‘Everyday resistance’: Challenging the norms of human–nonhuman engagements through bushwalking in Tasmania

Abstract

This article explores how bushwalking in Tasmania, Australia functions as a performance of ‘everyday resistance’. ‘Everyday resistance’ refers to experiences of relationship with the nonhuman, through which individuals resist alienating and dominating forms of human–nonhuman engagements encouraged by central Western cultural narratives. The work of Tasmanian environmental activists is easily understood as ‘political’, encouraging ‘counter-narratives’ of critical forms of human–nonhuman engagement. Drawing from interviews conducted with 27 Tasmanians, this article contends that participants’ descriptions of their forest experiences reflect these same forms of counter-narrative. As such, I argue that personal experiences perform an important role as critical, resistant, and disruptive representations of human–nonhuman engagement. This radical power is easily overlooked, however, as such everyday activities lack the visibility, intelligibility, and intent of organised environmental activism. I therefore argue that forest experiences should be recognised as a performance of relational, compassionate connection with the nonhuman that is vital, dynamic, and often underestimated in its significance.

Keywords

environmentalism everyday resistance forests nonhuman Tasmania walking

In August 2019, around 200 people feigned death in the centre of Hobart, Tasmania. A ‘symbolic statement about the future of the planet’ (Mather, 2019), this collective ‘die-in’ provided a confronting image of climate change’s grim reality, with the powerfully destructive roles of capitalism, anthropocentrism, violent colonialism, and sequestration increasingly demanding our attention (Barry, 2012; Giddens, 1991; Harvey, 1996; Latour, 1993). These processes shape human–nonhuman encounters, rendering certain modes of interaction more visible and ‘rationally’ articulable. As Milton (2002: 4) argues, ‘[t]here is a strong convention in western culture that emotion is opposed to thought, or at least [impedes] rational thought’; this tendency features ‘prominently in public discourses around nature protection’, with environmentalist sympathies cast as less tangible, achievable, and of less immediate concern than economic or vocational needs. As increasingly visible movements protesting climate inaction indicate, there is growing transnational dissent towards such assumptions. However, as environmentalist movements are often inherently opposed to powerful economic and governmental interests, challenging instrumental views of the nonhuman remains a radical activity.

In this context, environmentalist groups (both small and large scale, and highly and loosely organised) operate as a form of resistance to the capitalist ‘status quo’. Organised environmental activism serves an important political function, and the structure, tactics and outcomes of contemporary environmental movements have a well-established place within sociological literature, including in the Australian context (Tranter et al., 2017; Wells, 2018). Here, however, my interest lies in acts of ‘everyday resistance’: personal experiences with/in forests that articulate and perform compassionate and critical relationships with the nonhuman.

Drawing on the bushwalking (hiking) experiences of the participants of a research study conducted in Tasmania, this article explores how these experiences echo environmentalist discourses and ideals. These experiences of human–forest engagement critique and resist processes of sequestration and domination of the nonhuman. The radical power of these experiences is easily overlooked, however, as such everyday (personal, recreational) activities lack the visibility of organised environmental activism. I therefore argue for the recognition of forest experiences as meaningful, not only as enjoyable activities at the individual level, but as a performance of relational, compassionate connection with the nonhuman that is critical of, and resistant to, dominant discourses about human–nonhuman engagements in Western societies.

Background

I work for about six different schools . . . it’s rewarding to take kids out into these environments . . . and educate them, or have them experience it themselves. It’s really important, because we need to inspire a bit of change for the next generation, because [our generation] haven’t done so well. . . . I haven’t, you know, gone and chained myself to bulldozers or anything [but it’s rewarding] taking people that couldn’t possibly get out to these areas themselves, and it makes a massive difference for them. Until people go and experience these areas themselves and actually be there, evoke all their senses and feel what it’s like – they might care about it, but they don’t have that passion. And I think after people go through these areas, they care so much more about them. (Jack)

A study participant, Jack has worked as an outdoor educator and walking guide. Here he illustrates what he sees as the significance of ‘in-forest’ experiences: a prompt for new, challenging forms of human–nonhuman engagement. He explains he has not directly protested by ‘chaining himself to bulldozers’; instead, his performance of resistance consists of encouraging others’ empathetic relationships with the forest nonhuman. This process is particularly salient in the highly politicised climate of Tasmanian forests.

