Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains

Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains

Rural Sociology 0(0), 2022, pp 1–24 DOI: 10.1111/ruso.12442 © 2022 The Authors Rural Sociology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Rural Sociological Society (RSS) This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited Global Markets, Risk, and Organized Irresponsibility in Regional Australia: Emergent Cosmopolitan Identities Among Local Food Producers in the Liverpool Plains☆ Helen Forbes-Mewett Sociology, School of Social Sciences  Monash University Kien Nguyen-Trung School of Social Sciences  Monash University Abstract This paper reflects on the conditions that emerge as regional Australia becomes increasingly immersed in international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions In the Liverpool Plains region, farmers are deeply reliant on global export markets Meanwhile, global demand for Australian minerals continues to produce both economic development and environmental degradation In this context, farmers are drawing on transnational and national social movements to collectively construct their knowledge of risk and “organized irresponsibility” and resist environmental risk by positioning themselves as a part of a cosmopolitan public While consistently evaluating risks associated with a proposed coal mine, farmers see themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations in a precarious world These conditions are productive of new risks, identities, as well as new forms of critical, collective practice Introduction In the Liverpool Plains—“Australia’s Food Bowl”—farmers have been challenging the development of a proposed coal mine near their properties for over a decade The Liverpool Plains is situated in regional Australia, which refers to the towns and areas outside the major capital cities Conditions of life on the Liverpool Plains are intimately bound up with international markets, global and local political shifts, and changing environmental conditions Farms export much of their produce, competing in global markets Demand for Australian minerals to meet the energy and industrial needs of emerging economies produced local and global economic development while contributing to environmental risks Mines offer the economic potential for regional Australia as well as leading to the establishment of new political alliances, both for ☆ Address correspondence to Helen Forbes-Mewett, Sociology, School of Social Sciences, Monash University Clayton Campus, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia Email: helen forbesmewett@monash.edu Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 and against mineral exploration Local farmers draw on national and transnational social movements to collectively resist environmental risk and secure livelihoods deeply reliant on international export markets They organized commissioned research and used their situated understanding of the environment to challenge state decision-making and corporate power These complex conditions saw the forging of new social alliances and identities Farmers also saw themselves as having an ethical responsibility as food producers to provide for increasing global populations Therefore, in the Liverpool Plains, changing global conditions resulted in environmental and economic impacts that are both productive of risk and of new forms of critical practice In this study, we see this grassroots farmers’ movement as an example of how everyday people are understanding and responding to a complex and interrelated set of environmental, economic, and social risks Global markets have reshaped social conditions in regional Australia, reorienting responsibility for emerging environmental risks and altering the political orientation and collective identities of local food producers To understand this movement, we turn to the theory of Ulrich Beck For Beck (1992, 2006), contemporary society has become a “risk society” whose institutions and individuals spend a great deal of energy debating, managing, and preventing risks of its own making The risk society thesis is well utilized by sociologists to understand how actors constitute their social worlds in the face of uncertainty This paper aims to extend Beck’s discussion of subpolitics to reflect local farmers’ capacity to challenge risk definitions and the organized irresponsibility imposed by the state and industry (see Pellow and Brehm 2013) Our empirical approach is qualitative, involving 23 interviews with farmers in the Liverpool Plains We find the farmers’ position themselves as knowledgeable actors, combining “external” scientific knowledge with a situated knowledge of the environment to establish a comprehensive account of the risks posed to their collective identities and livelihoods In constructing this knowledge, they reflect on “organized irresponsibility” that captures how risks are being produced but the responsibility was not identified or assigned to any specific entity Farmers respond to this irresponsibility by situating themselves using a cosmopolitan identity and actively engaging in subpolitical actions Risk Society, Organized Irresponsibility, and Cosmopolitanization The risk society thesis (Beck 1992) has been widely used by social scientists to understand responses to risks associated with contemporary life The thesis belongs to a broader theory of reflexive modernization, which sits alongside the theses of individualization and multidimensional Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen globalization (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim  2010) Beck argues that our societies are living in late modernity in which the central feature is the production and distribution of risks rather than wealth, as in the first modernity (Beck 1992) In this epoch, risks are not external (i.e., natural risks) but, instead, are “manufactured risks” produced by the “progression of human development” (Giddens 1999:4) Thus, Beck defined risks as a systematic way of dealing with hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself Risks, as opposed to older dangers, are consequences which relate to the threatening force of modernization and to its globalization of doubt They are politically reflexive (Beck 1992:21) As a part of reflexive modernity, the theory of risk society refers to how humans have to face the unexpected consequences of their own activities, including overproduction, consumerism, and the adoption of technological advancements This does not necessarily mean, as Giddens  (1999:3) comments, that contemporary societies are riskier than traditional or industrial ones Rather, its defining