Ideology,Environment and Legislation: South Australian Attitudes to Vegetation

The paper addresses one possible manifestation of the interface between geographical concerns and the law. A brief discussion about aspects of law, images, attitudes and ideology is presented. A broad historical survey of legislation from the South Australian Parliament pertaining to vegetation illustrates that elements of the law, statutes in this case, can be usefully applied to studying geographical problems such as environmental management. It is argued that geographers should more regularly make use of legal materials, concepts and issues in both research and teaching.     

Gender and Environment: Some preliminary questions about women and water in the South Australian context

This paper speculates on three issues about the relationship between women and water, focusing on the context of South Australia, a particularly dry part of the world. First, it is suggested that gender affects our connections to environmental resources, in this instance to water. Second, it is noted that currently unexamined archival material exists for the South Australian situation and that the analysis of this material may shed light on the relationship between gender and environmental resources. Third, it is possible to argue that the conflation of nature and the feminine through such things as tropic devices in language results in both being constituted largely as corporeal, as bodies requiring management. Such a possibility suggests that a body politics exists in environmental studies and related disciplines that requires further theoretical work.