Aidan Davison
Biographic Data
| ID | 92756 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aidan Davison |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aidan |
| FAMILY NAME | Davison |
| SIGNATURE | DAVISON A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tasmania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5618-7068 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 177 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Buying time, buying hope: Making conservation futures through predator-proof fencing
The use of predator-proof fencing in protected area conservation has increased rapidly in recent decades. Often stretching for kilometres, predator-proof fences are an imposing form of infrastructure, attractive to conservation organisations and funders wanting visible investment, tangible impact, and technological innovation. Advocates promote fenced enclosures as a fast way to establish sanctuaries for threatened species in an extinction crisis…
Decolonizing conservation? Australian government discourses on the Indigenous Protected Areas program 2000–2023
Indigenous nature conservation programs are lauded as a step towards decolonizing nature. Created in 1997, Australia's Indigenous Protected Areas program has produced the world's largest Indigenous conservation estate. Yet little research has critically explored exactly how the program aligns the interests of Indigenous peoples with the settler colonial state and nature conservation actors. We address that gap here by using a Foucauldian discours…
Indigenous peoples and nature conservation: Lessons from 25 years of Australian biodiversity strategy
Indigenous peoples play a central role in Australian national biodiversity conservation, even as they continue to resist marginalization and dispossession by the settler colonial state. Foucauldian discourse analysis of national strategic documents on biodiversity conservation from 1999 to 2024 reveals changes in government discourses, ambitions, and mechanisms for inclusion. Our analysis identifies an emergent process within biodiversity strateg…
Firing the imagination? A visual analysis of bushfire preparedness videos from Australian fire agencies, 2015–2022
Australian fire agencies use videos to inform and advise the public about strategies and actions they can take to prepare for bushfire danger. This study examines videos about bushfire preparedness published on YouTube by Australian state and territory fire services over the period 2015-2022. Through visual analysis, we investigate the explicit and implicit messages of videos by fire agencies about public bushfire risk in Australia. Quantitative …
Transdisciplinary pathways for wildlife conservation: A method for navigating socio‐ecological systems on private lands
The decline of wildlife on private land is accelerating around the world. Resulting efforts to conserve wildlife on private lands are characterised by a complex socio‐ecological interplay between human practices and wildlife. Central to these socio‐ecological dynamics is the contradiction between fixed property boundaries and the mobility of wildlife, necessitating conservation strategies that transcend individual land parcels. Relevant human pra…
Heated discussions: Youth-Led Dialogue With Older Generations Reveals Unwitting Silences and Shared Feelings About Climate Change
Framing the flames: Addressing public disengagement through fear framings in Australian bushfire preparedness campaign videos
Obituary: Distinguished Professor Jamie Barrie Kirkpatrick PhD, DSc, AM (1946-2024)
Jamie (James) Kirkpatrick’s death on 21 October 2024, aged 78, is an irreplaceable loss for Australian geography. Jamie’s scholarly contributions sprawl from cities to wilderness, biogeography to culture, and ecology to politics. A recent Festschrift in this journal documents Jamie’s achievements (Turton, 2023). We thus touch on only a few highlights before offering a personal reflection on an intensely original life (Figure 1). Spanning 53 years…
Covid-19 in Australia: Systems resilience and outcome fairness
We apply a relational multiscalar model of the sustainability of social organisation to the management of COVID-19 in Australia to analyse systems resilience and outcome fairness. Our model encompasses the structures, processes, functions, and contents of social organisation across micro, meso, and macro scales. We developed four data sets linked to COVID-19 and analysed these as variables in our model: (1) letters to the editor in public newspap…
Relations of divergence and convergence. Political ontology at the intersection of protected areas and neoliberal conservation
We explore how relational thinking in protected area (PA) conservation both converges with and diverges from neoliberal capitalism. Deploying political ontology as a relational mode of enquiry, we identify how modern world-making continues to undermine the goals of PA conservation by constituting it as a practice for demarcating society from nature. An emerging socio-ecological paradigm has seen PA conservation shift from protecting fortresses of…
Environmental NGOs and Protected Area Conservation in Australia: The Political Consequences of Aligning with Private Interests
This article examines the political consequences of environmental nongovernment organization (ENGO) involvement in protected area conservation in Australia. Rapid growth of a nongovernment protected area (NGPA) estate this century has involved a range of individuals, communities, First Nations, and ENGOs, and has been closely tied to government policy and private finance. Although NGPA conservation achievements have been profound, there has been …
