When anger meets joy: how emotions mobilise and sustain the anti-coal seam gas movement in regional Australia

Abstract

In many countries, the expansion of unconventional gas exploration and development has been met with grassroots resistance; the scale and depth of which has surprised even movement organisers. An often-remarked feature of the movement’s success is the teaming up of farmers and environmental organisers, historically at odds with one another on other environmental issues. This paper explores the role of emotions in building alliances, and mobilising opponents of coal seam gas (CSG) in a particular rural setting in Australia. Drawing on interviews with anti-CSG movement participants, the paper argues that emotions help to explain how the movement has mobilised and sustained alliances despite differences between movement participants. We find that while anger plays a central role in mobilising various anti-CSG actors, it is the combination of anger with joy which helps to sustain the anti-CSG movement in regional Australia. Our analysis reveals three key sites (individuals, within groups, and the public arena) where these emotions are expressed and negotiated, and emphasises the influence of the rural context in this process.

Full text

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csms20
Social Movement Studies
ISSN: 1474-2837 (Print) 1474-2829 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csms20
When anger meets joy: how emotions mobilise
and sustain the anti-coal seam gas movement in
regional Australia
Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Selen A. Ercan & Sonya Duus
To cite this article: Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Selen A. Ercan & Sonya Duus (2018) When anger
meets joy: how emotions mobilise and sustain the anti-coal seam gas movement in regional
Australia, Social Movement Studies, 17:6, 635-657, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2018.1515624
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2018.1515624
Published online: 04 Sep 2018.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 464
View Crossmark data

When anger meets joy: how emotions mobilise and sustain
the anti-coal seam gas movement in regional Australia
Hedda Ransan-Cooper
a
, Selen A. Ercan
b
and Sonya Duus
b
a
Research School for Computer Science, the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia;
b
Centre for
Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia
ABSTRACT
In many countries, the expansion of unconventional gas explora-
tion and development has been met with grassroots resistance;
the scale and depth of which has surprised even movement
organisers. An often-remarked feature of the movement’s success
is the teaming up of farmers and environmental organisers, his-
torically at odds with one another on other environmental issues.
This paper explores the role of emotions in building alliances, and
mobilising opponents of coal seam gas (CSG) in a particular rural
setting in Australia. Drawing on interviews with anti-CSG move-
ment participants, the paper argues that emotions help to explain
how the movement has mobilised and sustained alliances despite
differences between movement participants. We find that while
anger plays a central role in mobilising various anti-CSG actors, it is
the combination of anger with joy which helps to sustain the anti-
CSG movement in regional Australia. Our analysis reveals three key
sites (individuals, within groups, and the public arena) where these
emotions are expressed and negotiated, and emphasises the influ-
ence of the rural context in this process.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 28 July 2017
Accepted 21 August 2018
KEYWORDS
Conflict; emotions; fracking;
movement; rural;
unconventional gas
In many countries, the expansion of unconventional gas exploration and development
has been met with grassroots resistance, the scale and depth of which has even surprised
movement organisers (Organ, 2014). This is particularly noteworthy given recent
research revealing that the mobilisation of groups against energy infrastructure is
neither inevitable nor easily explained by prevailing social movement theories
(Wright & Boudet, 2012). In Australia, the anti-coal seam gas (CSG) movement
is composed of urban and rural people from across the political spectrum, united by
common concerns about the impacts of CSG on land, water and affected communities.
Specific concerns cut across social, environmental and economic issues. They range
from impacts on water, health risks, community cohesion, justice for Indigenous
people, to broader concerns around decision-making and government collusion with
industry, energy supply, and global climate change (Arashiro, 2017; Measham, Fleming,
& Schandl, 2016).
CONTACT Hedda Ransan-Cooper hedda.ransan-cooper@anu.edu.au Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES
2018, VOL. 17, NO. 6, 635–657
https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2018.1515624
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

The emotional content of the debate over CSG development is one of its most
striking features. This is despite industry and government attempts to frame the issue
as simply a matter of managing technical risks (Boyd, 2013). Concerns are often
expressed with fear, anger, frustration and outrage. At face value, it is unsurprising
that the number of real and perceived risks from CSG development, alongside the
prospect of transformed rural landscapes and communities, might incite complex and
deeply emotional responses (Devine-Wright, 2009; Gross, 2007). Emotional responses
are not unique to opponents of CSG. Proposed CSG developments also spark strong
support from those excited by the prospect of increased employment opportunities,
especially in regions with aging populations and a lack of employment opportunities for
younger people (Brown, 2014).
This paper builds on the growing body of literature on emotions and social move-
ments showing how emotions intersect with mobilisation, de-mobilisation (across
individual and collective scales), and the development of intra-movement solidarities
(Ahmed et al., 2016; Bosco, 2006; Clough, 2012; Flam, 2015; Rodgers, 2010; Woods,
Anderson, Guilbert, & Watkin, 2012). These studies offer useful insights for under-
standing the relationship between emotions and movement dynamics in a wide range of
areas including environmental controversies that surround energy (Askland, 2017; Cass
& Walker, 2009; Ey, Sherval, & Hodge, 2017; Lai, Lyons, Kyle, & Kreuter, 2017),
forestry (Buijs & Lawrence, 2013), and environmental risk (Jacobson, 2016). In this
context, the ‘emotions ladder’developed by Woods et al. (2012) provides a particularly
useful metaphor to understand how different emotions become prominent as protest
movements proceed over time. Woods et al. rightly suggest that apart from the
particular issues that trigger protest activity (in their case the issue of hunting in
rural Britain), the existing, or ‘background’emotions (see also, Jasper, 2011) such as
those related to care for place, usually scale up to anger about a perceived threat and
can easily escalate further to feelings of frustration. Yet, Woods et al.’s analysis remains
silent of the particularities of rural contexts in shaping the contours of emotional
enrolment, especially in relation to movement dynamics –a theme we seek to explore
in some detail in our analysis.
To understand how different emotions interact with each other, how the rural
context influences this interaction, and the way people mobilise against large scale
energy projects, we focus on the anti-CSG movement opposing the Narrabri Gas
Proposal (NGP) –a controversial CSG project proposed in north-west New South
Wales (NSW) in Australia. We analyse this case by employing an ‘affective practices
approach’, which is particularly well suited to draw out the dynamic and contextual
features of emotions in social movements. The affective practices approach captures the
idea that emotions are typically repetitive and familiar, but are also very context specific
(Wetherell, 2012)and not immediately knowable or communicable (Wetherell, 2013).
We argue that examining the dynamics of how affect bubbles up at different scales,
from movement participants, to in-group dynamics, and finally to public expression,
can help us understand ‘surprising’or unexpectedly intense emotional responses to
CSG and, in this case, the birth of a grassroots anti-coal seam gas movement. In other
words, rather than trying to ascertain or pin down particular emotions found in the
Narrabri anti-CSG movement, we explore how emotions, while rooted in historical
636 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

