ABSTRACT
This article examines social mobilisation against coal seam gas and coal mining in country New South Wales. While environmental concerns are one of the motivations behind recent mobilisations, the alliances that are emerging bring together groups with a diversity of interests and ideological orientation. Disappointment with political elites and concerns with lack of transparency and public accountability, are setting the foundations for new forms of grassroots collaboration. Against the widespread notion of depoliticisation in Western liberal democracies, I argue that the growth in community mobilisation in country Australia reveals a more dynamic relationship with politics, one that requires differentiating the more rigid spaces within political institutions, from the political field more broadly.
