'Say no to the ATO': the cultural politics of protest against the Australian Tax Office

This paper examines taxpayers’ protests against amended assessments received from the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office), prompted by their involvement in tax effective schemes. Considering this issue through ‘social movement’ literature, and focussing on the Goldfields region of Western Australia, it aims to explore why some individuals became involved in schemes and why they later felt justified in protesting publicly against the Tax Office. It does not aim to access the ‘truth’ of claims by investors that they merely wanted to secure their financial future through legitimate investments, versus other’s claims they were knowingly practicing tax avoidance. Nor does it aim to make judgments on who is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Instead it considers the ‘stories’ that are motivating protestors’ actions now. These stories are important, as they are the moral foundations for subsequent and ongoing protests. They also help to understand the ways in which this issue has impacted individuals and communities ‘culturally’, beyond the obvious financial and legal issues. The main findings are that investors feel their personal and collective identity has been severely infringed by amended assessments. Protests are not just about money but are fundamentally moral claims over their rights and roles as ‘honest’ Australian citizens. Social movement literature helps to show how these moral claims are not experienced as separate from protestors’ financial, self-interested concerns. Rather, they are ‘read through the lens’ of culture and emotion, providing a ‘moral shock’ to investors’ identity and feelings of security. These findings have implications for governance in Australia. For one, government agencies have in recent times been keen to incorporate the language of fairness and openness into their ambits. However, being seen to then be institutionally inflexible and without a ‘human face’ when dealing with citizens – a point expressed continually by investors in this case study – can prove hugely damaging in the long term. It may be too late to re-engage these investors into a culture of voluntary compliance. However, being aware of the potential impact that administrative and legal decisions can have on citizens beyond the realms of finance could prove a first step in enabling the reflexive and responsive institutions, which citizens have come to hope for, and even expect, in contemporary Australia

Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy

Heightened concerns about long-term sustainability have of late enlivened debates around the circular economy (CE). Defined as a series of restorative and regenerative industrial systems, parallel socio-cultural transformations have arguably received less consideration to date. In response, this paper examines the contributions human geographical scholarship can make to CE debates, focusing on ‘generative spaces’ of diverse CE practices. Concepts infrequently discussed within human geography such as product service systems and ‘prosumption’ are explored, to argue that productive potential exists in bringing these ideas into conversation with ongoing human geographical research into practices, materialities, emergent political spaces and ‘everyday activism’

On the modern and the nonmodern in deliberative environmental democracy

The “deliberative turn” in green political theory and applied environmental decision-making is now well-established. However, questions remain about the applicability of its concepts and methods to non-Western or “nonmodern” contexts, to use a term from Gupte and Barlett's 2007 article in this journal that is the stimulus to this article. In such places the societal pre-conditions of modernity deemed theoretically necessary for “authentic deliberation” to occur are mostly absent. Yet, authentic deliberation does take place, prompting questions about the geographical and cultural bias of the deliberative environmental democratic project. This article takes up such questions, arguing that in deliberative theory modernity is more than a bias, which is highlighted when the nonmodern is counted in. Instead, in its noun-form modernity suggests a particular type of deliberating subject, replete with specific capacities and knowledge, which the nonmodern is, in true binary fashion, deemed to lack. This article draws on qualitative data from deliberative workshops in northern New Mexico, USA, to argue that such categorizations do not hold up to empirical or conceptual scrutiny, particularly in light of Bruno Latour's work on modernity and the Modern. Thus, this article argues that deliberative environmental democracy research should therefore be recast as an ethnographic and context-based project, and explores how such a project could be carried out

Diversifying and de-growing the circular economy: radical social transformation in a resource-scarce world

Programmes and policies for a Circular Economy (CE) are fast becoming key to regional and international plans for creating sustainable futures. Framed as a technologically driven and economically profitable vision of continued growth in a resource-scarce world, the CE has of late been taken up by the European Commission and global business leaders alike. However, within CE debates and documentation, little is said about the social and political implications of such transformative agendas. Whilst CE proponents claim their agenda is ‘radical’, this paper outlines its inability to address many deeply embedded challenges around issues of consumption and the consumer, echoing as it does the problematic (and arguably failed) agendas of sustainable consumption/lifestyles. Using the Sharing Economy as an example, we argue here that the ontological and sociological assumptions of the CE must be open to more ‘radical’ critique and reconsideration if this agenda is to deliver the profound transformations that its advocates claim are within our collective reach

Mapping individual responses to Australia climate change scenarios and the limits of social adaptation

How individuals and collectives will respond to climate change is a pivotal yet undeniably uncertain field of analysis. However, questions about the impacts of environmental change on individuals’ intentions, values and actions remain key to future adaptive trajectories across several scales. In response, this paper reports on findings from recent research that aimed to explore cultural, social, and possible behavioural responses to future climate change in Australia. The research project—called ‘Climate Change and the Public Sphere’—developed regionally modeled climate scenarios that were then used in Q-sort opinion charting; qualitative interviewing; and a deliberative event with members of the Australian public to map responses to, and chart changes under, the different climate scenarios. This paper outlines how members of the Australia public currently perceive and will potentially react to climate change, as well as how they think they and others can and will respond to its future effects. In particular, this paper outlines how different climate scenarios affect participants’ norms and principles; and suggests that limits to social adaptation do exist, creating particular barriers to implementing adaptation policies

'Small stories of closing loops': social circularity and the everyday circular economy