In Tasmania, home of the world’s first Greens party, debates regarding resource use have long shaped the socio-political landscape (Buckman, 2008; Lester, 2007; Lester and Cottle, 2015), with the persistently turbulent clashes over the state’s forestry industry comprising ‘Australia’s longest running environmental dispute’ (Lester and Cottle, 2015: 103). Activism has long played a prominent role in Tasmanian environmental politics. I use ‘Tasmanian environmental activism’ to refer to the organised work performed by groups (or individuals associated with groups) such as The Wilderness Society (TWS), Still Wild Still Threatened (SWST), National Tarkine Coalition, Environment Tasmania, Tasmanian Conservation Trust, and the Bob Brown Foundation. This includes public rallies, forest blockades and tree-sits, on-site protests, petition writing and distribution, and public, legal, and political lobbying.

In Tasmania, protests and blockades have adopted a particularly colourful and visible character, with the ‘power of the Tasmanian environment movement . . . built on protest and protest images, on making the unseen seen’ (Lester 2011: 40). As Lester (2011) argues, the significance of organised political process lies in its ability to bring issues to others’ awareness, and environmental activism – particularly in the forms it has taken in Tasmania – is adept at bringing issues of human–nonhuman engagement to wider attention. Activism communicates (at times very personal) messages for the public sphere; activists take experiences of (radical) relationship with the nonhuman, and make these experiences seen by the many (Espinosa, 2019). Activists also employ strategies of ‘intelligibility’, discursive performances ‘realized through narrations, performances and visual representations by which activists enact ideas, communicate understandings, and elicit their own modes of analysis of relevant problems’ (Espinosa, 2019: 245). For a key Tasmanian example of this process, see Lester (2007) and McGaurr et al.’s (2015) discussions of ‘wilderness’ discourse.

Amidst this context of strong environmental activism, Jack’s comment reminds us that these strategies of visibility and intelligibility are often a public and political method of communicating the personal experiences and connections that take place between humans and nonhumans. Implicit in environmentalists’ efforts are attempts to legitimise emerging narratives about how humans can and should engage with the nonhuman world (Espinosa, 2019). As such, they are ‘counter-narratives’: messages designed and endorsed to critique and resist capitalistic, anthropocentric, and colonialist modes of human–nonhuman interaction, ‘[r]edefining the relationship between humankind and nature in a way that ensures the mutual maintenance and flourishing of both’ (Espinosa, 2019: 243; emphasis added). While this resistance is at times flawed – for example, engagement with wilderness rhetoric may contribute to the erasure of human impact on landscapes, particularly the impact of Indigenous peoples (Bayet, 1998; Gómez-Pompa and Kaus, 1998 [1992]) – there remains within the ideals, discourse, and campaigns of Tasmanian environmentalist groups a desire to challenge and change instrumental narratives of human–nonhuman engagements. This desire constitutes a ‘spirited challenge to what is possibly the most fundamental tenet of western civilisation’: the right to conceive of ethical behaviour as a matter of human–human, not human–nonhuman, relationships (Hay, 2002: 17). To endorse alternative ways of engaging with the nonhuman is therefore radical. Further, as Barry (2012) convincingly argues, it is confrontation with vulnerability – a challenge to anthropocentric and capitalistic narratives of human dominance – that makes green politics challenging for many, but incredibly vital in the contemporary climate.

My argument thus far has been that environmentalist groups perform important work as voices of critique and resistance. Building from this, my interest is in the ways that personal in-forest experiences of individual Tasmanians reflect and sustain these same counter-narratives. This is ‘everyday resistance’: experiences of empathetic and critical relationship with the nonhuman, through which individuals resist (whether explicitly or implicitly) the alienating and dominating forms of human–nonhuman engagements encouraged by central Western cultural narratives. The specific form that these counter-narratives take comprises the ‘findings’ section below.

The concept of ‘everyday resistance’ is most commonly associated with the work of Scott (1989), who argues that ‘political action’ encompasses many actions not typically understood as such. Scott (1989: 34) describes ‘paired forms of resistance’, with ‘everyday resistance’ standing as an individualised, ‘quiet’ echo of that more easily recognised as organised political actions. In this sense, I am using Scott’s work to frame participants’ experiences with forests as an ‘everyday’ form of political engagement which echoes organised environmental activism in Tasmania. Drawing from Hynes’ (2013: 570) critique of the expectation for ‘resistance to be oppositional – to be defined by an act of saying no to an existing state of affairs’, my understanding of everyday resistance downplays the significance of conflict and struggle. Further to this, I understand participants’ experiences as a form of everyday resistance that is distinctly relational. Of primary interest to me is how ‘everyday resistance’ reflects relationships between humans and nonhumans. These experiences are radical and resistant in the sense that as participants’ descriptions echo organised environmental activism, they also represent a respectful form of relationship with the nonhuman that (quietly) breaks from the status quo of human–nonhuman engagements in industrialised, colonial Australia. To this end, I am inspired by Beaman’s (2017a) work on ‘deep equality’, in which respectful relationships across difference are found in the ‘non-events’ of negotiating everyday life. This emphasises the power of quiet, personal, ‘everyday’ actions grounded in harmony, rather than conflict.