feature is an increasing preoccupation with the future, and the aspiration to normalize and control it in the face of uncertainty and insecurity Risk is now crucial to the way people live, make sense of, and organize their social world (Beck 2006; Giddens 1990) In other words, risks have gained political potency in the contemporary world (Beck 2009) The rise of manufactured risks raises the question of social responsibility (Beck 2006) Answering the question, “who is responsible?” is not easy in the context of manufactured risks since it is difficult “if not impossible to trace any specific social damages to any specific individuals” (Curran 2015:5; see also Giddens 1999) Beck (2009:8) captures this feature of contemporary life with his concept of “organized irresponsibility,” suggesting that irresponsibility is organized or institutionalized so that responsibility can be assigned, but punishment is not likely to be given to any specific individuals (Beck 2009:8) There is the coexistence of responsibility [Zustăandigkeit] and impunity [Unzurechenbarkeit] (Beck 2009:8) This is because risks are coproduced by many actors (e.g., science, politics, the economy, media), and it is not possible to cast blame on any one of these alone (Beck 2009:8) This coproduction makes it unreliable to clearly identify the causes and consequences of specific threats Risks have now become imperceptible, noncalculable, invisible, and uninsurable (Beck  1992) In other words, it is impracticable for laypeople to directly perceive and Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 explain risks through their own senses; instead, they rely on their personal experience to make sense of risks Testing this thesis empirically, Marks, Martin, and Zadoroznyj (2008) point out that because of their concern with industrial factors (for instance, the use of chemicals), most participants expressed their hesitance toward using recycling water for drinking than other sources of water such as treated rainwater In making sense of risk, laypeople are dependent on the scientific and technical knowledge supplied by powerful institutions such as science, politics, or corporations or media (Beck 1992) Given risk is fundamentally about the production and authorization of knowledge, these institutions are seen to be both “instruments of risk management” and a “source of risk” itself (Beck 2006:336, original emphasis) The focus on technical expertise and institutional actors is where Beck’s theory receives its criticism; his emphasis on expert systems leads to the neglect of laypeople’s knowledge (Lash 1994) This argument is part of a long tradition of critiquing early conceptualizations of risk by Beck (1992; also Giddens 1991), where the theory is seen to lack relevance in the actual processes of institutional and everyday life (Alexander  1996) While not entirely dismissed as another “grand theory,” the “risk society” thesis has been rigorously critiqued for its universalizing and totalizing assumptions (Dean 1999; Mythen 2004) along with its apparent ahistoricism (Zinn 2008b) Beck rejects the notion of methodological nationalism while supporting the rise of methodological cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanization has opened a “global space of responsibility of global risks” in which people living distant from each other must face the unexpected consequences of others’ decisions and actions (Beck 2009:6) Risks cannot be contained in national–territorial borders nor in the present time (Beck 2006) Global market risks demonstrate this type of irresponsibility because they are not controlled by—and cannot be restrained within— the national market (Beck  2009) Facing global threats has led to the formation of “cosmopolitan ‘collective consciousness’,” where global citizens must acknowledge themselves as a part of the global public in facing the shared problem (Beck 2009) In his final book, Beck (2016:26) extends the risk society theory to the theory of metamorphosis of the world where “the nation is not the center of the world… but the nations are circulating ‘around the new fixed stars: world and humanity’ that are at risk As such, people’s everyday life reality is shaped by the ‘cosmopolitized reality’” (Beck 2016:30–31) In this context, Beck promotes the idea of individualization in which individuals now must live a life of their own, moving from building their biographies based on the institutional and structural rules, regulations and supports to constructing Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen “elective biographies, ‘do-it-yourself biographies’, risk biographies, broken or broken-down biographies” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002:24) Because of their choices, individuals must be responsible for their own “personal misfortunes and unanticipated events” (Beck and BeckGernsheim  2002:24) Indeed, this individualization thesis has been confirmed by some studies In their study of how Australians perceive risk, for instance, Lupton and Tulloch (2002) found little awareness of external forces that cause risk Rather, these Australians tended to individualize their ability to manage the complexities of social life While individualizing a sense of social responsibility, the authors suggest that “laypeople” remain keenly involved in the able navigation of risk Traditionally underwritten by the nation-state, political power is now dispersed across a broader array of social constellations Beck (1992:183– 5) argues that in the age of reflexive modernity, the formal politics based on nation-state’s institutions of representative democracy such as parties, parliaments has lost its power of structuration and legitimation, giving rise to subpolitics, “a new political culture (citizen’s initiative groups and social movement).” In this movement, citizens not need to rely on democratic control to legitimize their actions but actively use all the available tools including media, legal control, and consultation to pursue their goals and interest (Beck,  1992, 1996) They aim to confront their own problems from “outside formal politics,” in areas such as sciences and professions; green, ethical, and political consumption; and corporations (Holzer and Sørensen  2003:79) or climate governance (Acuto 2013) The subpoliticization is also portrayed in the emergence of new environmental movements such as the environmental justice movement, the grassroots environmental movement, and radical ecological resistance (Buttel 2003; White 2009) The environmental justice movement from 1980 to 1990s, for instance, has shown that local people cannot be perceived merely as a subject of study but rather should be deemed an active