Amanda’s thesis, entitled Cultivating Community: A Discursive Study of Environmental Water Policy in Farming Communities in the Murray-Darling Basin, supervised by Dr. Peter Andrée, examines the politics of water management in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) in New South Wales (NSW), Australia.
Shankland uses a discursive analysis to demonstrate how dominant discourses can serve to silence meaningful perspectives and alternative solutions to environmental crisis. The study shows how marginalized actors push back, resisting both from inside and outside dominant discursive frames and assumptions. A discursive construction of nature that effectively excludes people from its ambit, coupled with a long history of top-down, expert-driven water management policy in the MDB, has had devastating effects on farming communities attempting to deal with the twin impacts of drought and associated policy reforms. Shankland constructs an alternative discourse that helps to explain how farmers understand the challenges their communities are facing. This discourse of resistance—community-centrism—seeks to put human social relationships at the heart of environmental decision-making. Community-centrism provides a much-needed positive reconceptualization of environmental problem-solving in the MDB, surfacing economic, environmental, and social opportunities in ways missed by other dominant discourses. The research demonstrates how critical reflection on policy discourses helps us envisage an alternative future that can provide for the needs of the economy, society, and the environment.
Congratulations Amanda!