Making Bushfire Babies
Celia Roberts, Mary Lou Rasmussen, Louisa Allen and Rebecca Williamson
Bristol University Press
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ISBN 978-1-5292-2684-3 hardcover
ISBN 978-1-5292-2685-0 paperback
ISBN 978-1-5292-2686-7 ePub
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The right of Celia Roberts, Mary Lou Rasmussen, Louisa Allen and Rebecca Williamson to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Interleave 1 1
- 1Reproducing in Climate Crisis 3
Interleave 2 27
- 2Methods in Crisis 29
Interleave 3 47
- 3Breath, Breathing and ‘Mum-Guilt’ 51
Interleave 4 75
- 4Smoke, Machines and Public Health 79
Interleave 5 111
- 5Kin, Care and Crises 115
Interleave 6 147
- 6Pyro-reproductive Futures 151
Interleave 7 177
- 7Making Bushfire Babies 181
Figures
- 1.1Looking towards Parliament House, Canberra and showing Namadgi National Park on fire 5
- 1.2‘Where is our Parliament?’ Participant photograph highlighting the severe lack of visibility and making a political statement about the absence of governmental action during the fires and in relation to climate change more broadly, taken a short distance from Parliament House, Canberra 6
- 1.3Screenshot of fires surrounding Canberra on the ‘Fires Near Me’ app 7
- 2.1Fire-ravaged bush, taken from a moving car, NSW South Coast 41
- 2.2The Namadgi National Park fire on the outskirts of Canberra 42
- 2.3Participant’s care map of their social network during the bushfires and COVID-19, drawn on a computer, names removed 43
- 2.4Participant’s hand-drawn care map, showing the differences between hoped-for and actual support 44
- 4.1ANU bushfires infographic 80
- 4.2‘Ludicrously bad’ PM 2.5 concentrations recorded by a domestic air quality monitor 98
- 4.3 and 4.4Notices in shop windows, Cobargo, one year after the fires 104
- 5.1Kangaroos in Canberra in the middle of day during the bushfires, enjoying irrigated grass 118
- 5.2Canberra Hospital cloaked in smoke 119
- 5.3View of smoke and hose from a balcony 121
- 6.1‘Have Fewer Children’ graphic from The Guardian newspaper (Carrington, 2017) 168
- Interleave 1.1
Driving towards the fires in Canberra, January 2020 2 - Interleave 2.1The view from Rebecca’s house, Canberra 28
- Interleave 3.1View from a South Coast kitchen, taken shortly before evacuation 48
- Interleave 4.1Neighbours gather to observe the fire 76
- Interleave 5.1A coastal evacuation 112
- Interleave 6.1Bush burning 700 metres from a participant’s house in rural NSW 148
- Interleave 7.1Participant’s hand-drawn care map showing how her social world was reduced during the COVID-19 lockdown 178
- Interleave 7.2Ash on the car, Canberra 178
Table
- 2.1Parental interviewees’ occupations 34
We wish to acknowledge that, though many of the figures included in this book are of a low resolution, they are integral to the authors’ content. The decision to publish these figures was made on the understanding that these are the best versions available. For those reading in digital formats, it will be possible to zoom in on any image to achieve greater clarity.
We also wish to acknowledge that the text describing some of the images included in this book refers to colours in the images, despite the images being printed in black and white in the print version of this book. The decision to retain these colour descriptions was made in order to provide greater visual clarity to readers. The images are available in full colour in the electronic version of this book; furthermore, a PDF containing all the colour images in their original form can be viewed at: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/reproduction-kin-and-climate-crisis.
Louisa Allen is Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland. She specializes in research in the areas of sexualities, reproduction, gender and schooling. These areas are examined through the lenses of queer, feminist poststructural and feminist new materialist frameworks. She is interested in the use of innovative research methodologies such as sensory methods to engage hard-to-reach populations and know the world differently. Currently she is Editor-in-Chief with Mary Lou Rasmussen of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Sexuality Education, and her latest book is entitled Breathing Life into Sexuality Education (2021, Palgrave).
Mary Lou Rasmussen is Professor in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Their research focuses on building transdisciplinary understandings of reproduction, sexuality and gender across diverse lifeworlds. Rasmussen is associate editor of the journal Sex Education. She is also Editor-in-Chief, with Louisa Allen, of the Encyclopedia of Sexuality Education (Palgrave) and has co-authored Becoming Subjects: A Study of Sexualities and Secondary Schooling (Routledge, 2006), Progressive Sexuality Education: The Conceits of Secularism (Routledge, 2016) and Faiths, Freedoms and Futures: Teenage Australians on Religion, Sexuality and Diversity (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Celia Roberts is Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. Working in feminist technoscience studies and social studies of health, biomedicine and sexuality, she is the author of several books, including Messengers of Sex: Hormones, Biomedicine Feminism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Puberty in Crisis: The Sociology of Early Sexual Development (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and, with Adrian Mackenzie and Maggie Mort, Living Data: Making Sense of Health Biosensing (Bristol University Press, 2019).
Rebecca Williamson is Research Officer in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University and a research associate at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She specializes in
ethnography and qualitative research. Her research interests and published work encompass the topics of maternal health and embodiment, spatialities of care, and migration and urban diversity. She has been involved in several projects examining the impact of the Australian bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable populations and community wellbeing.
Three of us live and work on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, Australia, and the other in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Some of the research documented here took place on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country, and some on lands of the Yuin Nation. We pay our respects to the elders of these lands, and of Australia’s First Nations more broadly, acknowledging that sovereignty was never ceded and that reconciliation is ongoing and unfinished business. This book describes the devastation of vast tracts of land and argues that this has close ties to the unlawful and violent colonization of this country. It also pays tribute to the enduring knowledges of First Nations people, particularly in relation to the significance of fire-related practices in caring for country. These knowledges are essential to our collective ongoing survival.
We would like to acknowledge the generosity of our participants who gave us their time and energy during a very difficult period. We hope they feel we have listened carefully and treated their stories with the respect and care they deserve. We learnt so much from our conversations with them.
We would also like to thank our colleagues in the Mother and Child 2020 project at the Australian National University (ANU), especially Professor Christopher Nolan, for including us in their study of the impact of bushfires on pregnant women and babies. We have benefited enormously from participating in discussions about the biomedical, psychological and maternity care elements of that research.
The research in this book was funded by a Cross-College grant provided by the Research School of the Social Sciences, ANU. We are grateful to the College of Health and Medicine, and particularly our colleagues, Professor Paul Dugdale and Professor Sotiris Vardoulakis, who agreed to be named on our bid and helped us shape our research and understand our findings.
In 2022, Celia and Mary Lou spent time at Silverwattle, a beautiful Quaker retreat centre on Lake George (Weereewa) near Canberra. We would like to thank our hosts for a peaceful and convivial time, which made the framing of the book’s themes so much easier.
