The State, Rural Environments, and Globalisation: ‘Action at a Distance’ via the Australian Landcare Program

Abstract

Contrary to the suggestion that transnational capital has largely subsumed the agency of Australian governments and farmers in shaping rural environments, in this paper I argue that new, often indirect, forms of action have developed within the context of globalisation and neoliberalism. These may be described as forms of ‘action at a distance’, oriented towards shaping both the environment within which people make decisions and the ways in which they are likely to respond to that environment. Since 1989, the National Landcare Program has mobilised around 30% of farm businesses to participate in community Landcare groups based on principles of self-help, cooperation, and localised action. This has initiated a new phase of negotiation over the delimitation of objects of governance, and facilitated the deployment of novel forms of state influence. Of particular importance have been technologies of knowledge that promote the further intensification of agriculture as environmentally rational and responsible, a trend reinforced by the vast bulk of neoliberal agricultural policy. Although neoliberal policy and local Landcare action appear contradictory, they do appear consistent with the self-understandings of Australian farmers as independent and self-reliant—understandings that render more direct forms of state intervention problematic. It thus remains to be seen how profoundly Landcare will reshape rural landscapes.