Many writers have contributed to understandings of human–nonhuman engagements that challenge and resist (but necessarily operate within) capitalistic, neoliberal, and anthropocentric social structures. These engagements can, therefore, be understood as examples of (environmental) everyday resistance. Singh’s (2013: 194) work on affective labour – performances of care through which people ‘develop affective ties with the growing plants, trees, birds, and animals wherein their capacity to affect and be affected is articulated and strengthened’ – is one example. Related to affective labour is ‘commoning’, the active practice and process of living, through acts of alternative governance, cooperation, communication, and resource sharing, within ‘a distinct community that governs [a] resource and its usage’ (Bollier, 2015: 5; Ostrom, 1990). Similarly, cases of community forest management across the globe demonstrate novel, communal, and (to varying degrees) democratic forms of natural resource management which encourage forest conservation (Charnley and Poe, 2007; Lee and Krasny, 2017). Environmental ‘citizenship’ and environmental volunteering also offer insight into novel and empathetic engagement with the nonhuman (Beaman, 2017b; Lorimer, 2010), as do studies of gardening, particularly in urban and educational settings. As Moore et al. (2015: 407–8) describe, while it is:

clear that school gardens are not a panacea for all the ills of modern education and socioecological relations . . . [gardens] have the potential to expand knowledge acquisition beyond an individualistic, atomistic, neoliberal view of nature and social relations toward one based on solidarity with and mutual care for human and nonhuman others.

Finally – while I am conscious of the potential for such claims to ‘relegate’ Indigenous peoples as ‘closer to nature’ – many writers argue that Australian Aboriginal relationships with land and country offer productive, non-Western models of human–nonhuman engagement (Bawaka Country et al., 2016; Rose, 1996).

Building from these approaches, I offer a view of bushwalking – recreational walking as a characteristically Australian activity – as an expression of resistant human–nonhuman engagement. Writers have explored walking’s non-economic benefits, including emotional and embodied experiences of place (Solnit, 2001), spiritual experiences, reflexivity, and belonging (Svarstad, 2010), and a sense of community and identity (Collins-Kreiner and Kliot, 2017). While bushwalking is not synonymous with environmental concern, there appears to be a correlation (Svarstad, 2010); for example, Collins-Kreiner and Kliot (2017) identify ‘love of environment’ as a motivational factor for hiking. In Australia, Myles Dunphy pioneered (a Western conceptualisation of) ‘bushwalking’ in the early 20th century, establishing a link between bushwalking and conservation, believing wilderness experiences to be ‘good for the mind, the soul, and the country’ (Hutton and Connors, 1999: 65).

Hughes et al. (2016: 1313) argue that bushwalking reflects a characteristically Australian ‘anti-establishment’ sentiment, and ‘a tradition of lawlessness, nationalism, and egalitarianism associated with life in Australian bush settings’. This suggests bushwalking is a natural candidate for the performance of ‘everyday resistance’. Physical journey with/in the nonhuman landscape – whether described as ‘walking’, ‘hiking’, ‘bushwalking’, or ‘tramping’ – is a situated activity, imbued with social meaning. Given Tasmania’s history of forestry conflicts, it is unsurprising that bushwalking may adopt an (at least) implicit political tone. The following sections detail how bushwalking can be understood as reflecting radical meaning within the state’s enviro-political landscape, reifying environmental consciousness through everyday human–nonhuman engagements which challenge anthropocentric and capitalistic views of Tasmanian landscapes.

Methods

Reflecting my interest in individuals’ personal, memory-driven stories, I utilised a self-selection sampling strategy (Tranter, 2013). Advertising primarily through Tasmanian environmental organisations and word-of-mouth, I distributed a call for those who ‘care about forests and forest issues’ to participate in semi-structured interviews. Interviews covered topics including opinions and feelings about Tasmania’s forestry industry, past experiences in forests, emotions associated with forests, and where and how participants usually learned about forest issues. Upon reaching a sense of ‘saturation’, the final sample comprised 27 Tasmanians. Participants’ ages and occupations varied. Four participants lived in northern Tasmania, while the remaining 23 hailed from the south of the state. I transcribed and thematically analysed each interview and, following Saldaña’s (2009) advice, manually coded the transcripts before moving the codes into electronic form. All names used are pseudonyms.

The project’s theoretical framework drew from Giddens’ (1991: 243) ‘ontological security’, commonly defined as a ‘sense of continuity and order in events’. Through this framework I explored the implication of forests in participants’ sense of trust and stability, highlighting aspects of bushwalking experiences such as emotion, ontology, vulnerability, and relationship. The thematic coding and analysis of the transcripts – and the core themes explored in this article – reflect this.

