“I Guess You Could Call It Plant Racism”: Making Kin in Australian Environmental Workfare

Abstract

Some scholars have drawn associations between Australian environmentalism and racism. Others have argued that natural resource management policies go beyond the science in justifying policies that have their real foundation in Australian nationalism. Yet applying semiotic analyses to focus upon such associations can risk obscuring efforts to actively loosen the nature–culture binary. Australia has a unique history of three decades of national environmental youth training programs such as Green Corps and Green Army. This environmental workfare engages a diverse range of actors: from university-qualified scientists to unemployed urban and rural youth. If any workplace culture is likely to generate a naïve environmentalist eco-nationalism, then the pseudo-military setting of national environmental workfare programs would be worthy of close examination. Based upon data collected from participants in Australian environmental workfare programs, this article explores how young workers display critical reflexivity, engaging creatively and ironically, embracing the more obscure Others. While attempting to generate cultural capital, particularly in the field of environmental science, they actively spurn naïve environmentalism. From the midst of the Australian bush, young people are answering Haraway’s call to “make kin in the Chthulucene”.