There is now no doubt that current global production-consumption-disposal systems are threatening the fundamental conditions of existence on this planet. In response, the pressing need for total system transformation has gained civic and political traction, feeding into long-standing debates and interventions that are aimed at recalibrating prevailing economic and social practices. One such debate and intervention is that of the circular economy (CE). Here, advocates argue that current linear resource and energy use systems must be reconfigured into loops of re-use, repair, refurbishment, and recycling, displacing primary production and lessening greenhouse gas emissions in the process. This agenda has potentially profound implications for aspects of daily social practices. Yet, to date, little attention has been paid (politically and in research) to how the CE does and will interact with everyday habits, norms, and meanings. In response, this paper explores some of the conceptual assumptions underlying the CE ‘consumer’. It argues that mainstream CE debates are underscored by an impoverished view of our relationships with complex material cultures, which in turn is creating barriers to transformation. Drawing on empirical research into responses to the CE in the UK and the Netherlands, this paper contrasts the challenges of inciting consumers to take up new, resource-efficient business models in contexts of hyper-consumerism, with a more hopeful ‘small story’ of overt, small-scale circular spaces, that nevertheless embed the CE and its underlying impetuses more clearly into the everyday

Monitoring and evaluation in UK low-carbon community groups: benefits, barriers and the politics of the local

In the UK, there now exist hundreds of low-carbon community groups (LCCGs) that aim to decrease collective resource consumption and/or generate renewable energy through diverse social and environmental interventions. These groups have in recent years become the subject of political attention and funding schemes, underpinned by beliefs that LCCGs are key to fostering resilience to climate change and meeting national-level greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. While previous research into LCCGs has focused on drivers, barriers and outcomes of LCCG action, there is now growing policy and academic interest in groups' capacities for, and uses of, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes and tools. However, little is known about the experiences, opportunities and potential challenges for LCCGs undertaking M&E. In response, this paper draws on a Knowledge Exchange project that explored M&E processes and tools with a sample of UK LCCGs. It outlines the benefits and drawbacks of groups' attempts to achieve change and to account for their outcomes and/or impacts, individually, and as part of a wider movement. It argues that, while M&E could be one way for groups to “scale up” their impact without losing their grounding in place and community, issues of capacity, resources and utility remain paramoun

Monitoring and evaluating eco-localisation: lessons from UK low carbon community groups

In the UK ‘low carbon’ community groups and partnerships (LCCGPs) have flourished in recent years, with sectors such as community energy receiving increased national policy attention. Whilst such attention aligns LCCGPs with agendas such as ‘New Localism’ and climate change mitigation, other modes of local socio-environmental change are advocated and enacted under a broad rubric of ‘eco-localisation’. Across the political and ideological spectrum however, there is growing interest in how LCCGPs understand and evaluate their impacts, with questions arising about what indicators, processes and tools are most pertinent and rigorous. In response, this paper draws on a knowledge exchange project that explored and trialled monitoring and evaluation (M&E) tools amongst a sample of UK LCCGPs in conjunction with groups and networks operating in an eco-localisation vein. Project findings highlight the positive effects that flexible and relevant M&E has on groups and networks. It also draws attention to the need for on-going support and facilitation for those undertaking M&E: vital if the burgeoning ‘impact agenda’ – whether emerging from central funders or ‘eco-localist’ networks themselves – does not over-burden or dishearten groups, thus causing the opposite effects of tools and processes meant to facilitate sustained and shared thinking, learning and action

Technologies of the self' and some Contradictions of the Enabling State: The Case of Tax Effective Schemes in Australia

The role of the state has been reshaped in recent years by substantive economic and political internationalisation processes, making it replete with inherent contradictions or tensions. The aim of this paper is to consider, if this is the case, are these tensions visible ‘on the ground’ and if so, how do they affect citizens? The story of ‘tax effective schemes’ in Australia provides a pertinent example. Here, approximately 40 000 individuals made tax-related investments in the mid-1990s, which were subsequently ruled to contravene tax law. Affected investors have responded by arguing they were trying to do as the Coalition government has increasingly requested - provision their family’s future economic security. Yet, inherent systemic tensions made carrying out this task within the bounds of the law problematic. For one the system of tax administration in Australia - here discussed through the Foucauldian concept of technology of the self’ – requires individuals to be wholly responsible for practices and knowledge over which they have little control or access. As a result, many investors who aimed to heed the self-provisioning call are now facing bankruptcy and the state response has been to call for more regulation to be introduced into the market place, thus perpetuating and intensifying the already present tensions

Systems of practice and the circular economy: transforming mobile phone product service systems

Of late, policy and research attention has increasingly focused on making the Circular Economy a reality. A key part of this agenda is the creation of Sustainable Product Service Systems (SPSS) that meet consumers’ needs whilst lessening negative environmental impacts. Although the SPSS literature has grown recently, key aspects require further examination. In response, this paper discusses empirical research exploring consumers’ reactions to a novel, hypothetical mobile phone SPSS, utilizing qualitative methods that included ‘business origami’. It examines consumers’ knowledge about current mobile phone life cycles, and responses to the proposed SPSS, drawing on a ‘systems of practice’ framework to discuss the potential for significant changes in phone purchase and use. It outlines barriers to alterations in practices, underscoring the centrality that connectivity and data storage now have in many peoples’ daily lives, which have for some become clustered around the capabilities and accessibility of the mobile phone