knowledge producer who can oppose and change projects that harm their locality (Martinez-Alier et al. 2016) Despite recent developments adding a much needed “bottom up” perspective to Beck’s theory, there remains a need to explore how social actors understand and respond to the environmental risks associated with the combination of a changing economy and climate (Austen  2009; Henwood et al.  2008; Lupton and Tulloch  2002; Wall and Olofsson  2008) In other words, how social actors would form their definition of risks and cope with the effects of organized irresponsibility so as to protect their interests in the context of a globalized world In a convincing critique, Anderson  (2019) has recently suggested that risk is both constraining and enabling critical practice Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 to manage the complexities of social life Anderson  (2019:501, original emphasis) challenges the limitations of the risk society thesis, noting how risk “is a way of governing ourselves that works both with and against contemporary forms of individualizing power.” As such, it is worth considering the resources of resistance made possible by the accumulation of risks This account suggests that individuals are increasingly expected to manage and mitigate risks in their lives in a way that extends beyond Beck’s  (2006) suggestion of three possible reactions to such conditions: denial, apathy, and transformation Specifically, we need to take seriously Anderson’s (2019) contention that “risk” produces new and unexpected sites of collective resistance as well as reproducing patterns of individualization Regional Australia has been hit particularly hard by the conditions of a changing economy and climate, yet there is a need to develop knowledge of how communities perceive and respond to these challenges As such, this paper takes Beck’s thesis to the Liverpool Plains in New South Wales, Australia, where farmers are active in debating, managing, and responding to the risks associated with a proposed coal mine near their properties This case study explores how these food producers make sense of a looming coal mine they see as threatening their collective livelihoods and identities In it, we find farmers construct knowledge of the complex environmental risks caused by the prospective mine that is then used as a form of resistance to organized irresponsibility Denial, apathy, and transformation (Beck 2006) are not mutually constitutive in this context: they are overlapping and experienced in different ways by our informants through time We consider the role of local food producers in navigating a “risk society,” therefore, grounding Beck’s thesis in everyday lives, where “lay knowledge” and “expert knowledge” are combined in novel ways to formulate new collective identities and social movements Data and Methods This paper is a qualitative case study conducted in January 2016, concentrating on responses to a proposal from a multinational company (“the Company”) to mine for coal in the Gunnedah Basin in New South Wales, Australia The expansive Gunnedah is one of many mineral basins in the Liverpool Plains (Franks et al. 2010) The Liverpool Plains covers a large area of the North West Slopes region and is one of the most productive farming regions in Australia, with the rotation of winter and summer crops practiced since the 1970s (Sun and Cornish 2006) The favorable conditions are the result of rich aquifers, high-quality black soil, and historically high rainfall in both summer Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen and winter This allows farmers to cultivate diverse crops throughout the year The region produces around 40 percent of the national agricultural output and is therefore often considered to be “Australia’s Food Bowl.” While occupying a more divisive position in the political life of the country, mining is central to the Australian economy Its economic might is certainly indisputable; mineral exports generated AU$278 billion in 2019 with a large proportion of all exports (Department of Industry Innovation and Science  2019) Of total export earnings, coal exports contributed AU$57 billion, second only to iron ore (Britt et al. 2018) Its environmental impact is, however, hotly debated Most coal mines are spread across the states of New South Wales and Queensland, with a particularly high density in the Hunter Valley, northwest of Sydney The “politics of coal” are prominent in feeding divisive debates surrounding Australia’s future economy, environment, and energy mix that are decades-old and continuing Meanwhile, in 2006, the Gunnedah Basin in the Liverpool Plains was initially a prospective resource region (Franks et al. 2010) Within a space of a few years, a major mining company was granted an exploration license to construct underground mines, followed by another for a subsidiary of a second multinational, which forms the subject of this paper In the years preceding 2012, the Company completed exploration and submitted a contentious Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) claiming that the project would have minimal impact on groundwater and agricultural production The claim was challenged by Caroona Coal Action Group (CCAG), an activist group of farmers who had established themselves to campaign against the earlier development This is the context in which we undertake our exploration of how farmers produce knowledge of “risk” and the actions taken under these conditions Contesting the claims of the Company, CCAG hired an independent consultant from a large research university to conduct an independent peer review of the watermark coal project’s groundwater modeling report The review raised major concerns regarding the conclusions reached in the EIS submitted by the Company After the Company revised its modeling, the state government granted conditional approval for the project Immense pressure from local farmers and CCAG resulted in the government buying back half of the Company’s exploration license (Murphy  2017) Nevertheless, the Company progressed with plans for the watermark coal mine, although with a reduction in size The approvals of the state government caused great concern for many local farmers, fearing further rubber-stamping from the government The farmers’ construction of knowledge of the complex and interconnected Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 environmental, economic, and social impacts of this proposal is the subject of this paper This paper draws on interviews the lead author conducted in January 2016 with 23 farmers The sample encompasses 13 males and 10 females (see Forbes-Mewett 2019) The participants were aged between 18 