Turning Water into Wine, Beef and Vegetables: Material Transformations along the Brisbane River

Main Article Content

Veronica Strang

Abstract

The Brisbane River starts high in the Jimna Ranges in a network of small streams that are often no more than a thread of green in the dusty hills. By the time it reaches the Port of Brisbane, it has been captured, used and turned into many things: beef and vegetables, fruit and wine – things that can be bundled into containers and shipped to the trading partners on which Australia relies.

This paper is concerned with the transformations through which ‘natural’ resources are acculturated and commodified, in the process becoming not only economic resources, but also material expressions of human agency and identity. As the most basic and most vital ingredient of all organic products, water can ‘become’ almost anything. It is therefore, like money, broadly perceived as an abstract symbol of wealth and power, defining the relationships between those who have access to and control of water, and the wider populations whose material needs they supply.

In Queensland, as in other parts of Australia, there are growing political and economic tensions between rural communities and the enlarging urban populations who now compete for increasingly scarce water resources while also demanding that environmental health should not be sacrificed for economic gains. The implications of this shift have been severe: farmers who formerly enjoyed a primary social and economic position as ‘primary producers’ now feel beleaguered, undervalued, and resentful of the loss of control implied in newly competitive water allocation processes. A wider shift from farming into residential development or recreational use of land is also reframing Australia’s economic relationships with other countries, introducing new forms of ‘productivity’ and empowering different groups of people. This paper considers how these changing patterns of commodification are changing the social and cultural landscape along the Brisbane River.

Article Details

Section
Articles

References

Appadurai, A. (1986) The Social Life of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582

Atran, S. (1990) Cognitive Foundations of Natural History, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bender, B. (ed) (1993) Landscape, politics and perspectives. Oxford: Berg.

Bennett, V. (1995) The Politics of Water: urban protest, gender and power in Monterrey, Mexico. Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5hjnb9

Blatter, J. & Ingram, H. (2001) (eds.) Reflections on Water: new approaches to transboundary conflicts and cooperation. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press.

Caplan, P. (ed.) (1997) Food, Health and Identity. London, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203443798

Carrier, J. (1995) Gifts and Commodities, London: Routledge.

Csikzentmihalyi, M. & Rochberg-Halton, E. (1981) The Meaning of Things: domestic symbols and the self, Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139167611

Douglas, M. (1975) Implicit Meanings: essays in anthropology, London, Boston, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Durkheim, É. (1995 [1912]) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. K. Fields, New York: Free Press.

Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: an anthropological theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Hegel, F. (1977) The Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Howes, D. (2003) Sensual Relations: engaging the senses in culture and social theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11852

Kopytoff, I. (1986) "The Cultural Biography of Things: commoditization as process" in A. Appadurai (ed) The Social Life of Things: commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819582.004

Lansing, S. (1991) Priests and Programmers: technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Lupton, D. (1996) Food, the Body and the Self. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications.

Miller, D. (ed.) (1998) Material Cultures: why some things matter. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203167014

Schechner, R. (1985) Between Theatre and Anthropology, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Shore, B. (1996) Culture in Mind: cognition, culture and the problem of meaning, New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stewart, P. & Strathern, A. (eds.) (2003) Landscape, Memory and History, London: Pluto Press.

Strang, V. (1997) Uncommon Ground; cultural landscapes and environmental values, Oxford, New York: Berg.

Strang, V. (1999) "Familiar Forms: Homologues, Culture and Gender in Northern Australia", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 5(1):75-95. https://doi.org/10.2307/2660964

Strang, V. (2001) "Negotiating the River: Cultural Tributaries in Far North Queensland", in B. Bender & M. Winer (eds.) Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place, Oxford, New York: Berg.

Strang, V. (2002) "Life Down Under: Water and Identity in an Aboriginal Cultural Landscape", Goldsmiths College Anthropology Research Papers. No. 7. London: Goldsmiths College.

Strang, V. (2004) The Meaning of Water, Oxford, New York: Berg.

Strang, V. (2005a) "Knowing Me, Knowing You: Aboriginal and Euro-Australian Concepts of Nature as Self and Other", World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion, 9(1):25-56. https://doi.org/10.1163/1568535053628463

Strang, V. (2005b) "Common Senses: Water, Sensory Experience and the Generation of Meaning", Journal of Material Culture 10(1): 93-121. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183505050096

Strang, V. (2005c) "Water Works: Agency and Creativity in the Mitchell River Catchment", The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 16(3): 366-81. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1835-9310.2005.tb00317.x

Tilley, C. (1994) A Phenomenology of Landscape: places, paths and monument, Oxford, Providence: Berg.

Tilley, C. (1999) (ed.) Metaphor and Material Culture, Oxford: Blackwells.

Turner, V. (1982) From Ritual to Theatre: the human seriousness of play, New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications.

Ward, C. (1997) Reflected in Water: a crisis in social responsibility, London and Washington: Cassell.