From activism to “not-quite-government”: The role of government and non-government actors in the expansion of the Australian protected area estate since 1990
What can we learn from the prodigious expansion of the non-government protected areas that now comprise 12% of terrestrial Australia? An increasingly professional, formal, and diverse non-government sector has developed since 1990, comprising private individuals, non-government organizations, and First Nations and having close ties to governments. We investigate the drivers, dynamics, and diversity of this sector through thematic analysis of 24 k…
Innocent heroes or self‐absorbed alarmists? A thematic review of the variety and effects of storylines about young people in climate change discourses
Discourses about young people are interacting with climate change discourses in ways that often marginalize the young in social responses to climate change. The resulting stories about young people in a changing climate build upon long‐standing representations of youthhood in late modern societies as a liminal, ill‐defined state between childhood and adulthood. The social and behavioral sciences have both helped produce these stories and critical…
Professionalisation and the spectacle of nature: Understanding changes in the visual imaginaries of private protected area organisations in Australia
Imaginaries of protected areas as state-based fortresses have been challenged by expansion of the global nature conservation estate on non-government lands, notably in contexts such as Australia where neoliberal reform has been strong. Little is known about the implications of this change for the meanings, purposes and practices of nature conservation. Images are central to public understandings of nature conservation. We thus investigate the vis…
The Role of Government in a Partial Transition from Public to Private in the Expanding Australian Protected Area System
Since the 1980s in democratic societies, neoliberal reforms and neofeudal governance have transferred the delivery of many public goods and services from governments to non-government actors. Privatisation is a core neoliberal agenda, but little is known of the nature and extent of its application to nature conservation through reservation. We investigate the degree of privatisation of the expanding protected area system in our case study areas o…
Insurantial imaginaries: Some implications for home-owning democracies
Meaning, Belonging and Well-being: The Socio-psychological Benefits of Engaging in Private Land Conservation
While the economic and ecological benefits of private land conservation (PLC) programmes are well known, their contribution to socio-psychological well-being is less understood. Thus we applied the concept of basic psychological needs (BPN) from self-determination theory (SDT) to document these well-being impacts and understand the experience of landowners engaged in PLC programmes in Tasmania, Australia. We developed and administered an online s…
Disempowering emotions: The role of educational experiences in social responses to climate change
Imagining the Dirty Green City
The green city is being elevated to the status of a self-evident good in the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A large literature documents the linked environmental, economic and well-being benefits associated with vegetating urban systems to maximise the ecosystem function. Contemporary urban greening seeks to challenge attempts to expel nature from the city in a quest for order and control. However, by imagining nature as a new mode …
Not 'getting on the bandwagon: When climate change is a matter of unconcern
Extensive research into public attitudes about climate change commonly portrays those who do not express concern about this issue as unwitting victims of their own or others' biases. Characterised as apathy, ignorance, scepticism or denial, absence of concern about climate change has been presented as being rooted in an individual's lack of considered engagement with scientific reasons for concern. This 'concern deficit' is framed as a problem to…
Housing and Home Unbound: Intersections in Economics, Environment and Politics in Australia
Could urban greening mitigate suburban thermal inequity: The role of residents’ dispositions and household practices
Over the past decade research on urban thermal inequity has grown, with a focus on denser built\nenvironments. In this letter we examine thermal inequity associated with climate change impacts and\nchanges to urban form in a comparatively socio-economically disadvantaged Australian suburb. Local\nurban densification policies designed to counteract sprawl have reduced block sizes, increased height\nlimits, and diminished urban tree canopy cover (U…
How climate change research undermines trust in everyday life: A review
Empirical and theoretical research on trust has received little attention in climate change literature despite the central role of trust in determining responses to climate science. We reassess the challenge of climate change communication in light of recent research on trust across social, psychological, and neuroscientific disciplines. We argue that networks of explicit and implicit trust in everyday practices are a foundation of stable society…