ways of ‘doing’emotion, also are shaped through individual and collective experiences
in the rural context.
Our analysis reveals that core aspects of rural identity and everyday affective experi-
ences have a profound effect on the capacity of people to collectively mobilise and
respond to an external threat, such as CSG development. There is a strong social
imperative for people in small rural communities to get along with each other and to
constructively negotiate disagreements (Alexander, 2015). This affects the way negative
emotions such as anger or frustration are expressed in a small community context and
as part of the anti-CSG movement. In our case, we find that while anger is the central
emotion fuelling the anti-CSG movement in and around Narrabri, how people ‘do
anger’in a rural context is key to understanding how movement participants come
together and negotiate their differences. The small rural community context also
enables movement participants to combine anger with the joy of ‘doing community’
together. Our analysis shows that while negative emotions (such as anger, fear, and
distress at the idea of CSG development) play a crucial role in the formation of the anti-
CSG movement, it is the combination of negative emotions with positive ones (such as
joy of social connection and the love of place) which helps to sustain this movement
and the alliances built in and around Narrabri.
The paper begins with a conceptual discussion about the role of emotions in social
movements to foreground the practice-based approach we take. We then provide a
background to our case study in the context of the broader anti-CSG movement in
Australia, as well as an outline of our research methods. We discuss how emotions
enliven mobilisation and solidarity building in our case study by focusing on the
different roles they play in individuals, within groups, and the public sphere. Finally,
we reflect on the empirical and conceptual implications of these findings for existing
and future research on emotions in social movements.
Emotions in social movements: the affective practices approach
Social movements are rich in emotion. Emotions such as anger, fear, and shame play a
central role in the formation of social movements, the recruitment of potential mem-
bers, and in the interaction of movements with their targets (Della Porta & Giugni,
2013). They can help or hinder mobilisation efforts and affect the success or failure of
social movements. As such, the emotional dimension of social movements has long
been the focus of theoretical and empirical research (for an overview see Jasper, 2011;
Ruiz-Junco, 2013). Generally, the theoretical underpinnings of much of the research on
emotion can be found in cultural approaches to emotion, which understand it as an
embodied evaluative response to the environment (some refer specifically to the
cognitive appraisal approach e.g. Jasper, 2014). Although some researchers have
begun toying with cultural theories of affect (e.g. Papacharissi, 2016), the requirement
of explaining the workings of social movements has meant that researchers have
typically turned to more empirically-grounded theories from sociology. In this sense,
the task has been about ‘bringing in’emotion to existing concepts such as framing and
collective identity, as exemplified in Arlie Hochschild’s concept of emotional labour
(Hochschild, 1983) or Yang’s(2000) work on ‘emotional achievement’as a motivator
for movement participation. These studies have provided valuable insights into how
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 637

emotions can be managed, channelled or harnessed in a way that contributes to the
success of social movements (Ruiz-Junco, 2013).
There now seems to be increasing interest in analysing emotion as a force in its own
right in everyday movement work –not just as adding interesting psycho-social texture
to prevailing concepts. For instance, authors such as Clough (2012) and Gould (2009)
see emotion as adding another structural ‘layer’onto social analysis of movements –
Gould for instance uses the concept of emotional ‘habitus’. These are promising
conceptual avenues, helping us to see emotion as important on its own terms. The
dynamism evident in both Clough (2012) and Gould’s research prompts us to question,
as Wetherell does (Wetherell, 2012,2015), whether concepts such as Pierre Bourdieu’s
‘habitus’and Raymond William’s‘structures of feeling’are adequate for revealing the
role emotion plays in the creation and workings of social movements.
1
The dynamism
of emotion in movements has been noted by many authors (e.g. Jasper, 2014), which
raises the empirical question of how can one study something that is so mobile, yet
clearly also patterned.
In her fascinating analysis of the mobilisations against government neglect of HIV-
Aids victims in the United States in the 1980s, Gould (2012) shows how the emotions
associated with loss and shame were transformed into pride and anger. Her analysis
reveals three conceptual points that underscore the dynamism of emotion. First, emo-
tions are non-static: whether privately felt or generated in a collective, they can change
due to a momentous event or in relation to the engagements of everyday life. Second,
they are combinatory: emotions come bundled together –despair can coexist not only
with feelings of grief and sadness, but also with an activating anger. How despair
combines with or gets tethered to other feeling states, affects its political potential.
Third, the way emotions work is indeterminate: the same feeling may lead to a range of
effects.
In this paper, we argue that Wetherell’s(2012)‘affective practices’approach is a
productive avenue for studying the dynamic nature of emotion in social movement
research. There is much that is similar with prevailing approaches –for Wetherell,
emotions are relational and embodied. Yet what is distinctive about Wetherell’s
approach is an insistence on both how emotions are interpreted and expressed (their
meaning making) along with their physical manifestation (e.g. breaking out in sweat,
before you perhaps fully realise you are nervous). Wetherell argues that we understand
our own sense of ‘nervousness’and what has caused it, at the same time as we ‘feel’that
emotion in our bodies (of course this interpretation can change over time as the person
reflects or discusses the emotional response with others). From this perspective, phy-
sical, symbolic and relational elements come together and produce emotions. As
Wetherell (2015, p. 86) notes ‘body/brain landscapes, meaning making, feeling,
communication, and social action entangle and become figured together in emotion
episodes. The affective and the discursive intertwine’.
In everyday life, affective practices are typically repetitive and familiar, but as in any
social practice they are also flexible and can change with novel social experiences
(see also Reckwitz, 2002). As such, affective practices are a sketch, rather than a recipe
or rulebook. An over-reliance on the idea of feeling rules, has the drawback of not quite
being able to capture the mobile, context specificity, and flexible patterning character-
istic of emotion in action.
2
638 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

In empirical application, we can distinguish between affective practices –ways of
‘doing’emotion, such as ‘being enthusiastic’, which help us explore the experiences of
emotion in everyday life (Wetherell, 2012)–and affective discourses which involve an
articulation, mobilisation, and organisation of affect and discourse which imply the way
things ‘should’be, and are typically used in the public sphere as a rhetorical device
(Wetherell, McCreanor, McConville, Moewaka Barnes, & Le Grice, 2015, p. 57). It is
important to make this distinction because in a social movements context, we are
interested in everyday emotional experiences (affective practices), and how these
become mobilised in the context of building and sustaining a social project (in our
case study, stopping CSG). Affective practices capture the idea that people express
emotions in particular ways that are familiar, but that also intersect with individual
experience and the particularity of context (and hence, emotions are not a robotic
repetition of past behaviour).
In our study, the affective practice approach helps us to identify the role of the rural
context in shaping emotions and their expression. We examine how affective practices
are involved in mobilisation and in the development of alliances between different
groups. At the same time, we are also interested in how emotions are enrolled to
convince others. That is, how the development of affective discourses may shape how
the movement feels about itself and how these feelings help sustain the momentum of
the movement.
Affective discourses involve articulating relationships of proximity and distance, and
inclusion and exclusion that constitute an emotional frame, in our case for the politics
surrounding the proposed CSG development. They often imply positions and reper-
toires which naturalise some emotions over others; ‘typically, an agent or a circum-
stance to blame becomes marked out, often combined with innocence and passivity on
the part of the disappointed and aggrieved who thus become not actors but reactors’
(our emphasis) (Wetherell et al., 2015, p. 58). Our analysis not only emphasises those
affective practices that are distinctly rural, or those that participants articulate in
relation to their involvement in the anti-CSG movement, but also how these practices
‘spatialize, demarcate and place communities and social groups’(Wetherell et al., 2015,
p. 60). The relationship between social power and affect is dynamic and, for social
movement research, this is of particular relevance. As in Clough’s(2012) empirical
work, affective practices are embedded in the enterprise of social change, but must also
respond to external (and internal) threats and challenges. As such we will explore how
affective discourses are fundamental to the experiences of doing activism, building
alliances, and positioning anti-CSG actors in relation to actors outside the movement.
Background: the anti-CSG movement in Narrabri and beyond
Our paper focuses on the movement opposing the Narrabri Gas Project (NGP), a
proposed coal seam gas project south of the town of Narrabri, 500km north-west of
Sydney. The proponent of the Narrabri Gas Project (NGP), the energy corporation
Santos, proposes to develop 850 gas wells across a project area of approximately 1,000
square kilometres. The majority of the project area occurs within the Pilliga State
Forest, with the remainder on privately owned agricultural land. The project area for
the proposed CSG development falls entirely within in the boundaries of Narrabri
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 639