and 85 years, of which four were under 40, 11 over 55, and the remaining from 40 to 55 This broad age range loosely reflects the average age of Australian farmers, which was reported to be 57 as of 2017–2018 (Australian Bureau of Statistics  2019) All participants relied on farming as their main livelihood and all were members of the activist group CCAG mentioned above, who assisted with organizing interviewees Individuals in the group described themselves as generally not antimining, but driven by the threat to their livelihoods, identities, and communities they saw posed by the Company’s proposal The interviews were approximately h in duration and took place in situ (on the participants’ farms) The interviewer drove to the participants’ farms aided by the provision of “mudmaps.” These detailed, hand-drawn maps provided by each farmer enabled the interviewer to find the next interview site Each participant was allocated a pseudonym to ensure anonymity These efforts were undertaken so participants would feel comfortable in their familiar environment and there would be minimal disruption to their daily work routine The interviews have conducted either one-on-one, in pairs, or in threes Interview questions related to agricultural produce, distribution, exports, and the perceived threat of mining to food security in Australia and beyond Farmers were asked about their crops, where the produce was destined and how they responded collectively to the risk of the mining proposal They were also asked if they considered themselves as a national or a global supplier, and how farming in the area benefitted or was impacted by being in the Liverpool Plains, an area that was also home to significant mining After being transcribed, data were analyzed by using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) This analytical approach helped the authors develop familiarity with the data set; generate initial codes; form, review, and name emerging themes and subthemes relating to how farmers perceived and responded to the risks from the coal mining proposal After reading and becoming familiar with the data, the authors generated initial codes from the interview manuscripts and gradually formed the coding scheme As such, codes generated were related to the three domains of knowledge of “risk,” “organized irresponsibility,” and “cosmopolitan identity.” In accordance with each of these domains, themes were formed based on similar codes As Braun and Clarke (2019) pointed out, these domains are predetermined in the process of formulating Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen research questions, while themes were what arose within data through a process of data analysis Eventually, in response to risk, there were three themes: “unpredictability, unmanageability, uncertainty of risk”; “transcending temporal, spatial boundaries”; and “questioning expert definition of risks.” In response to “organized irresponsibility,” there were three themes “the project’s risk representing the threat of the whole mining culture in Australia,” “questioning the role of the government,” and “CCAG and collective resistance to organised responsibility.” In response to “cosmopolitan identity,” there were two themes “playing a role of global food producer” and “representing the environmental movements.” In the final step, themes were connected to produce a convincing story As suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006:93), the data extract presented in this paper is relevant, essential, “concise, coherent, logical, nonrepetitive, and interesting,” thus helping to illustrate the arguments relating to the research questions The involvement of CCAG was a limitation of this study, as it restricted the opportunity for more diverse opinions regarding the coal mining proposal Nonetheless, the method offered a way to examine how local food producers made sense of risks in a changing economy and environment At the time the fieldwork was conducted, the Company’s project was still in a process of gaining approval to start construction and operation By this stage, the campaign against the proposal had lasted almost 10 years This context provides a valuable opportunity to assess how local farmers, both individually and collectively, perceive and challenge risks associated with the proposed coal mine near their properties Findings In this section, we discuss three key topics and corresponding themes emerging from interviews with farmers in the Liverpool Plains (see Table 1) First, using qualitative data, we show how farmers positioned themselves as knowledgeable actors, combining “expert” scientific knowledge with their “lay knowledge” of the environment to establish a comprehensive account of the risks posed to their collective identities and livelihoods We then outline how this knowledge was incorporated into a formidable resistance movement, one connected to both local, national, and transnational social movements Finally, we reveal how in accounting for risks, informants reflected on their own identity, constructing themselves as global food producers, central to the international supply chain, rather than simply local actors responding to local risks Our analysis of these varied responses to emergent risks demonstrates the potential for new identities and forms of political mobilization that emerge under conditions of economic and ecological precarity 10 Table 1. Themes Summary Themes Quotes Risk Unpredictability, unmanageability, uncertainty of risk If it was only one football field it probably might only have a minor impact but we’re talking about 4,620 football fields, that’s 38 km2 That’s a massive hole in the ground which will impact everything around it and that’s our aquifers (Wendy) But the whole story isn’t being told [in the Company’s proposed plan and EIS] [The impact the EIS assessed] only focused on the top one third of the resource The other twothirds of the resource is underground… that is up to 600 m deep… So where we think we’ve got a 30-year mine, this could end up a 100-year mine…So that is Russian Roulette [a potentially deadly game] this government is prepared to take (Malcolm) With the Company, it wouldn’t matter what mining company it was, and what I’ve learned since I’ve been involved with the group [CCAG] is that everything they present in their EIS… are all assumptions… Well, they [consultants] say they present themselves as independent consultants However, they are paid by the proponent [the Company] (Meghan) Looking at the activities by BHP [another mining company], farmers saw the unsure future with the company’s changing their mining plan The fight [of CCAG and farmers in general] was not against just