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Coral Battleground? Re-examining the ‘Save the Reef’ campaign in 1960s Australia
- Source :
- Environmental Sociology. 3:54-63
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Informa UK Limited, 2016.
-
Abstract
- Today’s campaigns to protect the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have parallels with historical campaigns. With hindsight, we can more clearly see the way environmental discourses are socially constructed as well as their outcomes. This is potentially insightful for contemporary environmentalists. Beginning in 1967, the Save the Reef campaign had a thoughtful media strategy and sought to socially construct the GBR as a precious ecosystem that was at risk from exploitation. Histories of this campaign remember environmentalists as a weak, David-like contender in a fight against the powerful Goliath of the Queensland government and extractive industries. Using the historical archives as our primary data source, however, reveals that these memories are overstated and that environmentalists actually enjoyed widespread support. Moreover, we see that the GBR has no explicit ‘opponents’; even those who sought to exploit it came from a position of pragmatic conservationism, believing exploitation and conservation could c...
- Subjects :
- Government
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Sociology and Political Science
Ecology
Exploit
Media strategy
Geography, Planning and Development
Environmental ethics
010501 environmental sciences
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Social constructionism
01 natural sciences
Archaeology
Environmental movement
Political science
Historical sociology
Parallels
Hindsight bias
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 23251042
- Volume :
- 3
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Environmental Sociology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........051486c0aebbd70b1ff2874a88341811