Shire, with a population of around 14,000 people across 13,000km
2
. Agriculture is the
dominant sector in the region which includes a variety of crops, most famously cotton,
and grazing enterprises (Narrabri Shire Council, n.d.). Concerns about potential nega-
tive impacts from the NGP strongly align with complaints against CSG in other parts of
Australia and around the world –including issues around water, agriculture, human
health, socio-economic impacts, community well-being, property rights, procedural
justice, governance and regulation, the natural environment and climate change
(Arashiro, 2017; Labouchardiere, Goater, & Beeton, 2014; Lloyd, Luke, & Boyd, 2013;
Measham et al., 2016; Taylor, Sandy, & Raphael, 2013). Risks to underground water are
particularly emphasised in the Narrabri region, given the local agricultural industry’s
reliance on ground water and the proximity of the Great Artesian Basin (De Rijke,
Munro, & Zurita, 2016; also see Hendriks, Duus, & Ercan, 2016). Our case study has
also revealed emotional distress as a significant impact of CSG development –a
dimension that has been observed in other research on extractive industries, whereby
individuals and communities can suffer from changes to familiar and cherished land-
scapes, interruptions to their sense of place, and pressures from local socio-economic
changes (Askew & Askland, 2016; Askland, 2017; Connor, Albrecht, Higginbotham,
Freeman, & Smith, 2004; Everingham, Devenin, & Collins, 2015; Ey et al., 2017;
Hossain et al., 2013; Lai et al., 2017; Sherval & Hardiman, 2014).
Community opposition to the NGP began to emerge from around 2009 and rapidly
gained momentum. Spills and other incidents in the early stages of local CSG explora-
tion coalesced with circulating ‘horror stories’about CSG production in Queensland’s
new gas fields, galvanising concern (Askew & Askland, 2016). By August 2010, there
was sufficient community agitation about the potential combined impacts of coal and
CSG on surface and ground water in the Narrabri region to prompt the NSW govern-
ment to commission a comprehensive water impact study.
3
In the following months,
the Lock the Gate Alliance was officially formed, bringing environmentalists, farmers
and other concerned individuals into coalition in their joint fight against the CSG
industry (see Colvin, Witt, & Lacey, 2015). Facebook and other social media sites
quickly developed into an essential communicative backbone of the burgeoning anti-
CSG movement, helping to mobilise and facilitate contact between diverse and geo-
graphically dispersed individuals and communities (Hendriks et al., 2016).
The diversity of individuals and groups opposed to the NGP echoes a pattern in the
anti-CSG movement more broadly. Concerned citizens from across the political spec-
trum are finding common ground; significant tensions that have at times existed
between farmers, environmentalists and Aboriginal people over resource extraction,
environmental management and land tenure (Lockie, 2000; McCarthy, 2017; Ritter,
2014; Vincent & Neale, 2016), in at least some respects, are being transcended to create
alliances of ‘strange bedfellows’
4
against the common enemy of CSG production. The
large number of concerns bundled around CSG might help to explain the number and
diversity of detractors. Research has also shown that apparent disparity within anti-CSG
coalitions belies consistent and compatible personal values of those involved (Colvin
et al., 2015).
Local opposition to the NGP is largely comprised of farmers in the Narrabri region,
but also includes some residents of Narrabri and surrounding towns. Farmers con-
cerned about the construction of a gas pipeline on black soil plains were among the first
640 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

to oppose CSG in the region. More recently, People for the Plains, a grassroots
organisation concerned about the proposed project, has been a central farming-oriented
community opposition group based around Narrabri. Members of Coonabarabran
Residents Against Gas (CRAG), a group based in a town over 100km south of
Narrabri, includes a number of people who have a longer history with environmental
activism in the region and who are generally more accustomed to ‘direct action’
interventions. There are local ‘loops’of Knitting Nannas Against Gas (KNAG),
5
as
well as individuals who do not associate with particular groups, but who have played
pivotal roles in organising bush camps in the Pilliga Forest and activities such as the
‘Pilliga Push’–a rolling summer of activism in 2015–16. There are a number of local
Aboriginal people who have been actively involved in the opposition to CSG
(see Norman, 2014), and there has been an effort across the other opposition groups
to create space for Indigenous voices.
6
Larger state- and nation-wide organisations,
such as The Wilderness Society and Lock the Gate Alliance, have also played a role in
the north-west. In early 2012, an umbrella group was formed –the North West Alliance
–in an effort to coordinate strategies among the member groups.
As with Australian anti-CSG networks more generally, the historical tensions
between many of the constituent member groups of the anti-CSG movement in the
Narrabri region are significant. The rapid development of the cotton industry in the
region from the late 1950s brought conflict over water and chemical use, and later
genetic modification (Askew & Askland, 2016); the earlier colonial history saw an often
aggressive taking over of Aboriginal land, with long-lasting consequences for
Indigenous people (see Norman, 2014). In such a potentially fraught and emotion-
ally-charged context, a focus on the role of emotions in mobilising and building
solidarity is particularly fitting, although to date this has not been examined.
Methods
Our analysis is part of a larger research project examining the conflict around the
Narrabri Gas Project drawing on over 45 semi-structured interviews and extensive
qualitative data collected over three separate fieldtrips to the Narrabri region between
November 2015 and June 2017. To identify the role of emotions in building and
sustaining the anti-CSG movement in the region, we particularly focus on a subset of
12 semi-structured interviews with the key actors who have been active in the anti-CSG
movement around Narrabri. Our purpose here is not to make generalisations based on
these interviews but rather generate context specific insights about the role of emotions
in the anti-CSG movement from the perspective of the actors involved in this move-
ment. In other words, our analysis does not seek to exhaustively explain the broad
spread of experiences of CSG activism, rather it seeks to understand the context specific
factors at play (as suggested by Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006).
Semi-structured interviews offer a powerful way to understand these factors and the
emotions at play when individuals engage with social movements. Participants are
encouraged to share rich biographical information, providing an opportunity to under-
stand how emotionally infused experiences, relationships, and events relate to political
engagement. Our interviews focused on participants’engagement in the CSG debate,
their concerns, and perspectives on the nature of the debate over time. Members of our
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 641

research team have also engaged in participant observation through attending a large
anti-CSG event in Narrabri in November 2015, and sitting down with participants
during a highway protest in June 2016.
Much has been written about the methodological difficulties in seeking to under-
stand the emotions of others, particularly in a cultural context in which emotions are
understood as private and as juxtaposed with reason (Wettergren, 2015). Yet, emotion
pervades narrative, and emotions are narrative in their character (Kleres, 2011;
Wettergren, 2015). As such, in listening to the recorded interviews, we paid particular
attention to how emotions were embedded in stories of movement participation and
characterisation. When participants explicitly discussed emotions (for instance when
describing feeling ‘burnt out’,or‘angry’), we analysed how these emotions were
discussed and what they meant to participants. When emotions were directly expressed,
we paid attention to how they were expressed and what this meant to participants and
to the broader anti-CSG movement (see Katriel, 2015 for a similar focus). Importantly,
our analysis drew on a broader understanding of emotional content than just what was
directly discussed or expressed. We also considered the tone of voice, narrative struc-
ture, and use of metaphor to understand where and how emotions surfaced in relation
to the emotions of the anti-CSG movement. In what follows, we focus on the key
findings emerging from our analysis of emotions as affective practices in the context of
the anti-CSG movement formed around the controversial Narrabri Gas Project.
Findings: sites of and for emotions in the anti-CSG movement
Actors involved in the anti-CSG movement have developed a range of affective reper-
toires by drawing on a combination of identities, social ties, and organisational forms
that constitute everyday social life (Tilly, 2006). As argued by Wright and Boudet
(2012), these everyday experiences of actors make up the context which has historically
been missing from explanations of mobilisation against large energy projects. We argue
that these experiences, and in particular the affective dimensions of these experiences,
are core to explaining the emergence and dynamics of the anti-CSG movement in
Narrabri.
Our analysis reveals three different sites in which emotions as affective practices play
a crucial role. These include: i) the site of ‘the self’, where emotions are entangled in
individual’s experiences of mobilisation; ii) in-group and between-groups sites, where
emotions are embedded in alliance building and where they help to sustain movement
participation; and iii) public sites, where emotions help in claim making and persuading
others. The distinctions between these three sites are blurred, but in what follows we
distinguish them for analytical purposes.
The site of the self: the role of emotions in individuals' experiences of
mobilisation
We start with the self as a site of affective discursive activity. It is through the embodied
experience of being an activist that the role of affect in anti-CSG activism is revealed.
For instance, emotions can drive activist involvement, be expressed as doubt about
risking participation in certain ‘actions’, and be experienced as the ‘rollercoaster’of an
642 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

