ABSTRACT
Drawing on recent ethnographic research in Queensland, this chapter considers notions of ownership in relation to water. It observes that, as a relation between persons and things, concepts of property require some degree of material stasis and it suggests that the material qualities of water elude such conceptual fixity and enable – indeed necessitate – more fluid forms of ownership. Making comparative use of some of the principles of Aboriginal Law, it considers subaltern ‘ways of owning’ that are processually acquired, subverting the more static concepts of enclosure and separation on which Western notions of property depend.
Water ownership in Australia, as elsewhere, expresses a longstanding ideological tension between the maintenance of collective rights and the desire of individuals and elite groups to enclose and gain control of water ‘resources’. There is a parallel divergence in values, between commitments to sustaining social and ecological needs and competitive short-termism. As well as challenging conventional notions of property, alternate forms of water ownership and appropriation draw attention to the separation of economic activities from wider social and ecological processes. This chapter suggests that alternate claims have some potential to support more integrated and thus more sustainable human-environmental relationships.