the Company’s proposed project but also the mining culture (Don) Every person you talk to in the government all say now it was a bad decision to release the land for mining, they will admit that privately The problem they have now is that it’s that far down the track it’s very hard to undo and it’s not Labor, it’s not Liberal, it’s not National, they’re all complicit in allowing a bad decision to continue (Joe) When the EIS was first published, we had six weeks to respond So, we did individual submissions as well as we employed consultants to submissions as well And I went over to the Breeza Hall and I interviewed the locals, and I typed up their submissions for them because a lot of them didn’t know where to start… (Meghan) Transcending temporal and spatial boundaries Questioning expert definition of risks Organized irresponsibility The project’s risk representing the threat of the whole mining culture in Australia Questioning the role of the government CCAG and collective resistance to organized responsibility Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 Topics Topics Themes Quotes Cosmopolitan identity Playing a role of global food producer …the food’s going to run out elsewhere You’ve only got to look at Europe with urbanization and things like that and you look at South African countries or African countries that can’t feed themselves I think…with Asia becoming more affluent they are going to demand more of the food that we produce… So, why are we destroying what is a clean, green, productive area (Jane) We’ve seen, right round the world, how multinationals have destroyed, or are destroying, many of the nations in Africa, South America, certainly in Indonesia with the Java mud flow and that was Santos, the local company that created the biggest environmental disaster the world has ever seen We’ve seen it in New Guinea where the Ok Tedi River was destroyed and we’ve just got to take every measure to see that that doesn’t happen in Australia (Maurie) Representing the environmental movements Source: Consolidated from interviews with farmers Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen 11 Table Continued 12 Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 Reflecting on Risk in the Liverpool Plains In our discussions with farmers in the Liverpool Plains, an aptitude for incorporating various modes of expertise was clearly demonstrated Our informants drew on scientific expertise to support their claims, while their lived experience as food producers gave their accounts collective legitimacy, producing a comprehensive account of risks that were locally felt When asked about the risk of open-cut mining, Malcolm framed his understanding of various risks within his experience of agricultural production, the dispersal of scientific thought based on environmental regulation, and his cumulative expertise in sustainable food production based on decades of farming in the region He explained that two decades ago, farmers in the region had voluntarily come to an agreement with the State to reduce their water use by two-thirds to protect the groundwater in the interests of long-term environmental sustainability Farmers did this because they were well aware that if they continued to use irrigation systems to extract water from the aquifers at the rate they had been used to, the groundwater would gradually decrease and not be sustainable However, their water plan was unseated by an international company’s proposed coal mine: Now we have a new player (the Company) that could cause serious disruption to that science that says it’s sustainable at the moment… What happens when [the Company] starts blasting for that 300 m hole? No one can tell us what’s going to happen when you blast five days a week (Malcolm) The Company released an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) persuading that there would be no risk from the proposed mine However, the CCAG, an activist group of farmers opposed to the Company’s proposal suggesting no risk, hired an independent review of the EIS As the independent review revealed, the modeling used in the EIS was flawed because it did not consider the impact of the proposed project on underground water that could extend further beyond the project’s area Thus, for farmers, if the local irrigation system extracting water at 30–70 m below the ground could affect the aquifers, a massive hole of 300-m depth would definitely destroy them In normal conditions, the aquifers bear water that is replenished by rainfall However, if the proposed mine damaged the aquifers they would no longer be able to hold groundwater, and eventually be unable to provide water for crop plantation and daily consumption For Wendy, “you don’t have to be Einstein” to see such a possibly devastating impact of the proposed open-cut mining on local aquifers and food production For our informants, their understanding extended beyond their concern of risks to their own farming so as to care for the farmers in general and Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen 13 consumers of foods in the next 100 years Descriptors such as a “100 year mine,” “30 years,” and “100 years down the track” constituted their definition of seemingly incalculable, imperceptible, uninsurable risks Reflecting on a scenario where the mine goes ahead, Greg and Joe combined rational thinking with their knowledge of the environment to produce alternative visions of a ruined landscape In their opinion, the proposed mine would not just affect the aquifers, but also produce and distribute a large amount of salt onto farms through the irrigation system and eventually contaminate the soil It is evident that salty soil is not suitable for planting many crops [The mine is] going to produce 24,000 tonnes of salt on the mine site every single year and that has to just dissipate into this farming ecosystem (Greg) When the mine moves away… 100 years down the track, it’ll reach equilibrium where all those holes [that have] been filled up with rock and rubble When they fill up with water again… what comes out is going to be salty (Joe) In sum, farmers did not just rest their judgment on intuition or personal observation, they also drew on various forms of knowledge including scientific research to produce a more rational analysis of long-term risks posed by the looming mine Reflecting on Organized Irresponsibility For farmers, the Company’s assessment of risk showed the “organized irresponsibility,” where the industry players and their “scientific” consultants were not concerned about local farmers and their land Relying on their critical thinking and the hired independent review of the EIS, Malcolm was able to clearly analyze the