activist life that must be managed –in private and with trusted others. As one might
expect, during interviews there was a tendency for participants to focus on the sub-
stance of their concerns rather than dwell for long on emotions. Similarly, while
participants occasionally expressed overt emotions, often emotional content was
implied through descriptions of how they became involved and the issues that most
concerned them, as well as through the simple evidence of their long-term commitment
and engagement. This points to an important dimension of the role of emotions in the
anti-NGP campaign. The depth of emotion is often hinted at, rather than openly
reflected, as it might be in other movements that have more expressive affective
practices in their repertoires. Emotional reflexivity –and having spaces to express
difficult emotions associated with activism –appears to be a key element in maintaining
movements and managing burn out (Brown & Pickerill, 2009; Gould, 2012). As
discussed below, emotional reflexivity does not appear to be a core part of the
Narrabri movement’s repertoire of affective practices, although the potential negative
implications of this (in terms of burn out) is mitigated by collective action (such as
participating in community events).
Our findings resonate with that of Woods et al. (2012), who describe how people
express a range of emotions in the face of CSG development: from love of place
(expressed in the use of phrases such as ‘this is a special place’); to anger, fear, and
distress at the idea of CSG development and its associated risks; to feelings of betrayal
and frustration at the sense of disrespect from authority figures. Most of our partici-
pants were new to activism and so did not have an established repertoire of activist
affect to draw on, or the emotional resilience developed through long-lasting campaigns
(explored e.g. in Rodgers, 2010). In their articulation of anger, we see bewilderment, a
note of outrage, and a sense of surprise about the government and the CSG industry’s
willingness and power to override their sense of justice, civil rights, and democracy. As
one participant said:
... “I really want to be here [in this region and community], how dare you threaten us,
we’ve just settled here.”I don’t want to have this threat of CSG over our heads. And then I
just started to become more –just wanted to learn more about it and then the more I
learnt the scarier that I was like, “Oh my gosh, this can’t be true”.
7
Again as intimated in the emotions ladder developed by Woods et al. (2012), we can see
in participants’stories how anger/fear is escalated to frustration against authority
figures. This can then lead to active involvement in even the more extreme tactics
associated with activism –tactics, outside of their usual experiences such as locking
their bodies on to gas infrastructure or machinery (‘locking on’). The anger and
indignation stems from a sense of being profoundly disrespected by authority figures
and a sense that the risks and impacts associated with CSG, especially to water, are
unacceptably high.
8
In one participant’s view, independence and not wanting ‘to be impeded by others all
that much’, is a distinctly rural characteristic, particularly among farmers.
9
This senti-
ment can perhaps be understood in terms of the relative isolation of rural areas
accentuating the value of autonomy and resourcefulness. Feeling intruded upon is
then particularly confronting to prevailing rural identities, leading to an acute sense
of frustration and anger.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 643

As others have argued, the identity shift required by a person moving from being
relatively apolitical to taking direct action requires not just a cognitive liberation, but
also an emotional liberation. Anger plays a specific role in emotional liberation, and
results in the cutting of ties with prevailing systems of power and authority (Flam, 2015,
further elaborated by Benski & Langman, 2013). Our findings suggest that anger is
often fuelled by a perceived lack of respect and engagement by authority figures. As one
respondent said ‘It’s a highly emotive debate and it’s emotive because nobody’s bloody
well listening to us.’
10
What is interesting here too is that ‘direct action’tactics represent
a particular repertoire of contention usually associated (in this region) with environ-
mental activists in anti-logging protests. Participants’willingness to engage in direct
action, as well as activist work in general, is noteworthy given many movement
participants described themselves as being time poor, and the fact that historically
farmers have generally not engaged in radical forms of protest. It is worth noting that it
was not only non-local activists that brought these tactics to the case study region; anti-
logging and anti-mining activity was already occurring in the region, so familiarity with
direct action amongst a minority of locals in the movement is likely to have facilitated
the adoption of this repertoire for those new to activism.
For many local people involved in anti-CSG activism in our case study, the novelty
and excitement associated with experiences of direct action often lay in tension with a
desire not to be out of step with the broader community. Discomfort with being at odds
with the broader local community was a common theme implied in many participant
comments. This was also commonly expressed as a reluctance to become engaged in
confrontational encounters with those in their community they knew disagreed with
them.
Certainly, ambivalence and reluctance also characterised many participants’discus-
sion about their involvement in anti-CSG activities, with one person noting that they
had moved to the country explicitly for a ‘quiet retirement’
11
; another noting ‘I’m
branded an activist –and that brand carries a person who doesn’t want to wear it’.
12
This reluctance stemmed in part from the emotional energy and time burden required
to be activists.
Participants generally did not express explicit pride in being an anti-CSG activist per se –
instead, people expressed joy and pride when their efforts were recognised across mainstream
media outlets, or by prominent commentators. In other words, there was a strong desire to
normalise anti-CSG sentiment, and for many participants –especially those new to being
politically active –a feeling of frustration that it was not already more mainstream. A few of
our participants did mention a sense of empowerment from learning new skills related to
campaign management and communicating with the media. Moreover, while fewer partici-
pants described enjoying activism for its own sake, for one retiree and migrant, involvement in
activism (beginning with other environmental issues prior to the CSG controversy) was a way
to express her connection to place:
For me [involvement in the debate is] doing community as well as attention to place, but a
lot of that is actually ‘doing community’, that’s what I call it. Just being involved is part, as
a way of belonging in place.
13
For this participant and several others, it appears that involvement in groups such as
Knitting Nannas Against Gas (KNAG) provided a sense of connection and belonging to
644 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

community that might otherwise be quite difficult when not actively involved in the
workforce. This experience also highlights that emotions around CSG activism mean
different things depending on life stage and the potential effects of CSG on one’s life
and livelihood. Those who were more actively reliant on groundwater for farming
talked less about the benefits of connection to community and more about the risks
of CSG. One participant referred to a farmer she knew:
She said “I have nightmares, I have nightmares. They’re drilling through the Great
Artesian Basin”. It just absolutely absorbs her completely.
14
While individuals’anger against industry and government –actively fostered on
Facebook sites (e.g. People for the Plains Facebook Group) –helped maintain involve-
ment in the movement, the negative impact it had on individuals’lives also played a
dampening effect. Several participants referred to feeling drained, tired, and stressed by
the work and the ongoing uncertainty associated with whether or not the development
would go ahead. At least two of our participants had decided to opt out of the activist
work and described being ‘burnt out’by its intensity. One participant expressed a
stronger and more serious concern that the emotional toll could quite conceivably lead
to suicide,
15
a possibility fresh in people’s minds following the recent suicide of
prominent anti-CSG activist George Bender. George Bender’s suicide had become a
highly public discussion point in the national controversy over CSG, played out on
national television, in press statements and news articles, and with a later Federal Senate
Inquiry being named in his honour (Drapalski, 2015; Lock the Gate Alliance, 2015;
Roche, 2015; Willacy, 2015).
While it is a theme that would require further research, participants’reluctance to
elaborate on the emotional toll from activist work seems consistent with research that
identifies stigma being attached to the expression of vulnerable emotions in rural
communities. This then presents the possibility that without more explicit attention
to emotional distress caused by CSG, the rates of burn out and/or depression could
increase and present a force for the de-mobilisation of the movement. A different,
perhaps parallel scenario is that for some, anger continues to be scaled or ‘ramped up’.
One participant elaborated this:
[Local farmers opposing CSG] might become a bit like French farmers, eventually, and
become a little bit less inclined to be polite. The first response [from Australian farmers] is
always: be polite. That is the difficulty of getting up a political campaign. . . You can’t just
go out and slag
16
people. But I don’t know if that politeness will last. If they get the go-
ahead here and they start wanting to create a gas field.
17
The anger and distress experienced by anti-CSG participants is often offset by the
excitement and sense of empowerment they feel when their efforts are recognised by
the mainstream media or prominent people, or when they try new tactics, and in the
moment of collective action. Yet allusions to burn out and to the negative toll on
people’s lives, often expressed almost as an aside, hints at the cost of ongoing activist
work with its associated ups and downs and uncertainties.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 645