Two participants did not discuss participating in activities such as bushwalking, camping, or rafting, opting instead to focus on the political context of Tasmania’s forestry industry (rather than their own experiences). All other participants did discuss such activities, and it is from these participants that I draw my conclusions here.

Table 1, discussed later, details the characteristics of environmental counter-narratives that are shared by Tasmanian environmentalist groups and participants. The four categories of the table are those characteristics which not only feature consistently throughout Tasmanian environmental literature, news media, and activist publications, but were clearly reflected in participants’ comments. There is an important distinction between participants’ experiences of their in-forest activities, and my interpretation of these experiences. While I did not specifically ask participants if they considered their bushwalking to be ‘political’, it is notable that no participants used such language. Rather, to describe bushwalking as ‘political’ is to interpret these bushwalking experiences within a broader framework that I see performed through the meanings and emotions that participants intimated in describing their experiences, and subsequently their relationships with forests. Indeed, it is the individual nature and ‘ordinariness’ of participants’ bushwalking that both obscures everyday resistance, and gives it its radical power. I return to this point in the final sections of this article.

Table 1.

Counter-narratives of Tasmanian environmentalist groups and participants.

Counter-narrative	Examples from environmentalist groups	Examples from participants
Alternative landscape valuation (critique of instrumental use and economic valuations of the nonhuman)	The purpose of critical Tasmanian campaign sites (e.g. Lake Pedder, Franklin Dam, Camp Florentine) has been to oppose the use of the state’s natural resources for instrumental and/or economic purposes. ‘As a pile of wood chips, forests like Wielangta and the Tarkine are almost worthless. But with a proper carbon price in place, they’d be among the most valuable forests on the planet.’ (TWS, 2019)	‘[I found] a patch of Huon Pines [that had] never been touched – they were magnificent. Fantastic saw logs, if you look at it that way.… Amazing celery-top pines.… I hope, hope I did [save the site], because … they were really, really significant patches of vegetation.’ (James)
Interdependence (acknowledgement of human–nonhuman interdependence, including the life-supporting qualities of landscapes)	‘Life relies on forests like these. And so do we.… In our fight against climate change, keeping these ecosystems intact is one of the most important (and simple) things Australia can do. We can’t afford to live without them.’ (TWS, 2019) ‘Tasmania’s forests … are the lungs of our land’ (Australian Conservation Foundation, n.d.)	‘[Humans are] an organism … part of this ecosystem. So we’re just an organism that is part of that other, part of the forest.’ (Diane)
Wonder (emphasis of emotional response, particularly awe)	‘In a country of diverse landscapes, Tasmania stands a world apart. Its spectacular forests support life across the state.’ (TWS, 2019) ‘Tasmania’s World Heritage forests are priceless, irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration.’ (Environment Tasmania, 2019) ‘On several occasions [the Tasmanian activists I spoke with] would be reduced to words such as “awesome” and could not describe their experience further.’ (Cianchi, 2015: 46)	‘[It’s a feeling] of absolute awe, really. It’s awe, it’s response to majesty, response to extraordinary light that penetrates down … it’s just awe and joy and delight.’ (Ken)
Time (emphasis on long-term time scales, i.e. longer than Western colonial presence)	Environmentalists have encouraged nomenclature linking Tasmanian forests and Australian Aboriginal (pre-colonial) heritage, such as the Tarkine/takayna region in the state’s north-west. (Lester, 2007) Tasmanian environmentalists rely heavily on ‘wilderness’ discourse, invoking notions of the nonhuman ‘before’ or ‘outside’ of human (Western) intervention (TWS; Keep Tassie Wild, 2019) Similarly, the ‘ancientness’ of Tasmanian old-growth forests is often used as a justification for their conservation: ‘A living example of one of the most primitive vegetation formations on Earth. Providing a unique window into our planet’s ancient past.’ (Bob Brown Foundation, n.d.) Aims of protecting Aboriginal heritage are often associated within environmentalist goals. The Wilderness Society (TWS, 2019) state they conduct their conservationist efforts ‘with a mind for Land Justice for Tasmania’s Aboriginal people’.	‘Because old growth has taken so much longer to get to that point … I do think [logging old-growth forest is] worse [than younger trees]. I mean, if you kill a three-year-old tree, you can replant it and it’ll be like it was in three years. But if you log a 150-year-old gum … you’re never going to be able to see it there again.… I’m more sad about it if it’s old-growth.’ (Zoe)

In defining ‘Tasmanian forests’, I took my cue from participants who identified many facets (forest types, ecosystems, wilderness rhetoric, ‘Tasmanian-ness’) of what defines a forest. Forests are not merely groups of trees, and so cannot be replaced by plantations; participants understood forests as complex systems of interrelated species. Similarly, while some researchers consciously operationalise ‘hiking’ (Collins-Kreiner and Kliot, 2017; Svarstad, 2010) I have avoided doing so, reflecting the loose definitions that participants themselves seemed to utilise. While clearly defining ‘bushwalking’ would provide ‘an understanding of bushwalking as a physical activity, the meanings attributed by bushwalking participants form an important part of the experience’ (Hughes et al., 2016: 1312). Participants’ responses illustrated the significance of the affective aspects of forest experiences, and how these dimensions of bushwalking can foster pro-environmental identities and relational connections to place.