Beyond the Mirrored Horizon: Modern Ontology and Amodern Possibilities in the Anthropocene
Early talk of the Anthropocene has been prompted by material evidence of the incoherence of ontological divisions between humanity and the rest of Earth. Yet, ironically, it has also been dominated by modern narratives about human distinction, autonomy, and dominion. Along with recrimination about the death of nature, the modern Anthropocene carries hope of human redemption through natural evolution or technological progress. The resulting narrat…
Risk and the Arborist in the Remaking of the Australian Urban Forest
The emerging profession of arboriculture has influenced Australian urban landscapes over the past decade. Arborists manage the urban forest as a core component of urban sustainability. We analyse qualitative interviews with 53 professionals involved in tree management in six eastern Australian cities to determine the ways in which a concern with risk management has shaped both the urban forest and the professional status and role of arborists. We…
Disempowering emotions: The role of educational experiences in social responses to climate change
Roots, Rupture and Remembrance: The Tasmanian Lives of the Monterey Pine
Why do certain landscapes become contested sites for claims about identity? In responding to this question, we approach landscapes as assemblages of human and non-human elements that reach beyond the confines of their immediate physical and temporal locations. Our empirical focus is a small group of pine trees in a Tasmanian suburb, where remnants of human and non-human migration are inscribed and live on in the landscape and in human memory. We …
The trouble with nature: Ambivalence in the lives of urban Australian environmentalists
Beyond the Mirrored Horizon: Modern Ontology and Amodern Possibilities in the Anthropocene
Early talk of the Anthropocene has been prompted by material evidence of the incoherence of ontological divisions between humanity and the rest of Earth. Yet, ironically, it has also been dominated by modern narratives about human distinction, autonomy, and dominion. Along with recrimination about the death of nature, the modern Anthropocene carries hope of human redemption through natural evolution or technological progress. The resulting narrat…
Not 'getting on the bandwagon: When climate change is a matter of unconcern
Extensive research into public attitudes about climate change commonly portrays those who do not express concern about this issue as unwitting victims of their own or others' biases. Characterised as apathy, ignorance, scepticism or denial, absence of concern about climate change has been presented as being rooted in an individual's lack of considered engagement with scientific reasons for concern. This 'concern deficit' is framed as a problem to…
Sinners, scapegoats or fashion victims? Understanding the deaths of trees in the green city
"What Do You Think about Genetic Medicine?" Facilitating Sociable Public Discourse on Developments in the New Genetics
An important aspect of any meaningful public discussion about developments in gene technology is the provision of opportunities for interested publics to engage in sociable public discourse with other lay people and with experts. This article reports on a series of peer group conversations conducted in late 1996 and early 1997 with sixteen community groups in Perth, Western Australia, interested in gene therapy technology. With the case of cystic…
Imagining the Dirty Green City
The green city is being elevated to the status of a self-evident good in the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A large literature documents the linked environmental, economic and well-being benefits associated with vegetating urban systems to maximise the ecosystem function. Contemporary urban greening seeks to challenge attempts to expel nature from the city in a quest for order and control. However, by imagining nature as a new mode …
Contesting sustainability in theory–practice: In praise of ambivalence
A great deal has been written about the complexity and multiplicity of the essentially contested concept of sustainability (Becker and Jahn 1999; Dobson 1999; Harris et al. 2001; recent contributions include Baker 2006; Connelly 2007; Newman 2007; Redclift 2005). Many have lamented the slippery, shape-shifting nature of this concept and that it has accumulated an absurd number of definitions. As early as 1988, Richard Norgaard (1988, 607) observe…
Covid-19 in Australia: Systems resilience and outcome fairness
We apply a relational multiscalar model of the sustainability of social organisation to the management of COVID-19 in Australia to analyse systems resilience and outcome fairness. Our model encompasses the structures, processes, functions, and contents of social organisation across micro, meso, and macro scales. We developed four data sets linked to COVID-19 and analysed these as variables in our model: (1) letters to the editor in public newspap…
Environmental NGOs and Protected Area Conservation in Australia: The Political Consequences of Aligning with Private Interests
This article examines the political consequences of environmental nongovernment organization (ENGO) involvement in protected area conservation in Australia. Rapid growth of a nongovernment protected area (NGPA) estate this century has involved a range of individuals, communities, First Nations, and ENGOs, and has been closely tied to government policy and private finance. Although NGPA conservation achievements have been profound, there has been …