In-group and between group sites: the role of emotions in alliance-building
Our analysis shows that emotions play a particularly important role within the anti-
CSG movement, shaping the very emergence of the movement. It is also where we see
the possibilities for aspects of rural sensibilities being re-made; where for instance what
it is to be a woman, Indigenous (or for that matter an Indigenous woman) have begun
to take on a new meaning as the movement has provided opportunities for these groups
to take on the responsibility of coordinating and enacting protest actions.
Significantly, it is the ‘politeness’–and the emotional labour this entails –that rural
people expect of each other which plays such an important role in the building of
movement solidarity:
. .. an important way of operating in the country is you don’t upset people, because it’s part
of a survival mentality. You might actually want that person that you’ve completely
annoyed at some point, it’s how you live. It’s part of living in a civil way.
18
Avoiding confrontation, and by implication the outward expression of emotion, was
referred to several times in terms of activist tactics. It was also mentioned in relation to
the workings of a widely perceived important umbrella group for the movement, the
North West Alliance (NWA). Early meetings of NWA were overall characterised by
goodwill, but some participants described individual ‘loose cannons’who were fru-
strated with the content or pace of the discussions and who subsequently left the
meeting. These same people would ultimately return to meetings, which points to the
active emotional management required to continue participating in the movement. In
relation to developing more tolerance and ‘managing oneself’one participant noted,
‘the more we met, the more we went on, the more we evolved skills to kind of keep that
stuff’.
19
Another stressed the work that they have done in their group to foster restraint
and ethical conduct among group members:
We’ve spent a lot of time saying "you cannot disrespect people in the community",
particularly other individuals in our community. We all have to live together after this. .
.. We’ve made really strong rules in our group that you don’t name people and you don’t
disrespect people and you don’t drag them through the mud.
20
Another participant
21
emphasised the importance of not being ‘elitist’in campaign
work –contrasting local grassroots anti-CSG engagement with other approaches to
anti-coal campaigning in the area that sought direct influence with politicians. This
points to ongoing learning and reflection, not just on the tactics of mobilisation, but on
the importance of relationships of trust and solidarity with a broad section of the
community. We would argue here too, that the values around mutual respect pursued
by the local anti-CSG movement have provided an opportunity for women and
Indigenous groups to express themselves politically in a safe and respectful space.
The dominance of women in the movement has been noted by participants themselves
(both female and male), although there is a variety of interpretations of the cause of
this.
In small communities such as the one in our case study, robust relationships between
campaigners that involve trust and care are perhaps even more important than in larger
urban centres. Unlike the professional organisers we spoke with, local anti-CSG cam-
paigners cannot easily take a break from the constancy of concern about the future
646 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

impacts of CSG on their livelihoods and communities, or from the implications of a
hypothetical break down in community relations, a point that the organisers made and
understood well. In that sense, trusting each other, sharing the joys of campaign wins,
as well as the connection over the lived experience of activism is critically important.
One organiser emphasised this point at length:
. .. Because we recognise that relationships are the most important thing that we have in all
of this. We don’t have the money and the resources and the government support, we just
have one another and we have our social networks and we have the collective intelligence
and networks of all the people that we work with, so maintaining good relationships is
number one.
22
In our case study, affective practices associated with cultivating good relationships have
a distinctly local, rural character centring on values of hospitality, loyalty and generos-
ity. Examples include a morning tea with scones at a campaign meeting held on
Mother’s Day, local restaurants staying open late to cater for visitor activists (‘like’
groups), and the presence of children and a festive atmosphere at a highway protest.
The expression of emotions such as joy and a sense of connection, such as through a
shared meal, opens up spaces of solidarity (Sziarto & Leitner, 2010). In all these
examples, we see that alongside more confrontational tactics like protests and locking
on, there is a lot of emphasis on caring for other campaigners and for creating spaces to
build, maintain and strengthen relationships. One example was weekly Knitting Nanna
meetings at a local cafe for people to ‘do’activist work that is in keeping with a peaceful
and non-confrontational repertoire of contention, and a creative way of combining
anger with joy (Ercan, 2017; Ercan & Hendriks, 2018). These affective practices are key
for sustaining the movement, as they offer a way of mitigating burn out mentioned
above.
There was evidence in our case study that people actively foster affective practices
involving mutual respect and trust among different local action groups, which include
farmers and non-farmers. Members of Coonabarabran Residents Against Gas (CRAG)
would attend actions organised by People for the Plains in a support capacity, while
being mindful not to steal the thunder of the organising group by tweeting breaking
news about the event. In another example, a couple who considered themselves long-
standing environmental activists deliberately held back from emphasising the issue of
climate change in early meetings as they were unsure that fellow (farmer) participants
would share their views on the issue. These interviewees described their delight in later
meetings when several farmers raised the links between CSG and climate change on
their own terms, demonstrating, to them, the value of the emotional management
associated with being patient and non-confrontational.
23
Afinal example is the involvement of local Indigenous people in the movement
against the NGP. This is no small achievement in light of a history of colonialism and a
context imbued with mutual suspicion and segregation. One organiser believed humour
deployed by Indigenous participants, as well as Indigenous art and performance has
played a role in facilitating an ongoing ‘conversation’between non-Indigenous and
Indigenous locals (see also, Chazan, 2016). That ceremony and dance is being accepted
as part of the repertoires of contention is perhaps indicative of a mutual respect
emerging out of the process of mobilising against CSG (see Figure 1).
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 647

Challenges associated with maintaining positive relationships cannot be underesti-
mated, particularly in alliances where there are internal power imbalances between
participants that tend to undermine solidarity (Flam, 2015). References to minor
conflicts on Facebook by participants within the anti-CSG movement point to some
of the risks to relationships, especially when people are ‘feeling up against a wall, and
tired and strung-out’.
24
People can take on the attitude of a ‘keyboard warrior’and
through this, risk alienating fellow campaigners. Learning from this, there have been
conscious attempts to have strategic face to face conversations and phone calls, so to
leave Facebook as a space for publicising events, sharing news and expressing solidarity
(Hendriks et al., 2016).
The expression of emotions in public arenas
In general, anti-CSG campaigners must tread carefully in the use of emotions and
associated affective discourses in the public arena. CSG is overwhelmingly framed as a
technical question by both industry and government, excluding non-technical issues
such as place attachment in decisions of whether development should go ahead or not.
Proponents of CSG have frequently characterised arguments against the industry as
emotional, usually as a means of discrediting their merit (Miskelly & Daniel, 2017). This
has forced CSG opponents to become more self-conscious about how they use emotion
in their public arguments, and to temper their own experiences of emotionality with
peer reviewed science. A key response has been to display different emotions to
different audiences (see also, Flam, 2015, p. 267), all the while projecting a position
of being ‘reasonable’. For instance, one participant stressed that ‘all we can do as a
group is make sure whatever we communicate is well-informed and factual and
moderate and respectful’.
25
Burden of proof standards can be relaxed when displaying emotions on social media
to a group that may be more sympathetic; a higher degree of overt emotional
Figure 1. Gomeroi Dancers at an anti-CSG event (screenshot from Pearce, 2014).
648 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

