When anger meets joy: how emotions mobilise and sustain the anti-coal seam gas movement in regional Australia

ABSTRACT

In many countries, the expansion of unconventional gas exploration and development has been met with grassroots resistance; the scale and depth of which has surprised even movement organisers. An often-remarked feature of the movement’s success is the teaming up of farmers and environmental organisers, historically at odds with one another on other environmental issues. This paper explores the role of emotions in building alliances, and mobilising opponents of coal seam gas (CSG) in a particular rural setting in Australia. Drawing on interviews with anti-CSG movement participants, the paper argues that emotions help to explain how the movement has mobilised and sustained alliances despite differences between movement participants. We find that while anger plays a central role in mobilising various anti-CSG actors, it is the combination of anger with joy which helps to sustain the anti-CSG movement in regional Australia. Our analysis reveals three key sites (individuals, within groups, and the public arena) where these emotions are expressed and negotiated, and emphasises the influence of the rural context in this process.

KEYWORDS:

• Conflict
• emotions
• fracking
• movement
• rural
• unconventional gas

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the research participants for their time and generous responses. We would also like to thank John Dryzek, Carolyn Hendriks, Jensen Sass and Helen Sullivan for their insightful comments and suggestions on the previous versions of this paper. We are also grateful to Australian Research Council for providing financial support for the research presented in this paper (Grant no DP150103615, 'Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A Deliberative Systems'.)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Gould draws on the sociological concept of habitus to explain the patterning of how people ‘do’

emotion in a manner which is largely unconscious. Habitus refers to a set of embodied dispositions but must also be understood within broader Bourdieuian social theory in terms of how it intersects with capital, and field (for further conceptual elaboration, see Grenfell, 2008). ‘Structures of feeling’ is an idea developed by Raymond Williams (1961) to characterise a whole society or group of societies during a particular period in history. It refers to a sense of what guides people’s behaviour and culture, beyond official discourses in particular periods of time, such as the feeling of risk anxiety in modern capitalist societies (Hoggett & Thompson, 2012).

2. A note about the terminology of ‘emotion’ and ‘affect’ in empirical analysis: ‘affect’ is generally used to describe generic feeling experiences, whereas ‘emotion’ describes more specific reactions.

3. The Namoi Water Study (Schlumberger Water Services, 2012).

4. Phrase taken from (Colvin et al., 2015).

5. This group was formed in June 2012 when a small group of women from the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales – self-described as ‘nannas’ – formed to protest against proposed coal seam gas development. KNAG protests CSG development by gathering and knitting in public spaces.

6. Interviewees #21 and #22, 24.11.15; #39, 17.3.17.

7. Interviewee #19, 24.11.15.

8. Interviewees #23, 25.11.15 and #33, 25.11.15.

9. Interviewee #12, 24.11.15.

10. Interviewee #5, 22.11.15.

11. Interviewee #18, 24.11.15.

12. Interviewee #5, 22.11.15.

13. Interviewee #16, 24.11.15.

14. Interviewee #15, 24.11.15.

15. Interviewee # 5, 22.11.15.

16. ‘To slag’ is a common Australian term meaning to denigrate or criticise someone.

17. Interviewee #12, 24.11.15.

18. Interviewee #12, 24.11.15.

19. Interviewee #16, 24.11.15.

20. Interviewee #33, 25.6.16.

21. Interviewee #23, 25.11.15.

22. Interviewee #39, 17.3.17.

23. Interviewees #21 and #22, 21.11.15.

24. Interviewee #39, 17.3.17.

25. Interviewee #33, 25.6.16.

26. Interviewee #38, 17.3.17.

27. Interviewee #38, 17.3.17.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [Discovery Project Grant DP150103615 - Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A Deliberative Systems Approach].

Notes on contributors

Hedda Ransan-Cooper

Hedda Ransan-Cooper was a research fellow the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra for the research conducted in this paper. She is now a contract research fellow at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Australian National University working on the sociological dimensions of a transition to renewable energy. Her research interests include the human dimensions of global environmental change in the areas of energy change and human migration.

Selen A. Ercan

Selen A. Ercan is an Associate Professor of Politics at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance/Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. Her research interests include deliberative democracy, identity politics, social movements, alternative forms of political participation, and interpretive political research.

Sonya Duus

Sonya Duus is a research fellow the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra. Her research interests include the interrelationships between human and environmental systems, particularly in the context of current dilemmas such as land degradation, biodiversity loss, and global climate change. .