Findings

In the previous section, I outlined how the ideals of the Tasmanian environmental movement can be understood as ‘counter-narratives’. Table 1 details the specific characteristics of these counter-narratives, demonstrating how the rhetoric used by environmentalist groups is echoed by participants’ descriptions of their forest experiences. Participant quotes in Table 1 complement the following sub-sections below.

I chose the characteristics and strategies of Table 1 based on extensive reading conducted during the course of my doctoral studies, and a review of environmentalist groups’ online publications. In describing their forest experiences, participants invoked these same themes: endorsing valuations of forests beyond economic/capitalistic considerations; appreciation of human–nonhuman interdependence; associating emotional response, including wonder, with forests; and understandings of forests as symbolising long-term time spans. These categories did not guide the initial interview design, but emerged during analysis as participants’ descriptions of their experiences reflected common themes of Tasmanian environmental and activist literature and discourse.

Alternative landscape valuation

Reflecting the endurance and salience of forestry in Tasmania, most participants in some way discussed the monetary value of forests as a natural resource. Overwhelmingly, participants criticised what they perceived as unsustainable harvesting methods, and the concomitant under-valuing and under-selling of rare, high-quality timber (see Banham, 2019). While these particular conversations did not challenge the hegemonic commodification of forests, the obvious respect participants held for the unique characteristics of Tasmanian trees and timber was striking, and suggests a more nuanced valuation of forests than conventional, industrial views.

Participants often described the value of forests in non-monetary terms, criticising market systems that value Tasmanian forests and trees in an exclusively capitalistic sense. Participants identified several alternative (i.e. non-monetary) values of forests, describing them as valuable habitat for nonhuman animals, as valuable for aesthetic qualities, medicinal or health-giving potential, and rarity, and ethically as of inherent value.

I used to ask people at dinner parties. ‘Now, in your back garden . . . what if they found oil? Would you welcome that? . . . I’m sure you’d do well out of it.’ So we’d debate that. But I’d say no, I don’t want to find oil, gold, anything in my place. I want it to stay unspoilt. (Ken)

These places have a right to be because they’re there. So there’s a real moral thing around conservation for me . . . they have their own intrinsic value, and for that they should be allowed to stand . . . I don’t want to put a price on it, I don’t. . . they’re there and they should have the right to be there. (Catherine)

Participants also commonly described forests fondly for having played a significant role in the formation of their own self-identities and treasured memories. I have written about this process previously (Banham, 2017, 2018; see also Svarstad, 2010: 104). Harvey (1996: 153) roundly dismisses the utility of money as a means of valuing ecosystems, arguing that to do so reduces a landscape to a ‘Cartesian machine with replaceable parts’. Participants’ understanding of forests as complex systems – with a complex array of important qualities – reflects (and therefore resists) this view of monetary valuations, as inadequately simplistic.

Interdependence

Most participants described some form of human and nonhuman interdependence. A sense of humility was often implicit in these descriptions, alluding to negotiation of human vulnerability and interdependence through a lens of respect for the nonhuman. Participants did not downplay humanity’s ability to shape landscapes, but nor did they dismiss the nonhuman’s impact upon the human.

We need to be a bit more respectful of the environment really. I think humans – we’re arrogant.. . . We’re not just plonked here and using it, we’re actually made of it. We’re made of it. We are the environment ourselves, and we’re making a mess of it. (Don)

It’s fascinating. I just find that very humbling, to think, you know, there’s a whole lot of creatures extremely adept at living in that environment [but] I would die . . . [we] have lost that capacity to look at the forest and say, ‘I can cope in here.’ (Jane)

This can be understood as a relational response to the vulnerability of the nonhuman other, drawing from the ethics of Levinas (see Banham, 2020; Davy, 2003; Ezzy, 2004). What is intriguing in participants’ responses is that relationship with the forest other is not depicted as one-sided or domineering, but as a complex interdependency. As in Don and Jane’s comments above, the respect for this interdependence is clear in George and Catherine’s responses:

I think it’s a terrible indictment on our society that we don’t appreciate the things that we’ve got, or understand their role in our existence. And to treasure them more. We’re very anthropocentric, in everything we do . . . everything is related to everything else. (George)

It’s been there forever, and we are part of it . . . the planet is amazing, and these are the lungs of the land, they’re the lungs of the planet . . . our forests [are] habitat for all our [animals and birds] . . . it’s their homes, and they’re also intrinsically important to the wellbeing of the planet, which is also the wellbeing of us. (Catherine)

The engagement with environmentalist rhetoric here is also noteworthy. George’s comment is a clear critique of anthropocentric approaches to the nonhuman, while Catherine echoes the classic environmentalist description of forests as ‘the lungs of the earth’. This illustrates participants’ engagement with ideas critical of the status quo of human–nonhuman engagements.

Wonder

Most participants spoke about emotional dimensions of their forest experiences. While three participants explained they did not experience particularly strong emotions during their time in the forest, most participants did. Some expressed a sense of happiness or excitement felt when exploring favourite places, or described a sense of sadness or anger felt when confronted with logged or burnt forest tracts. Participants also commonly expressed awe:

You go out there and sit in the majesty of nature. . . . I try not to let emotion get into it, although one can’t not be emotional going out there, surrounded by giant trees – it’s pretty awe-inspiring. (Daniel)

[I feel] wonder. Joy. Curiosity – I mean, could argue about whether they’re emotions, but anyway. Feelings that I have – um . . . awe. (Hugh)

Echoing Hugh’s response, the concept of ‘wonder’ integrates these emotional responses of joy, fascination, and awe. Writing of being and becoming a feminist, Ahmed (2004: 179–81) highlights the transformative capacity and empowerment of wonder, arguing:

Wonder is the pre-condition of the exposure of the subject to the world: we wonder when we are moved by that which we face . . . wonder, as an affective relation to the world, is about seeing the world that one faces and is faced with ‘as if’ for the first time. . . . Wonder energises the hope of transformation, and the will for politics.

Nicholsen (2002: 17) similarly argues that ‘[w]hile awe stops us in our tracks, this is not the end of our experiencing but rather a beginning’. Wonder is the active component of a relational experience, rather than an end-point in and of itself. These emotional responses are stories of encountering the world – not just the forest, but the world of humans and nonhumans at large – in new, empowering, and humbling ways. This reflects a significant, if often implicit, aspect of environmentalists’ work: legitimising emotional response and emphasising the experience of wonder. As in the quote from Jack that opens the Background section of this article, tied with the sentiment of wonder is an assertion that people will ‘get it when they see it’, with contact with the nonhuman inducing a sense of care and protectiveness. Such transformation – seeing the world in a different way, and reacting to the nonhuman with respect, care, and reverence – is, at its core, a process of reconfiguring human–nonhuman engagements.

Time

It was extremely common for participants to contextualise long-term temporality through the age and longevity of forests and trees. Participants’ responses indicated that the materiality of forests encapsulates the distant past, as well as providing a tangible way to consider the distant future.

[Once logged, the rainforest] takes a generation to recover, you know, you’re talking – you wipe out a 400-year-old forest, 400-year-old trees – well you’re not gonna see the forest, anything like it, for another 400 years, at least. (Peter)

[Tasmanian floral species are] our Tasmanian biological heritage. Which is something so special, that perhaps a lot of people don’t think about, or they may not see it as important. But perhaps one day it becomes really important, and it’s nice that we would have it for the future. (Marie)

These places should be left alone, because in 10,000 years they could still be there. (Leon)

As shown in Table 1, the link between landscape and temporality is common in environmentalist rhetoric, invoking a sense of the nonhuman as ‘outside’ of colonial, industrial influence. This ‘temporal rhetoric’ functions to invoke a sense of that beyond the individual human, of landscapes as worthy of respect (and again, wonder) because they function as a means of framing one’s position within the ‘larger sphere which takes in but greatly exceeds the human’ (Plumwood, 2001: 28). In terms of everyday resistance, this sense of scale is significant as a (re)imagining of human–nonhuman relationships, wherein humanity is not central. As one participant, Reg, put it, ‘why should human beings assume that we are the pinnacle of creation? [Nothing] could be further from the truth.’

