ABSTRACT
From the 1970s, state-driven pursuits for coal and revenue have radically transformed rural landscapes and sociality in New South Wales, Australia. The region, which has a long history of coal mining, moved from being run by locally based enterprises that contributed to the sustainability of local communities to large-scale, global corporations relying on a translocal workforce. As coal operations emerged from the underground, a radical restructuring of spatial relations took place. This restructuring was also underpinned by the privatisation of coal and power supplies, with transnational extraction corporations becoming landholders in agricultural regions. As the mining boom intensified, mining companies emerged as a major landholder in rural areas of New South Wales. Seeking to purchase strategic properties for exploration, extraction or mitigation, mining companies approached and negotiated with individual, local landholders. In this paper, we consider how this process have followed class-based lines and how class exposes distinct vulnerabilities and privileges in a meeting with a miner. We contend that there is a vacuum in the planning process, which exposes vulnerable communities that have limited capacity to contest these developments and define the future and meaning of their place of belonging.
