Water as property: the social impact of water reform on agriculturalists in the Murray-Darling Basin New South Wales

This thesis contributes to sociology and social policy discussions on water reform in New South Wales, Australia. While the study draws on political economy theory in examining water as ‘property’ under economic rationalism policies, it makes an ethnographic contribution to rural sociology as it traces institutional reform in water management in the late twentieth century. The research is influenced by the theoretical concepts of Emile Durkheim on property relations, Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field, game, habitus and illusio and Niklas Luhmann’s concept ‘trust’. These sociological perspectives are integral to my research. The empirical research centred on field observation and qualitative interviews with farm managers and senior officers as the State clawed back over allocated water for environmental restoration. The aims of this study were: (a) to observe the implications of restrictions on water use for farmers under the Water Management Act 2000 (New South Wales). (b) to enquire into the strategies used by dryland and irrigation farm managers to cope with cutbacks in water allocations. And (c) to observe if the trust by farmers in government policy is eroding. I found that if the farmers cannot obtain water to develop their land and water further, to continue traditions of intergenerational change, then income is lost throughout the rural communities. Water reform principles ‘integrated water resource management’ and ‘sustainable water resource management’ give farmers a low priority for water access as trust in policy decisions is eroding. The small and medium broadacre farm managers interiewed retain their trust in their own abilities, resilience and survival strategies, such as earning off farm income. The larger agribusiness managers make decisions to accord with corporate objectives. If they cannot access adequate water resources their farms are more likely to be sold than are smaller or medium size broadacre farms. I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge contains no materials previously published or written by another person or substantial proportions of material that have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at The University of New South Wales or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in this thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at The University of New South Wales or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in this thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Capell, Marea

• water
• reform
• social impact
• agriculturalists
• property
• Emile Durkheim
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Niklas Luhmann
• Water Management Act 2000 (New South Wales)

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/

Language dc:language

EN

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/15265

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/51645