expression, including anger and expressions of solidarity, can be found online com-
pared to traditional print media. Emotions pitched to sympathetic audiences are
different to the more neutral emotions that are likely to be displayed in formal
proceedings, or the hostile emotions that may emerge in direct action protests.
Indeed, social media has been critical for building and maintaining networks of
supporters and for coordinating offline action. This is especially important in a rural
context where people are scattered across a large area. Research has previously found
around 20 Facebook sites that are wholly or significantly focussed on opposing the NGP
(Hendriks et al., 2016), and numerous participants have stressed the important of both
Facebook and Twitter in the campaign.
All this being said, activists argue that to resonate with a broader public, they have
had to appeal in emotional as well as rational terms. Partly in response to the fraught
role of emotions in the public arena, anti-CSG actors have tended to draw on affective
discourses that universalise concerns rather than stress the private fears and anxieties of
local residents, such as those related to love of landscapes and attachment to the ‘feel’of
their communities and towns. Here then we see the strategic deployment of emotions
(Juris, 2008). In emotional claims to outside audiences, there is typically a focus on
‘future generations’and a sense of sacredness associated with water and food produc-
tion, thus appealing to emotions that an audience can accept/emote. The claimants
embedded in affective discourses typically portray farmers and rural people as pitted
against rich, powerful and profit-motivated multinational players supported by morally
corrupt government players. One tactic deployed as part of this affective discourse was a
series of surveys conducted by local anti-CSG groups. The surveys consisted of door
knocking across entire sub-regions and asking people whether they would prefer their
regions to remain ‘gasfield free’. The results were then publicised in major events such
as the ‘Big Picture’–in which signs were displayed showing proportions of opposition
to CSG in particular communities (see Figure 2). The moral emotions appealed to here
was a sense of fairness and justice in the context of decision making and a local
democratic sensibility.
The movement has also drawn on important affective discourse associated with the
role of farmers in Australian culture. We see this in the dominance of affective
discourses associated with farmers’concerns (e.g. ‘farms not gas’) over themes such
as climate justice, or even land sovereignty. The symbolic power of farming in
Australian culture enables another affective discourse prevalent in our respondents –
adefiance and determination reflected in their strong claims such as ‘we’re not going
anywhere’.
The primacy of locals’emotions in the affective discursive repertoires appears to be
an important feature of the anti-CSG movement as a whole, with one respondent
stating:
I think there’s beauty in diversity and seemingly dis-organisation. I don’t think it is one
thing for everyone. Trying to put us in a box together would probably lead to conflict that
didn’t get us anywhere. I get very inspired by the diverse range of groups all over Australia
that are connected loosely but really driving their own agenda and putting their own local
vision forward. . . it’sdefinitely a movement of some description, and it’sdefinitely having
an influence. And definitely being driven by locals in each of their regions and I think
that’s maybe the strength of it in a way.
26
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 649

While the anti-CSG camp is most often criticised for its emotionality by others in the
public arena (see for example Energy Resources Information Centre, 2016; Wonhas,
2014), there is often failure by these same actors to recognise the passionate affective
discourses employed by pro-CSG actors who focus on the importance of jobs in a
context of an ageing regional population, where young people leave and do not return
(Connell & McManus, 2016; Hogan & Young, 2013; Measham & Fleming, 2014).
Indeed, it is striking that both affective discourses emphasise what is at stake is the
very viability of regional areas, suggestive of a deep anxiety felt by many people in
regional areas on this issue.
From the perspective of movement participants, the playing out of the local CSG
debate on the state and national stage is a win for the movement because it shows it is
more than just locals who ‘care’about CSG. Movement participants have realised that
technical models of risks are not going to win over the public; if the debate remains on
those terms, they are likely to lose.
27
It is by appealing to moral emotions around
farming, that movement participants can justify the radical and ‘uncivil’activities such
as locking on, framing this as a last desperate act in the face of an unresponsive
government.
Conclusion
This paper has revealed that the mobilisation against CSG can be better understood
by including a consideration of the role of emotion. Using affective practices as our
conceptual lens, we defined emotion as an embodied way of making sense of
experiences. We have explored how the distinctly ‘rural’affective practices and social
context have shaped the opportunities taken by, and limitations placed on,
Figure 2. ‘Gasfield free’declaration percentages, at Narrabri ‘Big Picture’event November 2015.
Photo supplied by author.
650 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

movement participants. We find that that large-scale energy projects, such as the
proposed CSG project in Narrabri, mobilise a rich range of emotions: from love of
place; to anger, fear and distress at the idea of CSG development and its associated
risks; to feelings of betrayal and frustration at the sense of disrespect from authority
figures.
Our analysis reveals two crucial insights regarding the dynamic and combinatory
role of the rich variety of emotions in the context of the anti-CSG movement. First, it
shows that while anger is the central emotion fuelling the anti-CSG movement in and
around Narrabri, how people ‘do anger’in a rural context is key to understanding how
movement participants come together and negotiate their ideological differences.
Interpersonal interactions in a rural context tend to be characterised not just by civility
but by hospitality, loyalty and inclusivity. Participation in community events and
holding back from confrontational interactions are key to building solidarity across
difference. The need for flexible affective discourses around ‘doing’anger that can
incorporate a range of new activist skills and strategies also points to the the importance
of establishing and maintaining relationships with others who can share their knowl-
edge and experience. It also shows that the CSG movement is remaking aspects of local
culture, in the sense that it is providing more avenues of expression for women and
Indigenous groups (though these of course are constrained by other affective discourses
that may in other contexts exclude these groups). At the same time, a tendency to gloss
over emotional impacts of activism, and to withdraw in the face of ‘burn out’, indicates
that opening up spaces to explore emotions in a reflexive manner could reduce the
demobilising effects of negative emotions.
Second, our analysis suggests that the actors involved in the anti-CSG movement do
not only carry the negative emotions of anger and frustration. While anger seems to be
the central sentiment mobilising many anti-CSG actors, it is the combination of anger
with the joy of social connection which helps to in sustain anti-CSG movement in
regional Australia. There was not a commonly expressed explicit pride in being an anti-
CSG activist per se, but the movement participants expressed joy in coming together,
‘doing community’and employing a wide range of creative protest activities, such as
those performed by the Knitting Nannas Against Gas. These activities also offered a
space for movement actors to withdraw in the face of ‘burn out’and served to open up
spaces to explore emotions in a reflexive manner that could reduce the demobilising
effects of emotions. Our findings confirm the ‘moral battery’argument suggested by
Jasper (2011), who notes that just as a battery works through the tension between its
positive and negative poles, a combination of a negative and a positive emotion can
operate as the ‘moral battery’of a social movement driving action forward.
Our research also highlights the way in which rural identities can shape the expres-
sion of emotion in very district ways, and in ways that are distinct from urban actors.
This is an important finding that future research will need to be attentive to. More
broadly, our study affirms the efforts of social movement scholars who emphasise the
combinatory, flexible and unexpected nature of how emotions animate social move-
ments. Framing affect as patterned, yet flexible, frees us to consider how emotional
experience and expression for movement participants has been not just relational, but
also dynamic and creative. If we are not only looking at ‘rules’or ‘patterns’, but also at
how actors feel about the issues at stake, we can better understand how movement
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 651