These findings demonstrate four key ways in which participants’ experiences with/in Tasmanian forests mirror the concerns, values, and human–nonhuman relationships commonly articulated by environmentalist groups in Tasmania: affirmation of non-economic valuations of landscape, acknowledgement of human–nonhuman interdependence, experiences of wonder, and contextualisation of vast time spans through nonhuman materiality. Common to these four processes is a sense of participants’ relationship with the forest nonhuman, generally involving empathy, fascination, care, and human–nonhuman ‘entanglement’. Participants expressed this variously:

I am passionate in my own way about forests, and nature, and biology, the world, the wonder of the world really. (Ben)

Oh, [I feel] compassion. Seeing creatures and wanting to look after things and the place. . . . Um. . . well, love, I guess. (Hugh)

I find I go to those areas for solace and for . . . a feeling of imparting of wisdom of the world, the nature. And I go there for inspiration . . . I would hate to feel isolated from all the life that goes on in our environment. All the things that we share our land with, that I love. (Marie)

I think I believe in myself, and I believe in simple things like . . . connect[ing] to . . . and protect[ing] the earth. (Lee)

As these comments demonstrate, participants’ relationships with the nonhuman – experienced through bushwalking – do not comply with straightforward narratives of sequestration and instrumentality.

Discussion

As described, environmentalist groups engage with the political sphere to realise goals of implementing substantive environmental change and protections. Individuals (such as the study’s participants) do not have this leverage, nor do they necessarily share these goals or ideals. Visibility, intelligibility, and strategy characterise the Tasmanian environmental movement, and are the very characteristics that everyday, individualised experiences do not embody (see Scott, 1989). Yet the similarities between participants’ experiences and the oft-shared ethos of environmentalist groups in Tasmania show that there is something potentially political – something critical, resistant, and disruptive – about personal experiences with/in forests. This is ‘everyday resistance’; experiences of relationship with the nonhuman that undermine the status quo of human–nonhuman engagements.

Bushwalking is not inherently positive, transformative, or enabling. Human access to forests is ambivalent; while contact with the nonhuman may facilitate the sorts of relationships described earlier, it can also reproduce narratives and actions of human domination of the nonhuman, particularly through incautious development and careless behaviour. Further, forest access and bushwalking are matters of competency and capacity. To experience such relationships with Tasmanian forests, a person must be able to competently navigate physical and metaphorical boundaries and space; they may need a Parks Pass (a paid annual pass to access Tasmania’s national parks), the correct safety gear and clothing, reliable transport, and the knowledge of where and how to access forest experiences. This matter of competency seems self-evident, but is an important and largely socio-economic factor in determining which Tasmanians are best able to engage with the state’s forests. Finally, bushwalking is a product of colonial history, popularised by middle-class men (and to a lesser extent, women) who were ‘product[s] of the age in which [they] lived’ (Hutton and Connors, 1999: 65), and remains culturally coded as a ‘masculine’ pursuit (Harper, 2015; Lugg, 2003; Wylie, 2005). In its close association with wilderness narratives (as described earlier), bushwalking can not only potentially contribute to the erasure of the (ongoing) presence of Indigenous peoples, but may also be understood as an act of accessing the very spaces of which Aboriginal Tasmanians have been dispossessed (and to this end, it is worth noting that participants were not asked whether they identified as Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander, as this was not part of the project’s recruitment protocol).

However, these limitations do not invalidate the positive experiences of those individuals for whom bushwalking is a viable, enjoyable, and respectful activity. In considering these individuals’ experiences, bushwalking can work to cultivate empathetic human–nonhuman (and human–human) relationships. Acknowledging the circumstances under which bushwalking is not a positive or transformative experience allows for a more meaningful understanding of when everyday resistance does ‘work’, by more clearly articulating the ‘ideal’ conditions under which bushwalking is recognisable as a significant, resistant act.

Several participants of this study had worked in some capacity as environmental activists, or had participated in actions such as environmental protests. However, most had not done so, or at least did not raise it as an important aspect of their engagement with Tasmanian forests. This included Zoe, who avoided participating in environmentalist campaigns due to the Tasmanian government’s implementation of punitive and unconstitutional anti-protest laws (Morton, 2018) – an acute demonstration of the institutional barriers placed between individuals and political action. In this context, participants’ experiences with/in forests can be understood as a covert form of resistance, in the sense that the ‘cloak’ of recreational activity (bushwalking) renders the experience of these types of relationship with the nonhuman as not overtly political in the same way that organised environmental protest might be. As Scott (1989: 35) highlights, everyday resistance comprises activities that can be performed with ‘relative safety’ against the interests of a more powerful party. In this sense, bushwalking – cultivating a non-anthropocentric, non-capitalistic view of the forest, walking in areas earmarked for logging, perhaps telling others of the ‘wonder’ experienced – can be understood as a ‘safe’ form protest against the state’s forestry industry.

