Synopsis
Making Do: Conservation Ethics and Ecological Care in Australia by Mardi Reardon-Smith is an anthropological exploration of environmental management, human-environment relations, and intercultural dynamics in Cape York Peninsula, a remote and biodiverse region in far northeastern Australia. The book, based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Aboriginal traditional owners, settler-descended cattle herders, and park rangers, delves into how diverse groups navigate the complexities of ecological care amidst historical legacies of settler colonialism, climate change, and shifting land tenure systems. Reardon-Smith, an environmental anthropologist, examines the co-production of environmental knowledges and practices, highlighting how competing values and perspectives shape conservation efforts in a landscape often romanticized as "wilderness" despite its deep human history.
The book centers on Cape York’s contested cultural, environmental, and economic values, where Aboriginal communities have lived for millennia, shaping the landscape through practices like cultural burning. Since colonization, the region has been transformed by cattle grazing, mining, and conservation initiatives, creating tensions over land use and belonging. Reardon-Smith investigates how different groups—Indigenous custodians, graziers facing industry decline, and rangers managing protected areas—form and maintain relationships with the environment. She explores critical issues such as the control of invasive species like weeds and feral pigs, which raises questions about what is deemed "native" or "invasive" and who has the authority to decide. These categorizations, she argues, are not merely ecological but deeply political, tied to power dynamics and cultural narratives.
A key theme is the concept of "making do," which reflects the pragmatic, adaptive strategies people employ to care for the land amid ruptures like environmental degradation and structural inequalities. Reardon-Smith traces how Aboriginal traditional owners assert their ecological knowledge and custodial responsibilities, often in collaboration or conflict with state-driven conservation frameworks. Meanwhile, settler-descended graziers articulate a sense of belonging rooted in their labor and historical ties to the land, even as their industry faces precarity due to economic and environmental changes. Park rangers, positioned as mediators, navigate these competing claims while implementing formal conservation policies. The book underscores the importance of intercultural relationships, showing how joint management of protected areas, such as national parks, reveals both possibilities for collaboration and persistent inequities.
Through a lens of political ecology and visual anthropology, Reardon-Smith weaves a narrative that challenges anthropocentric views of conservation and critiques the notion of nature as a resource to be managed. Her research, enriched by photographic and filmic methods, captures the lived realities of her interlocutors, offering a nuanced portrait of a region where environmental care is inseparable from social and historical contexts. Ultimately, Making Do asks how people come to know and care for the places they inhabit, advocating for conservation ethics that embrace diverse knowledges and address past injustices to foster equitable and sustainable futures. The book, under contract with Stanford University Press, draws on Reardon-Smith’s doctoral thesis and her broader work on multispecies relationships and Indigenous-settler dynamics, making it a significant contribution to environmental anthropology and conservation studies.