Australian Wetland Cultures

Swamps and the Environmental Crisis

Edited by John Charles Ryan and Li Chen - Contributions by Danielle Brady; John Charles Ryan; Li Chen; Rod Giblett; Christopher Kueh; Philip Jennings and Jeffrey Murray

Among the most productive ecosystems on earth, wetlands are also some of the most vulnerable. Australian Wetland Cultures argues for the cultural value of wetlands. Through a focus on swamps and their conservation, the volume makes a unique contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities.

The authors investigate the crucial role of swamps in Australian society through the idea of wetland cultures. The broad historical and cultural range of the book spans pre-settlement indigenous Australian cultures, nineteenth-century European colonization, and contemporary Australian engagements with wetland habitats.

The contributors situate the Australian emphasis in international cultural and ecological contexts. Case studies from Perth, Western Australia, provide practical examples of the conservation of wetlands as sites of interlinked natural and cultural heritage. The volume will appeal to readers with interests in anthropology, Australian studies, cultural studies, ecological science, environmental studies, and heritage protection.

Lexington Books

Pages: 268 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4985-9994-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-9995-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Series: Environment and Society

Subjects: Nature / Ecosystems & Habitats / Lakes, Ponds & Swamps, Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection

Australian Wetland Cultures

Swamps and the Environmental Crisis

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Among the most productive ecosystems on earth, wetlands are also some of the most vulnerable. Australian Wetland Cultures argues for the cultural value of wetlands. Through a focus on swamps and their conservation, the volume makes a unique contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities.

The authors investigate the crucial role of swamps in Australian society through the idea of wetland cultures. The broad historical and cultural range of the book spans pre-settlement indigenous Australian cultures, nineteenth-century European colonization, and contemporary Australian engagements with wetland habitats.

The contributors situate the Australian emphasis in international cultural and ecological contexts. Case studies from Perth, Western Australia, provide practical examples of the conservation of wetlands as sites of interlinked natural and cultural heritage. The volume will appeal to readers with interests in anthropology, Australian studies, cultural studies, ecological science, environmental studies, and heritage protection.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 268 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-4985-9994-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-9995-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Series: Environment and Society

Subjects: Nature / Ecosystems & Habitats / Lakes, Ponds & Swamps, Nature / Environmental Conservation & Protection

Author

John Charles Ryan is postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New England, Australia, and honorary research fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia. He is the author of Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination.

Li Chen is researcher and writer for environmental conservation and community development NGOs in Perth, and has published in the journals Heritage and The Conversation.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Credits

Pt IAustralian Wetland Cultures

The Swamp Nandi Chinna

Racecourse Lagoon, Uralla, New South Wales John C. Ryan

Ch 1 Introduction to Australian Wetland Humanities: Thinking About (and With) Swamps

John Charles Ryan and Li Chen

Ch 2 Rainbow Serpent Anthropology, or Rainbow Spirit Theology, or Swamp Serpent Sacrality and Marsh Monster Maternity?

Rod Giblett

Ch 3 Artist and Swamp: Wetlands in Australian Painting and Photography

Rod Giblett

Ch 4 Poet and Swamp: Wetlands in Australian Verse

John Charles Ryan

Ch 5Plant and Swamp: The Biocultural Histories of Five Australian Hydrophytes

John Charles Ryan

Pt IIWestern Australian Wetland Cultures

Beeliar Nandi Chinna

Three Wetland Poems by John Kinsella, Dedicated to J.P. Quinton

Poem for the Gathering

The Trees Along Bibra Lake

Resisting from Within the Green Tent at Bibra Drive, Beeliar (For James)

Ch 6 Environmental Activism and Wetlands Conservation in Western Australia

Philip Jennings

Ch 7 Where Fanny Balbuk Walked: Reenvisioning Perth’s Wetlands

John Charles Ryan, Danielle Brady, and Christopher Kueh

Ch 8 The Cultural Significance of Wetlands: Perth’s Lost Swamps to the Beeliar Wetlands

Danielle Brady and Jeffrey Murray

Ch 9 Swamp-philia and Paludal Heroism: The Passion of Wetland Conservationists in Australia and Elsewhere

John Charles Ryan and Li Chen

Power of Deluge Glen Phillips

Ch 10 Epilogue: Twenty-Five Years of Wetland Studies in the Humanities

Rod Giblett

About the Contributors

Reviews

A wonderfully engrossing book, elegantly championing the pivotal role of wetlands in Australian cultural life. The chapters within this book are as serpentine and mesmerising as the waterscapes they interrogate. The book draws the reader into considerations of why we often experience cognitive dissonance in these landscapes, to explore how wetlands as ‘othering’ spaces is embedded within interconnected artistic, semantic and physical practices. Australian Wetland Cultures provides us with a timely reminder that these paludal environments are a palimpsest of our ever shifting human drive to mould and mark landscapes. Our cultural perceptions shape our relationship with space, and the authors prove this is nowhere more true than within wetlands; places for the dead, the living and the more-than-human. I encourage readers to immerse themselves within this wonderful text, with an eye to appraising wetlands with a renewed vigour henceforth.
— Mary Gearey, University of Brighton

Australian Wetland Cultures

Swamps and the Environmental Crisis

Edited by John Charles Ryan and Li Chen - Contributions by Danielle Brady; John Charles Ryan; Li Chen; Rod Giblett; Christopher Kueh; Philip Jennings and Jeffrey Murray

Australian Wetland Cultures

Swamps and the Environmental Crisis

ALSO AVAILABLE