This ‘unseen’ quality is key to the crucial role that everyday resistance can play in Western enviro-politics: that is, the ability to stand as evidence of engagements with the nonhuman that are difficult to verbalise, and that are not immediately visible within current social landscapes. As Kidner (2012: 235, original emphasis) argues:

a tree I have known all my life would be part of a context that is temporally meaningful, locating me within a world that makes sense; and the psychological impact of the destruction of such a tree may be compared to that of bereavement . . . Such embodied feelings of loss, because they do not correspond to a cognitively, legally, or economically recognised loss, are invisible to the economic system.

Put another way, emotional engagements with the nonhuman might be, as Kidner argues, invisible within capitalist systems. Recognising the resistance embodied by everyday experiences with/in forests brings such connections to the fore. While life and work in Western societies is performed within dominant structures that marginalise the nonhuman, relationships with the nonhuman remain complex and potentially disruptive. That is to say, engagement with the nonhuman is significant and not incidental, and embodies a form of resistance that has a long and well-established history.

Contemporary conversations about emotional and ontological engagement with the nonhuman tend, rightfully, to be preoccupied with the spectre of climate disruption. The emotional elements of confronting climate disruption are well documented (Head and Harada, 2017; Norgaard, 2011; Nuttall, 2010). The work of these writers indicates that an important element of engaging productively with (an unknown and frightening) future lies in possessing the performative ‘tools’ to think constructively about the future. One such tool is the cultivation and celebration of human–nonhuman connections that are radical, fulfilling, and empathetic – put simply, connections that are perceived as being worth saving.

The politics of anticipation involve the acknowledgement that certain futures are seen, valued, mobilised, and therefore realised (Groves, 2017); in confronting and mitigating myriad environmental issues, individuals must therefore first be empowered to challenge systematic oppression of the nonhuman. Various writers, particularly those working with themes of pedagogy and social justice, have proposed the idea of ‘critical hope’ – a meshing of hope and criticality that Bozalek et al. (2014: 1) describe as ‘an action-oriented response to contemporary despair’. Critical hope is not naïveté or idealism (of which, as stated above, environmentalists are often accused); critical hope is ‘distinct from a vague pervasive dream that promotes generic forms that lack substance. Critical hope is a driver for social action’ (Goldin, 2015: 27). It has been my point in this article that individual experiences with/in forests are not organised, collective, or of political intent – but the critical and resistant relationships that the participants of this study described present potentially powerful ways of imagining the future. As Catherine put it:

I feel like I have a love affair with [forests]. I couldn’t imagine . . . you know you’d do anything to make sure the forests are looked after, right . . . if our forests aren’t protected and being looked after by our community in a decade, we’re going to be . . . well, I think we will look back and go, ‘What were we doing?’ The idea of cutting down ancient forests will be a crime against humanity, I believe. In a decade people will go, ‘What were we doing?’ So the time is now to make sure that we look after them.

Macy (2009: 8) makes a similar point, arguing that: ‘Of all the dangers we face, the greatest is the deadening of our capacity to response. . . . Through our very pain for the world, we can find the vitality of our interconnectedness and the power of our solidarity.’ Experiences with/in forests, as seemingly simple and everyday as they are, have the capacity to generate relationships that foster these interconnected and radical connections with the nonhuman world.

Conclusion

This article has argued that the personal in-forest experiences of a group of Tasmanians can be understood as a form of ‘everyday resistance’. Through bushwalking, participants performed relationships with the forest nonhuman that reflect the forms of empathetic and radical human–nonhuman engagement commonly endorsed by Tasmanian environmentalist groups. While various scholars have pointed to the significance of recreational walking, bushwalking remains an undervalued aspect of the Tasmanian enviro-political landscape. Such forms of everyday resistance – challenging the capitalist and instrumental systems that have irrevocably damaged the earth – take on a new significance in the face of anthropogenic climate disruption. Simply put, humans must consider the future, but the question of how we do that with hope and empowerment remains essential.

While the Tasmanian context is central in my thinking, the patterns I describe are broadly applicable to environmental politics transnationally. The most significant aspect of participants’ experiences described in the article is that in embodying ‘everyday resistance’, bushwalking, connection with the forest other and, indeed, the forests themselves, should be accorded due recognition in shaping how human lives are lived. From one perspective, the participants’ words are simple descriptions of recreational events. However, it is how participants performed and described such events – encountering the forest in relational, respectful ways – that demonstrates how everyday behaviour is an important form of experiencing and articulating human–nonhuman relationships.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the influence of Libby Lester, whose work has encouraged me to think differently about how ideas and images flow. As always, I offer my sincere thanks to the participants of this study, for so generously donating their time and ideas.

Declaration of Conflicting Interest

The author reports no potential conflicts of interest.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

ORCID iD

Rebecca Banham

Author Biography

Rebecca Banham is a Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania, where she completed her PhD in environmental sociology in 2019. Her current work focuses on religious diversity in Australia, and sociology of (non)religion.

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