change in the Company’s plans On behalf of the CCAG, Meghan summed up their critical assessment of the Company’s risk definitions: …everything they [the Company] present in their EIS… are all assumptions So yes, they employ consultants and make assumptions of the risk and forecasting what is likely to happen But… there is no concrete evidence of what will happen or what won’t happen There is so much unknown in regard to the ground water, which is one of the biggest risks So, they say… it’s not going to affect the ground water But they really know? Are they really presenting the facts correctly? Because at the end of the day, the consultants are paid by the mining company, so they are going to present what is going to favour them the most (Meghan) 14 Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 More importantly, for farmers, it was not just the industry sector but also the government and politicians who were “irresponsible” and “did as they pleased” when it comes to responding to the risk posed by the proposed mine … whether one is a Liberal or a Green or whatever you are, we are now of the belief that Malcolm Turnbull [Prime Minister at the time] understands what we’ve got, but we’re still very sceptical as to whether he is going to anything about it because, sadly, most people live for the here and now, they don’t live for out there That is the disturbing aspect (Carl) Noting that politicians “don’t care about what happens,” farmers questioned not just the risks but also the associated “organized irresponsibility.” The characteristics of contemporary risks, as Beck argues  (1992, 2009), are to allow people to create or be involved in producing risks and possibly escape from being responsible for the consequences From the farmers’ perspective, risk produces modes of governance that work both with and against the contemporary forces of “organized irresponsibility” and individualization proposed in Beck’s thesis (Beck 1992; also Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002) For our informants, risks, while individually mediated, were acted upon with an understanding of collective notions of responsibility In the face of risks, collective values emerged as the framework of reference for any definition of risks For instance, in response to the proposed mine, the CCAG conducted interviews with local people to gain a shared understanding of the proposed mine’s risk This effort of “typing up local people’s voice” and “how they felt” about the proposed mine not only justified the group’s representation of the affected farmers in the local area but also helped form collective identity and responsibility In farmers’ stories, it was observed that their sense of collective responsibility motivated them to speak out in order to respond to growing environmental risks (bushfires, drought), protect collective livelihoods (drinking water), and sustain community life (sport and recreation) In sum, their analysis of risk was framed in terms of the desire to sustain collective responsibilities and livelihoods Such a response was productive of a collective understanding of responsibility for acting upon perceived risks The CCAG is an illustrative example of a subpolitical movement that was created under conditions of and in direct response to the environmental and economic risk that went “outside and beyond” the formal political sphere of the nation-state and bureaucratic party politics Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen 15 (Beck  1992, 1996; Holzer and Sørensen  2003) In developing collective responses to contemporary risks, our informants were deeply embedded in a network of local, national, and transnational social movements CCAG is part of a network of grassroots social movements around Australia that are forging resistance to the divergent interests of the agriculture and resource extraction industries (Duus  2013) Among our informants, it was common to reflect on developments in the Liverpool Plains not only in terms of lived experience but also in light of broader national and international developments For example, Malcolm and Greg spoke of risks as “facts” by connecting observations of the consequences of mining on the livelihoods of farmers in different parts of the country In this way, local experiences of risk were mediated by broader events and acted upon through a localized understanding of the environment At this juncture, new forms of expertise emerged Greg and Maurie both reflected on risks by considering similar developments interstate, noting the impact mining has had on social and economic life in Queensland towns: You’ve only got to read stories about Emerald in Queensland and Chinchilla and places like that where the mines have come and gone and all of a sudden people lose their job and they can’t pay the mortgage anymore… (Greg) In reflections such as Greg’s, our informants linked their collective resistance to the Company’s proposal to a network of food producers and regional communities across the country However, the entanglement of Liverpool Plains in international markets, and the global risks posed by environmental degradation, saw informants produce understandings of local risks that were also negotiated by their immersion in an international public sphere For farmers in the Liverpool Plains, the impact of global markets—both mining and agriculture— was therefore productive of new forms of subjectivity as global food producers and activists participating in a larger social movement Our informants, for instance, Maurie in Table  1, provided many international examples of environmental sustainability being thwarted by the demands of short-term political capital and economic growth facilitated by “multinationals.” Here the “global” becomes a site of new subjectivities, risks, and critical subpolitical action For Maurie, anxieties around the rapaciousness of global capital have arrived at his farm We can see here how risk is globally experienced and locally felt The liberalization of markets has uneven effects; economic, environmental; 16 Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 local, national, and global It is also productive for new identities, as explained in the next section Global Markets, Risks, and Cosmopolitan Identities While immersion in global markets has produced new forms of risk and political action, it also creates the conditions for new forms of identity to emerge as Beck promotes a “cosmopolitan turn” or “cosmopolitan moment” (Beck  2009; Beck and Sznaider  2006) Specifically, our informants constructed their identities as global food producers, central to the international supply chain, rather than simply local actors responding to