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.



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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


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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

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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


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5

“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 do 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


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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


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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


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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 1 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


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9

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.


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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 do 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

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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 1. Continued


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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 do 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)


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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 do 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;


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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 do 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


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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


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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