The other is us: Conservation, categories and the law

Abstract

Categories are constructs that become normalised. Binary categories are hierarchical and normative: the bad is “them” and the good is us. Biodiversity conservation is predicated on provenance-based classifications of plants into native and introduced species. This duality is enforced in Australia by the colonial legal system, which is largely unaccommodating of pluralism and mainly antithetical to conservation. However, coarse plant classifications are challenged by the weedy-ness of some native species. Belated and partial recognition of invasive native species’ exceptions to the dominant duality have not challenged underlying assumptions and have caused perverse outcomes. These consequences are evident in a place-based case study conducted in regional New South Wales (NSW). The methodology is sensitive to non-human agency and is employed here to “ground-truth” the law. The results demonstrate that disagreements between local landholders and the law reflect the disjuncture between law and place. The analysis suggests that greater recognition of “place law” may reveal the inherent bias of the dominant legal system, as, in addition to imposing a hierarchy of plants, it is predicated on a human–nature binary and enforces its own class of primacy and privilege. It is this “othering” perpetrated by “us”, the settler state, that must be problematised, rather than the plants.