local risks In this context, new forms of identity emerge, a cosmopolitan public: So it’s a pretty big responsibility to feed the rest of the world and it’s also a big responsibility not to wreck it because there’s not a lot of farming land in the world that produces like this… it’s going to become quite an issue if we go and ruin [the] land forever, which is what we’re looking at here with the mines (Joe) Therefore, for farmers like Joe, if they allowed the proposed project to go ahead with such an “obvious” risk threatening the long-term sustainability, they failed to fulfill their identity as a protector of not just the place, but also the globe as a whole: “So as custodians of the land, which is that’s what we are, while we’re on earth We don’t have many jobs but one of them is to look after where we are” (Joe) Recognizing their global identity, farmers and their groups such as CCAG, have not only fought against the Company and its proposed project Don, as shown in Table 1, summed this up beautifully their mission that is not to fight against just the proposed project but also the whole mining culture that is destroying sustainable agriculture and the environment Situating their decade-long fight against the whole mining culture that intends to exploit local resources to gain economic advantages, farmers not just see themselves as a separate fighter outside the environmental justice movement observed in other parts of Australia and the world (White 2009) Again, farmers understood deeply that their fight was against the whole system of organized irresponsibility This is because the culture of mining industry, which “has never ever been restricted so much on licensed plan” could change their activities to serve their economical purpose, and be supported by the government who “wouldn’t have the guts to stop them” (Keith) As shown in the previous section, the liberalization of markets has had uneven economic and environmental effects However, it has also produced new identities, as farmers move from understanding themselves Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen 17 as local food producers and instead see their role as protecting against an uncertain global future Here we witness farmers’ comprehension of risks going beyond the national–territorial and present time boundaries Among our informants, it was common to speak of this uncertain future in terms of increasing and encroaching risks, producing visions of conflict and disaster Once again, these imaginaries are mediated by risks produced through the interreliance of economies and environments across territorial borders Informants saw themselves as having a global responsibility as food producers in this context: [It] is really important that we don’t damage [farmland] for the future generations because the world’s population is heading towards nine billion… That’s going to put a lot of pressure on the arable land resources around the world and it’ll get to a point where wars will be fought because people can’t be fed… In Australia we’ve got enough to eat here, but there’s other people outside that are expecting us to feed them as well And it’s going to become quite an issue if we go and ruin land forever, which is what we’re looking at here with the mines and you can see them just out the window here, where it’s going to go (Joe) It became evident how the temporal and spatial dimensions of risk quickly rebound between the local to the global From “just out the window here” to “around the world”; from “what we’re looking at here” to visions of swelling population numbers and competition for scarce resources In this risky global context, the farmers of the Liverpool Plains see themselves as globally responsible As such, the development of export markets for Australian agriculture has produced a global sensibility among our informants Informants listed various commodities, noting their various uses as they travel around the world (North Africa, Asia, and Europe) to various global markets These findings indicate that commodities take on social life as they travel around the world, reshaping social conditions in new and unexpected ways (Appadurai 1988) The various uses of agricultural products around the world were understood by farmers in terms of a deep connection with sustaining markets and people in a range of countries As Greg noted, “it’s a global food problem, not just a domestic one.” We have relayed above how for our informants, the risk was delocalized, with a global market seen as a new form of organized irresponsibility that produces a cosmopolitan subjectivity where risk, responsibility, and subpolitics were entwined These delocalized risks extend not only over space, but time, producing new identities for farmers as global food 18 Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 producers responsible for sustaining global environments, markets, and populations into the future Discussion Beck’s “risk society” thesis rests on a claim that risk now expands across time and space People are orienting their concerns toward future uncertainty which in turn affects the way they organize their social world Gow and Leahy’s  (2005) longitudinal qualitative study of residents in the Hunter Valley region found that environmental catastrophe dominated understandings of the future The dominance of risk in framing various aspects of social life corresponds with approaches to governing society that promote personal responsibility and reliance on individuals to manage and mitigate risks in their lives, often through their supposed power as consumers Such a framework is internalized as social actors navigate competing for social, economic, and ecological risks that are both the cause and response to contemporary forms of governance (Forbes-Mewett et al 2020) In this context of global risks, Beck assumes that risk has become so complex as to be inconceivable by social actors seeking to respond to changing social and political dynamics: causes and consequences are no longer measurable with any degree of reliability (Beck 2006) As such, it is nearly impossible to attribute accountability to any single entity (Beck 2009) In the Liverpool Plains, however, local farmers are developing new subjectivities and forms of critical practice to make sense of the new risks and (ir)responsibility posed by the proposal of coal mining This paper reveals how local farmers have formed their understanding of risk and responsibility associated with the proposed project using what Beck argues as the cosmopolitan “collective awareness” (Beck  2009) Situating themselves as global food producers and their resistance a part of fighting for global citizens and future