actors can go from being relatively politically disengaged, to participating actively in
direct actions and protests.
Finally, we also argue that examining emotions simultaneously at different sites (in our
case, individual, ingroup, and public sites), and over time, is important for disentangling its
different effects on mobilisation and alliance building. Of course, this sort of methodolo-
gical approach could potentially be modified and extended across time, and to different
places and issues.
Notes
1. Gould draws on the sociological concept of habitus to explain the patterning of how
people ‘do’
emotion in a manner which is largely unconscious. Habitus refers to a set of embodied
dispositions but must also be understood within broader Bourdieuian social theory in
terms of how it intersects with capital, and field (for further conceptual elaboration, see
Grenfell, 2008). ‘Structures of feeling’is an idea developed by Raymond Williams (1961)to
characterise a whole society or group of societies during a particular period in history. It
refers to a sense of what guides people’s behaviour and culture, beyond official discourses
in particular periods of time, such as the feeling of risk anxiety in modern capitalist
societies (Hoggett & Thompson, 2012).
2. A note about the terminology of ‘emotion’and ‘affect’in empirical analysis: ‘affect’is
generally used to describe generic feeling experiences, whereas ‘emotion’describes more
specific reactions.
3. The Namoi Water Study (Schlumberger Water Services, 2012).
4. Phrase taken from (Colvin et al., 2015).
5. This group was formed in June 2012 when a small group of women from the Northern
Rivers area of New South Wales –self-described as ‘nannas’–formed to protest against
proposed coal seam gas development. KNAG protests CSG development by gathering and
knitting in public spaces.
6. Interviewees #21 and #22, 24.11.15; #39, 17.3.17.
7. Interviewee #19, 24.11.15.
8. Interviewees #23, 25.11.15 and #33, 25.11.15.
9. Interviewee #12, 24.11.15.
10. Interviewee #5, 22.11.15.
11. Interviewee #18, 24.11.15.
12. Interviewee #5, 22.11.15.
13. Interviewee #16, 24.11.15.
14. Interviewee #15, 24.11.15.
15. Interviewee # 5, 22.11.15.
16. ‘To slag’is a common Australian term meaning to denigrate or criticise someone.
17. Interviewee #12, 24.11.15.
18. Interviewee #12, 24.11.15.
19. Interviewee #16, 24.11.15.
20. Interviewee #33, 25.6.16.
21. Interviewee #23, 25.11.15.
22. Interviewee #39, 17.3.17.
23. Interviewees #21 and #22, 21.11.15.
24. Interviewee #39, 17.3.17.
25. Interviewee #33, 25.6.16.
26. Interviewee #38, 17.3.17.
27. Interviewee #38, 17.3.17.
652 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the research participants for their time and generous responses. We would
also like to thank John Dryzek, Carolyn Hendriks, Jensen Sass and Helen Sullivan for their
insightful comments and suggestions on the previous versions of this paper. We are also grateful
to Australian Research Council for providing financial support for the research presented in this
paper (Grant no DP150103615, 'Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A
Deliberative Systems'.)
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [Discovery Project Grant
DP150103615 - Realising Democracy Amid Communicative Plenty: A Deliberative Systems
Approach].
Notes on contributors
Hedda Ransan-Cooper was a research fellow the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global
Governance, University of Canberra for the research conducted in this paper. She is now a
contract research fellow at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Australian
National University working on the sociological dimensions of a transition to renewable energy.
Her research interests include the human dimensions of global environmental change in the
areas of energy change and human migration.
Selen A. Ercan is an Associate Professor of Politics at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and
Global Governance/Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra. Her
research interests include deliberative democracy, identity politics, social movements, alternative
forms of political participation, and interpretive political research.
Sonya Duus is a research fellow the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance,
University of Canberra. Her research interests include the interrelationships between human and
environmental systems, particularly in the context of current dilemmas such as land degradation,
biodiversity loss, and global climate change. .
ORCID
Hedda Ransan-Cooper http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9053-0229
Selen A. Ercan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3649-2882
Sonya Duus http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9556-2449
References
Ahmed, S., Jaidka, K., & Cho, J. (2016). Tweeting India’s Nirbhaya protest: A study of emotional
dynamics in an online social movement. Social Movement Studies,16(4), 1–19.
Alexander, D. (2015). It’s not what you know it’s how you know: Political connectedness and
political engagement at the local level. Journal of Sociology,51(4), 827–842.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 653

Arashiro, Z. (2017). Mining, social contestation and the reclaiming of voice in Australia’s
democracy. Social Identities,23(6), 661–673.
Askew, M., & Askland, H. H. (2016). Local attitudes to changing land use - Narrabri Shire.
Newcastle, N.S.W: The University of Newcastle.
Askland, H. (2017). Displaced in place: Disrupted trails and lost directions. Presented at the
Society for Applied Anthropology 77th Annual Meeting: Trails, Traditions and New Directions,
Santa Fe, NM.
Benski, T., & Langman, L. (2013). The effects of affects: The place of emotions in the mobiliza-
tions of 2011. Current Sociology,61(4), 525–540.
Bosco, F. J. (2006). The Madres de Plaza de Mayo and three decades of human rights’activism:
Embeddedness, emotions, and social movements. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers,96(2), 342–365.
Boyd, B. (2013). Postcolonial times: Lock the gate or pull down the fences? Coolabah,12,1–31.
Brown, E. (2014, December 2). Coal seam gas supporters want “silent majority”heard on
Narrabri Gas Project [ABC Rural]. from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-02/narrabri-
locals-say-yes-2-gas/5934372
Brown, G., & Pickerill, J. (2009). Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Space and
Society,2(1), 24–35.
Buijs, A., & Lawrence, A. (2013). Emotional conflicts in rational forestry: Towards a research
agenda for understanding emotions in environmental conflicts. Forest Policy and Economics,
33, 104–111.
Cass, N., & Walker, G. (2009). Emotion and rationality: The characterisation and evaluation of
opposition to renewable energy projects. Emotion, Space and Society,2(1), 62–69.
Chazan, M. (2016). Settler solidarities as praxis: Understanding “granny activism”beyond the
highly-visible. Social Movement Studies,15(5), 457–470.
Clough, N. L. (2012). Emotion at the center of radical politics: On the affective structures of
rebellion and control. Antipode,44(5), 1667–1686.
Colvin, R. M., Witt, G. B., & Lacey, J. (2015). Strange bedfellows or an aligning of values?:
Exploration of stakeholder values in an alliance of concerned citizens against coal seam gas
mining. Land Use Policy,42, 392–399.
Connell, J., & McManus, P. (2016). Rural revival?: Place marketing, tree change and regional
migration in Australia. London:Routledge.
Connor, L., Albrecht, G., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., & Smith, W. (2004). Environmental
change and human health in Upper Hunter communities of New South Wales, Australia.
EcoHealth,1, SU47–SU58.
de Rijke, K., Munro, P., & Zurita, M. D. L. M. (2016). The Great Artesian Basin: A contested
resource environment of subterranean water and coal seam gas in Australia. Society & Natural
Resources,29(6), 696–710.
della Porta, D., & Giugni, M. (2013). Emotions in movements. In D. della Porta & D. Rucht
(Eds.), Meeting democracy: Power and deliberation in global justice movements (pp. 123–152).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Devine-Wright, P. (2009). Rethinking NIMBYism: The role of place attachment and place
identity in explaining place-protective action. Journal of Community & Applied Social
Psychology,19(6), 426–441.
Drapalski, M. (2015, October 26). Q&A: Family of farmer George Bender question panel on
CSG. The Australian. Sydney.
Energy Resources Information Centre. (2016, April 3). [Blog] Lazarus focussing on emotion not
facts in 'Bender Inquiry'. Retrieved July 11, 2017, from http://www.energyresourceinformation
centre.org.au/conversation/lazarus-focussing-emotion-not-facts-bender-inquiry/
Ercan, S. A. (2017). Sisters in yarn: The rise and rise of small p politics [BroadAgenda]. 50/50 by
2030 Foundation, Retrieved July 31, 2018 from http://www.broadagenda.com.au/home/sisters-
in-yarn/last
654 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

