Uncommon Ground: Landscape, Values and the Environment

by Veronica Strang

- What makes people care about the environment? - Why and how do different cultural groups value land in different ways? With increasing international concern about green issues, and the apparent failure of mechanistic solutions to complex problems, Uncommon Ground provides a timely understanding of the cultural values that underpin human-environmental relations. Through a comparison of two very different groups, the Aboriginal people and the white cattle farmers in Far North Queensland, Uncommon Ground explores how the human-environmental relationship is culturally constructed. This highly topical study also examines the long-term conflicts over land in Australia, which have brought to the surface each group's environmental values. The author considers how these values are acquired, and the universal and cultural factors that lead to their development. Major emphasis is put on the cultural forms that create and express environmental values for the Aborigines and the white pastoralists, such - historical background - land use and economic modes - socio-spatial organization - language, knowledge and methods of socialization - oral and visual representation - cosmological beliefs and systems of law This book is very accessible and should be widely used on anthropology, environmental studies and geography courses.]

324 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1997

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book - well written thesis account. I agree with its over all approach, but disagree with some of the points when it tries to give 'conceptual' frameworks in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are supposed to see the world. Like, Richard Baker, Strang has a tendency to stereotype "white' Australia in order that it can be contrasted with a (slightly) stereotyped Indigenous society. The main problem I have with this text is the notion that "space' is defined principally by white people on the Northern Australian pastoral stations (cattle ranges, if you like); but my own experience demonstrates that Indigenous people are often the architects of creating their own private spaces in these environs - which do not reflect white dominance, but rather Aboriginal spaces / structures in which they exercise their cultural sleeping and eating patterns according to direction and distance to their home country.
Still, it is worth a read, and makes many good points.

[Jen]

GF801 .S77 1997, SSAH