Governmentality of Fencing in Australia: Tracing the White Wires from Paddocks to Aboriginal Protection, Pest Exclusion and Immigration Restriction

ABSTRACT

The importation of wire-fencing to Australia from the 1840s transformed the management of sheep. Rather than shepherds watching over flocks, wire-fences allowed sheep to roam relatively unsupervised in paddocks. It is commonly argued that the popularity of wire-fenced paddocks arose because they reduced labor costs and improved wool production. This is partly true. The declining use of shepherds to protect flocks coincided with the ending of brutal frontier wars and localised eradication of dingoes. That is, the conditions for adopting wire fences and practice of paddocking were made possible through violence. Fences came to denote property, order, and civilization. Drawing on and expanding Michel Foucault’s work on pastoral power and governmentality, this paper argues that the initial period of colonial “pastoral violence” dovetailed into a “fencing governmentality” that mobilised literal and figurative “paddocks” to manage, sort, and reproduce life that is desirable while excluding life that is not. Importantly, violence does not vacate the paddock, but is recoded and manifest differently depending on one’s relation to the fences. This paper traces the development of a fencing governmentality and its use in the protection, exclusion and restriction of biological life, namely the lives of Aboriginals, animals, and non-British immigrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Governmentality
• Michel Foucault
• pastoral power
• sheep
• Australia
• colonial violence

Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Deakin Critical Animal Studies Network symposium on Animal Nationalisms. This published version of the paper has greatly benefited from the insightful comments of participants and feedback from Yamini Narayanan and Katie Gillespie. I am also indebted to the helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Christopher Mayes http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2674-6225

Notes on contributor

Christopher Mayes is an interdisciplinary scholar drawing on philosophy, history and sociology. He is the author of Unsettling Food Politics: agriculture, dispossession, and sovereignty in Australia (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018) and The Biopolitics of Lifestyle: Foucault, ethics, and healthy choices (Routledge, 2016). His research interests include sociology of food and health, history and philosophy of medicine, and bioethics.

Notes

1 It is important to note that other colonies introduced their own legislation and practices for governing the lands and lives of Aboriginal peoples. For example, Queensland had the Aboriginal Protection and Restrictions of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. I do not wish to suggest the Victorian experience was uniform across the colonies. I appreciate the comments from an anonymous reviewer suggesting I clarify this point.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DE170100550].