Ercan, S. A., & Hendriks, C. M. (2018) Performing protests in public deliberation: A dramatur-
gical analysis of knitting nannas. Paper presented at the 25
th
World Congress of International
Political Science Association, 2125 July 2018, Brisbane.
Everingham, J.-A., Devenin, V., & Collins, N. (2015). “The beast doesn’t stop”: The resource
boom and changes in the social space of the Darling Downs. Rural Society,24(1), 42–64.
Ey, M., Sherval, M., & Hodge, P. (2017). Value, identity and place: Unearthing the emotional
geographies of the extractive sector. Australian Geographer,48(2), 153–168.
Flam, H. (2015). Micromobilization and emotions. In D. della Porta & M. Diani (Eds.), The
Oxford Handbook of Social Movements. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gould, D. B. (2009). Moving politics: Emotions and ACT UP’sfight against aids. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Gould, D. B. (2012). Political despair. In S. Thompson & P. Hoggett (Eds.), Politics and the
emotions: The affective turn in contemporary political studies. New York: Continuum.
Grenfell, M. (2008). Pierre Bourdieu: Key concepts. Durham, U.K.: Acumen.
Gross, C. (2007). Community perspectives of wind energy in Australia: The application of a
justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance. Energy Policy,35(5),
2727–2736.
Guest, G., Bunce, A., & Johnson, L. (2006). How many interviews are enough?: An experiment
with data saturation and variability. Field Methods,18,1.
Hendriks, C. M., Duus, S., & Ercan, S. A. (2016). Performing politics on social media: The
dramaturgy of an environmental controversy on Facebook. Environmental Politics,25(6),
1102–1125.
Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley:
University Of California Press.
Hogan, A., & Young, M. (2013). Visioning a future for rural and regional Australia. Cambridge
Journal of Regions, Economy and Society,6(2), 319–330.
Hoggett, P., & Thompson, S. (2012). Introduction. In P. Hoggett & S. Thompson (Eds.), Politics
and the emotions: The affective turn in contemporary political studies. New York: Continuum.
Hossain, D., Gorman, D., Chapelle, B., Mann, W., Saal, R., & Penton, G. (2013). Impact of the
mining industry on the mental health of landholders and rural communities in southwest
Queensland. Australasian Psychiatry,21(1), 32–37.
Jacobson, G. (2016). The sociology of emotions in a contested environmental illness case: How
gender and the sense of community contribute to conflict. Environmental Sociology,2(3), 238–
253.
Jasper, J. M. (2011). Emotions and social movements: Twenty years of theory and research.
Annual Review of Sociology,37(1), 285–303.
Jasper, J. M. (2014). Constructing indignation: Anger dynamics in protest movements. Emotion
Review,6(3), 208–213.
Juris, J. S. (2008). Performing politics: Image, embodiment, and affective solidarity during anti-
corporate globalization protests. Ethnography,9(1), 61–97.
Katriel, T. (2015). Exploring emotion discourse. In H. Flam & J. Kleres (Eds.), Methods of
exploring emotions. London: Routledge.
Kleres, J. (2011). Emotions and narrative analysis: A methodological approach. Journal for the
Theory of Social Behaviour,41(2), 182–202.
Labouchardiere, R. A., Goater, S., & Beeton, R. J. S. (2014). Integrating stakeholder perceptions of
environmental risk into conventional management frameworks: Coal seam gas development
in Queensland. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management,21(4), 359–377.
Lai, P.-H., Lyons, K. D., Kyle, G. T., & Kreuter, U. P. (2017). Coping with change in rural
landscapes: The psychological stress of rural residents experiencing unconventional gas devel-
opments. Land Use Policy,67, 487–497.
Lloyd, D., Luke, H., & Boyd, W. (2013). Community perspectives of natural resource extraction:
Coal-seam gas mining and social identity in Eastern Australia. In Coolabah, 10, 144–164.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 655

Lock the Gate Alliance. (2015). [Media release] Vale Queensland farmer George Bender [Lock
The Gate Alliance]. Retrieved from http://www.lockthegate.org.au/vale_queensland_farmer_
george_bender
Lockie, S. (2000). Crisis and conflict: Shifting discourses of rural and regional Australia. In B.
Pritchard & P. McManus (Eds.), Land of discontent: The dynamics of change in rural and
regional Australia (pp. 14–32). Sydney: UNSW Press.
McCarthy, M. (2017, May 22). Conservationists accuse farmers of bulldozing one million
hectares of trees [ABC Rural]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2017-05-22/
tree-clearing-debate-re-emerges-in-queensland/8547116
Measham, T. G., & Fleming, D. A. (2014). Impacts of unconventional gas development on rural
community decline. Journal of Rural Studies,36, 376–385.
Measham, T. G., Fleming, D. A., & Schandl, H. (2016). A conceptual model of the socioeconomic
impacts of unconventional fossil fuel extraction. Global Environmental Change,36, 101–110.
Miskelly, G., & Daniel, S. (2017, April 6). Controversial Pilliga gas project provokes debate over
NSW energy future [ABC News]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-06/
nsw-csg-project-sparks-fierce-debate-over-energy-future/8418102
Narrabri Shire Council. (n.d.). Narrabri shire economic profile. Retrieved from http://www.
narrabri.nsw.gov.au/files/uploaded/file/Economic%20Development/Narrabri_Shire_
Economic_Profile.pdf
Norman, B. (2014, January 31). Australia courting danger with the great barrier reef. Retrieved
March 13, 2014, from http://theconversation.com/australia-courting-danger-with-the-great-
barrier-reef-20411
Organ, M. (2014, May 28). New tactics see coal seam gas protests gain the upper hand [The
Conversation]. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/new-tactics-see-coal-seam-gas-pro
tests-gain-the-upper-hand-26645
Papacharissi, Z. (2016). Affective publics and structures of storytelling: Sentiment, events and
mediality. Information, Communication & Society,19(3), 307–324.
Pearce, M. (2014). Aunty Maureen and Jane’s Pilliga Forest. Retrieved from https://www.you
tube.com/watch?v=aFFlt0mQF8s
Reckwitz, A. (2002). Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing.
European Journal of Social Theory,5(2), 243–263.
Ritter, D. (2014). Black and green revisited: Understanding the relationship between Indigenous
and environmental political formations. Land, Rights, Laws: Issues of Native Title,6,2.
Roche, M. (2015, October 27). QLD resources council releases public statement on George
Bender [Queensland Country Life]. Retrieved from http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.
au/story/3450719/qld-resources-council-releases-public-statement-on-george-bender/
Rodgers, K. (2010). ‘Anger is why we’re all here’: Mobilizing and managing emotions in a
professional activist organization. Social Movement Studies,9(3), 273–291.
Ruiz-Junco, N. (2013). Feeling social movements: Theoretical contributions to social movement
research on emotions. Sociology Compass,7(1), 45–54.
Schlumberger Water Services. (2012). Namoi catchment water study. Commissioned by the New
South Wales Government. Perth, Australia.
Sherval, M., & Hardiman, K. (2014). Competing perceptions of the rural idyll: Responses to
threats from coal seam gas development in Gloucester, NSW, Australia. Australian
Geographer,45(2), 185–203.
Sziarto, K. M., & Leitner, H. (2010). Immigrants riding for justice: Space-time and emotions in
the construction of a counterpublic. Political Geography,29(7), 381–391.
Taylor, M., Sandy, N., & Raphael, B. (2013). Background paper on community concerns in relation
to coal seam gas. Sydney: University of Western Sydney.
Tilly, C. (2006). Regimes and Repertoires. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Vincent, E., & Neale, T. (Eds..). (2016). Unstable relations: Indigenous people and environment-
alism in contemporary Australia. Perth: UWA Publishing. from https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/
products/unstable-relations-indigenous-people-and-environmentalism-in-contemporary-
australia
656 H. RANSAN-COOPER ET AL.

Wetherell, M. (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding. London: Sage
Wetherell, M. (2013). Affect and discourse –what’s the problem?: From affect as excess to
affective/discursive practice. Subjectivity,6(4), 349–368.
Wetherell, M. (2015). Tears, bubbles and disappointment—new approaches for the analysis of
affective-discursive practices: A commentary on “researching the psychosocial.”.Qualitative
Research in Psychology,12(1), 83–90.
Wetherell, M., McCreanor, T., McConville, A., Moewaka Barnes, H., & le Grice, J. (2015).
Settling space and covering the nation: Some conceptual considerations in analysing affect
and discourse. Emotion, Space and Society,16,56–64.
Wettergren, Å. (2015). How do we know what they feel?. In H. Flam & J. Kleres (Eds.), Methods
of Exploring emotions. London: Routledge.
Willacy, M. (2015, October 26). Doing it for Dad: Farmer’s family vows to continue his anti-CSG
fight. ABC News, Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-26/george-bender-
family-vows-to-continue-fight-against-csg/6886014
Williams, R. (1961). The long revolution. London: Chatto and Windus.
Wonhas, A. (2014, July 22). The challenge of sorting fact from fiction on coal seam gas. Retrieved
July 11, 2017, from http://theconversation.com/the-challenge-of-sorting-fact-from-fiction-on-
coal-seam-gas-28955
Woods,M.,Anderson,J.,Guilbert,S.,&Watkin,S.(2012). “The country(side) is angry”:
Emotion and explanation in protest mobilization. Social & Cultural Geography,13(6),
567–585.
Wright, R. A., & Boudet, H. S. (2012). To act or not to act: Context, capability, and community
response to environmental risk. American Journal of Sociology,118(3), 728–777.
Yang,G.(2000). Achieving emotions in collective action: Emotional processes and move-
ment mobilization in the 1989 Chinese student movement. The Sociological Quarterly,
41(4), 593–614.
SOCIAL MOVEMENT STUDIES 657