Boomtown : runaway globalisation on the Queensland coast / Thomas Hylland Eriksen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Globalization--Australia--Gladstone (Qld.).

Globalization.

Gladstone (Qld.)--Economic conditions.

Gladstone (Qld.).

Gladstone (Qld.)--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (243 pages)

Place of Publication:

London : Pluto Press, 2018.

Summary:

Sitting next to the Great Barrier Reef, marinated in coal and gas, the industrial boomtown of Gladstone, Australia embodies many of the contradictions of the 'overheated' world: prosperous yet polluted; growing and developing yet always on the precipice of uncertainty. Capturing Gladstone at the peak of its accelerated growth in 2013-14, Thomas Hylland Eriksen dissects the boomtown phenomenon in all its profound ambivalence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores the tensions and resentments surrounding migrant workers, and examines local identity, family life, infrastructure and local services. Writ large in Boomtown are the clashes of scale at the heart of the town's contradictions - where the logic of big industry and the state compete with that of the individual, local communities and ecology, revealing the current crisis of political legitimacy across the world.

Contents:

pt. I CUIUS, ALTIUS, FORTIUS

1. A City No Longer in Waiting

The First Century

Queensland Alumina Ltd and Beyond

The Expanding Port and the LNG Adventure

Promotion of the Gladstone Region

2. Australian Identity and Its Double Binds

The Cultural Grammar of Australia Day

Egalitarianism and Inequality

Diversity, Exclusion and Hierarchy

Mining and Pastoralism in Australian Identity

Water and the Double Bind

3. Change in Their Bones

Living Amid Accelerated Change

The FIFO Issue

Accelerated Structural Amnesia

A Module-based Identity

Ambivalence

Temporality and the Future

4. The Boomtown Syndrome and the Treadmill Paradox

The Boomtown

Gladstone as a Boomtown

Gladstone and Treadmill Capitalism

pt. II CLASHING SCALES

5. Green Voices

Environmental Ambivalence at the Epicentre

The Gladstone Conservation Council

Silencing and Ambivalence

A Typology of Environmental Engagement

Scale and Green Activism

Corporate Social Responsibility: Offsets and Lightning Conductors

6. Dredging the Harbour

Positioned Knowledge and Unequal Power

The End of Commercial Fishing in Gladstone

Conflicting Expert Knowledges

The Bund Wall Scandal

Trust, Power and Knowledge

7. Slow-Burning Overheating at the East End Mine

The Mine and the Farmers

The East End Mine Action Group

Knowledge about Mount Larcom Water

Scale, Knowledge and Power

Alec Lucke's Story

8. The Demise of Targinnie

Fruit and Industry

Shale Oil: The End of Targinnie

Retrospections

Scaling Up and Cooling Down

9. Clashing Scales: Globalisation, as We Know It.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781786803078

1786803070

9781786803061

1786803062