elements
that Eurocentric epistemologies denies exists.
Acknowledgments:
This paper revises a
number of presentations since 1999. We would like to acknowledge our
considerable debt to those who participated in discussion of various versions
of these ideas and particularly to Deborah Bird Rose, Jane Jacobs, Leah Gibbs,
Libby Ellis, Sue Jackson, Katherine Gibson, Bob Fagan, Jan Turner and Marcia
Langton for our ongoing conversations about these ideas.
Endnotes: