Contention

Since its inception, Contention has aimed to illuminate our understanding of activism and political behavior across a full variety of contexts and settings. By examining political behavior across multiple geographical and social sites, we can explore unique opportunities to expand the horizon of our theoretical frameworks, test the generalizability and applicability of our claims, and gain a stronger grasp of how different structural arrangements and historical trajectories might shape political action.

This introduction begins by challenging a common narrative formed in relation to Australia—that it is a “lucky country.” This “exceptionalist” view of Australia is also evidenced in national legal frameworks relating to human rights. Drawing on histories of Australian politics, it is argued that social justice stems not from luck or an exceptional legislative system, but from various forms of social contestation. Especially since the global protests of 2011, more scholars are considering the organization, impacts, and practices of social movements that occur on a global scale. Despite the evolution of globalized protest, this collection is informed by Connell's southern theory (2007), which identifies the unequal geopolitics of knowledge. The articles in this issue provide a diverse range of case studies that can inform protest practices and evidence the vitality of dissent in Australia. Activist knowledges and a quest for collaborative approaches to protest are the two elements that run throughout this issue of Contention.

In the past two decades, “Welcome to Country” and “Acknowledgment of Country” practices have become commonplace at the commencement of most public events throughout Australia, and it is highly unusual to participate in a public event where some words of acknowledgment of the traditional owners and custodians of the locale are omitted. This article traces the origins of such practices while identifying the semantic, political, and conceptual differences between them. It articulates how precolonial protocols of encounter among distinct groups and individuals inform “Welcome to Country” practices, attesting to the ontological and epistemological continuity of the latter in relation to the former. It explores recent trends in the public understanding and positioning of both “Welcome to Country” and “Acknowledgment of Country” speeches and events, contextualizing their emerging positioning within the fabric of Australian settler colonial relations, particularly in the context of contemporary discourses on Aboriginal sovereignty and the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

The struggle to save the Beeliar Wetlands, an urban remnant bushland in Perth, Western Australia, demonstrates elements of both urban social and urban environmental movements. At the end of 2016, 30 years of objection to the continuation of the Roe Highway development (Roe 8) culminated in months of intense protest leading up to a state election and a cessation of work in 2017. During the long-running campaign, protestors fought to preserve high-conservation-value bushland that was contained in the planned road reserve. At the heart of this dispute were competing spatial uses. This article will analyze four protest actions from the dispute using Henri Lefebvre's concept of the production of space, and will demonstrate that the practices of protest gave those fighting to preserve Roe 8 the agency to reinscribe meaning to the natural uses of the Beeliar Wetlands over and against the uses privileged by the state.

Signaling dissatisfaction with particular events, policies, or situations, modes of protest encompass individual expressions through to the development and mobilization of social movements. Indeed, protests can range from bodies blocking space and time to the aggregation of clicked signatures in an online petition and the sharing of campaign content through social media. All of these modes are currently employed within the Australian public sphere to bring about change or closure of the live export industry. This article analyzes the current dimensions and flows of public protest against Australia's live export industry, examining how they are shaped not only by a myriad of organizations but also by differing modes of protest, as well as by the different modes of appeal in use by activists to mobilize the Australian public sphere in protest. Through this discussion, insight is gained into some of the capacities and efficacies of multimodal protest and its significance for both public engagement and political and industry uptake.

This article brings together the ideas of protest and counterculture in a productive engagement. If protest is understood as publicly bearing witness in opposition to something, then countercultures often do this as rejections of dominant cultures that are folded into everyday life in order to create spaces for possible futures. The countercultural experiments undertaken in the region around Nimbin, Australia, are an example of such space creation. Using interviews, presentations, and archival materials collected at a 2013 community conference marking the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival, I will explore these experiments in the context of countercultural protest. The Festival not only gathered together people under the banner of the counterculture, but provided a unique space for gathering around common matters of concern to create an ongoing countercultural community. This community continues to develop practical knowledge regarding sustainable living and innovations in grassroots environmental protest.

There is often a division between scholarly publication and activist knowledge—something that Sarah Maddison and Sean Scalmer (2005) suggest may be countered by taking the knowledge produced by activists seriously. In this interview, Simon Hunt reflects on the genesis of Pauline Pantsdown, a drag persona that he developed in the late 1990s in reaction to Australian Conservative politician Pauline Hanson, who generated controversy for her racist and divisive views. The introduction briefly considers the importance of activist accounts and contextualizes Hunt's practice in relation to arts activism and networked societies. From there, Hunt discusses a range of significant considerations for activism, notably the significance of using persona as a means for activism, the affordances and challenges of using social media, and methods for activating participation in a changing media landscape.