generations, they actively produce a globalized biography and a “place-polygamous ways of living” as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002:25) suggest In doing so, they also try to justify their confrontation by assigning causes and consequences of environmental risks to foreign corporates, the government, and even the farmers who supported the proposed project This evidence illustrates movements that fight against environmental injustice (MartinezAlier et al. 2016; Pellow and Brehm 2013), environmental victimization, and state crime (White  2009) To their knowledge, the risks were not only associated with the Company and its proposed coal mine but also with the entire mining culture that is supported by the state and multinational industries Thus, the proposed coal mine did not only pose a threat to the economic livelihoods and regional identities of farmers Global Markets and Risk in Regional Australia—Forbes-Mewett and Nguyen 19 but was also thought to undermine their global responsibility to sustain the environment for future food production These claims suggest that farmers have engaged in what Beck calls the “cosmopolitized space of action” where they have gone beyond the nation-state to become a part of a global community (Beck 2016) As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) suggest, individualization accompanies the production and distribution of manufactured risks In this process, individuals must now live their own lives and build their own biographies That is to say, they must take responsibility for the decisions they make and thus, the risks they would face Reflecting on this, we see farmers in the Liverpool Plains actively take part in subpolitical resistance over the last decade They knew that if they did not stand up in collective solidarity and work against the irresponsibility, not only themselves but also global citizens and future generations would have to bear the consequences Seeing the risks of the proposed coal mine from the cosmopolitan perspective, farmers arrived at a definition of risk that was very much different from that of government agencies and the mining company In a proposed gold mine in a similar context in Turkey, Orhan (2006) witnessed a dispute between local people and government agencies and an international mining company What the author concluded can be said for the Liverpool Plains: “the whole struggle has also been a struggle for problem definition and competing risk perceptions of rival discourse coalitions involved in this process” (Orhan 2006:699) Not only in the arena of the mining industry, but in other sectors like food production, but definitions of risks also become the contested political sphere In China, for instance, in response to the global food risks, civil activists, farmers, food producers, policymakers, and researchers have formed civil organizations to promote food safety and connect farmers with the global market (Zhang 2018) These organizations can be regarded as a representation of the local perspective in response to the risk definition of food producers and distributors on the global market Indeed, these organizations’ visions and activities have shown a new form of cosmopolitan communities that go beyond the “geographic, socioeconomic, and political boundaries” (Zhang 2018:68) To some extent, these examples demonstrate the rise of subpolitics that emerge beneath and beyond nation-states In this context, farmers in the Liverpool Plains of course are not the only ones who actively facilitate a social movement so as to protect themselves Wherever there are different risk positions and different definitions of risk, there is a contested political sphere beyond formal politics During a decade of resisting the mining proposal, our informants combined “expert” scientific knowledge with their “lay knowledge” of 20 Rural Sociology, Vol 0, No 0, Month 2022 the environment to establish a comprehensive account of the risks posed to collective, global identities and livelihoods Despite the complexity of risk, local farmers have demonstrated the various ways in which they measure the causes and consequences of a changing economy and environment, creating new forms of expertise This includes the establishment of collective knowledge on social risks (social conflict and community polarization), economic risks (farming uncertainty, devaluing of land, and agricultural production), environmental risks (damaging underground water and black soil), and the combination of these (global food security) This presents our informants as knowledgeable actors who perceive risk beyond the conditions of local experience Releasing the weight of scientific expertise, CCAG commissioned research by a leading Australian research university on the environmental impact of the proposed mine, before translating this evidence into their collective response to risk Following Jens Zinn  (2008a), we register responses to risk that modulate between extreme rationality and extreme irrationality, rather than staying fixed at either pole In their understanding of similar risks, different informants outlined possible scenarios that ranged from the impact of water supply on the local community to visions of global conflict caused by food insecurity and environmental degradation As such, responses to risk range widely in their temporal or spatial orientation, in accordance with the Liverpool Plains’ immersion in global markets Under these complex conditions, we see uneven and contested economic and environmental effects emerge Although the empirical specification of Beck’s thesis has shown how social actors can at once perceive risk while lacking the resources to respond in any meaningful way (Gow and Leahy 2005), more recent work argues that risk can be both constraining and enabling critical practice as a way to individually and collectively manage the complexities of social life (Anderson  2019) In the context of the Liverpool Plains, our qualitative study has shown the often creative and critical ways social actors are responding to emerging forms of risk The divide between “local” and “outside” knowledge in supporting the formation of identities is becoming increasingly unclear, as global markets and environmental risks reshape how risks are perceived and acted upon Considering a looming coal mine, our informants reflect on their own identity, constructing themselves as global food producers, central to the international supply chain, rather than simply local actors responding to local risks Here we see how global markets are productive of new risks as well as altering how individual and collective identities are experienced Given the interdependence of economies