Sitting next to the Great Barrier Reef, marinated in coal and gas, the industrial boomtown of Gladstone, Australia embodies many of the contradictions of the 'overheated' world: prosperous yet polluted; growing and developing yet always on the precipice of uncertainty. Capturing Gladstone at the peak of its accelerated growth in 2013-14, Thomas Hylland Eriksen dissects the boomtown phenomenon in all its profound ambivalence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book explores the tensions and resentments surrounding migrant workers, and examines local identity, family life, infrastructure and local services. Writ large in Boomtown are the clashes of scale at the heart of the town's contradictions - where the logic of big industry and the state compete with that of the individual, local communities and ecology, revealing the current crisis of political legitimacy across the world.
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An anthropological study of a community 'marinated' in fossil fuels, fraught by ambivalence and conflict.
List of Illustrations Abbreviations Preface Prologue: The High Point of Extractive Industrialism Part I: Citrus, Altius, Fortius 1. A City No Longer in Waiting 2. Australian Identity and Its Double Binds 3. Change in Their Bones 4. The Boomtown Syndrome and the Treadmill Paradox Part II: Clashing Scales 5. Green Voices 6. Dredging the Harbour 7. Slow-Burning Overheating at the East End Mine 8. The Demise of Targinnie 9. Clashing Scales: Globalisation, as we Know It Epilogue: A Boomtown in Decline Appendix 1: Anna Hitchcock's submission regarding the further expansion of the State Development Area in Gladstone in 2014 Appendix 2: Letter to Coordinator-General from Cheryl Watson Bibliography Index
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'It takes a seasoned anthropologist like Thomas Hylland Eriksen, with his wealth of research and experience to elevate this ethnographic depiction of a town in Queensland to a study of the many social, economic and ecological tensions and contradictions that animate many places around the world'
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780745338279
Publisert
2018-07-20
Utgiver
Vendor
Pluto Press
Vekt
498 gr
Høyde
215 mm
Bredde
135 mm
Aldersnivå
Academic, P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
272

Biographical note

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He is the author of numerous classics of anthropology, including Small Places, Large Issues, Ethnicity and Nationalism and What is Anthropology?