Insurantial imaginaries: Some implications for home-owning democracies
Risk and the Arborist in the Remaking of the Australian Urban Forest
The emerging profession of arboriculture has influenced Australian urban landscapes over the past decade. Arborists manage the urban forest as a core component of urban sustainability. We analyse qualitative interviews with 53 professionals involved in tree management in six eastern Australian cities to determine the ways in which a concern with risk management has shaped both the urban forest and the professional status and role of arborists. We…
A precautionary tale
Indigenous peoples and nature conservation: Lessons from 25 years of Australian biodiversity strategy
Indigenous peoples play a central role in Australian national biodiversity conservation, even as they continue to resist marginalization and dispossession by the settler colonial state. Foucauldian discourse analysis of national strategic documents on biodiversity conservation from 1999 to 2024 reveals changes in government discourses, ambitions, and mechanisms for inclusion. Our analysis identifies an emergent process within biodiversity strateg…
Professionalisation and the spectacle of nature: Understanding changes in the visual imaginaries of private protected area organisations in Australia
Imaginaries of protected areas as state-based fortresses have been challenged by expansion of the global nature conservation estate on non-government lands, notably in contexts such as Australia where neoliberal reform has been strong. Little is known about the implications of this change for the meanings, purposes and practices of nature conservation. Images are central to public understandings of nature conservation. We thus investigate the vis…
Ruling the Future? Heretical Reflections on Technology and Other Secular Religions of Sustainability
I argue that the quest for sustainability in Western societies has been shaped by the secular religion of technology. Technological endeavor and moral reflection have been held apart in this quest, with the result that reformist and transformative approaches to sustainability often overlook articles of modern faith in technology. Instrumentalist appeals to eco-efficiency and environmentalist appeals to nature implicitly invest technology with tra…
Reinhabiting technology: Ends in means and the practice of place
Public attitudes to gene technology: The case of the MacGregor's® tomato
This paper reports the pilot phase of a three-year project, `Public perceptions of biotechnology', conducted in Perth, Western Australia. The purposes of this pilot investigation were (1) to develop a computer-based method for investigating public perceptions of biotechnology, and (2) to report the perceptions of four `interested publics' about the Flavr SavrTM/MacGregor's® tomato, a genetically engineered tomato. By `interested publics' we mean …
Problematic Publics: A Critical Review of Surveys of Public Attitudes to Biotechnology
This article discusses a range of recent major surveys of public attitudes toward biotechnology. The authors identify a number of problematic features of the surveys: the use of predominantly consumerist rather than civic conception of public discourse; the assumption of a unitary "general public," a "cognitive deficit" approach to public understanding of science; and the presumption of a politically neutral and instrumental ist model of science …
"What Do You Think about Genetic Medicine?" Facilitating Sociable Public Discourse on Developments in the New Genetics
An important aspect of any meaningful public discussion about developments in gene technology is the provision of opportunities for interested publics to engage in sociable public discourse with other lay people and with experts. This article reports on a series of peer group conversations conducted in late 1996 and early 1997 with sixteen community groups in Perth, Western Australia, interested in gene therapy technology. With the case of cystic…
A precautionary tale
Reinhabiting technology: Ends in means and the practice of place
Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto - by Michael Woodin and Caroline Lucas
The trouble with nature: Ambivalence in the lives of urban Australian environmentalists
Ruling the Future? Heretical Reflections on Technology and Other Secular Religions of Sustainability
I argue that the quest for sustainability in Western societies has been shaped by the secular religion of technology. Technological endeavor and moral reflection have been held apart in this quest, with the result that reformist and transformative approaches to sustainability often overlook articles of modern faith in technology. Instrumentalist appeals to eco-efficiency and environmentalist appeals to nature implicitly invest technology with tra…
Contesting sustainability in theory–practice: In praise of ambivalence
A great deal has been written about the complexity and multiplicity of the essentially contested concept of sustainability (Becker and Jahn 1999; Dobson 1999; Harris et al. 2001; recent contributions include Baker 2006; Connelly 2007; Newman 2007; Redclift 2005). Many have lamented the slippery, shape-shifting nature of this concept and that it has accumulated an absurd number of definitions. As early as 1988, Richard Norgaard (1988, 607) observe…
Urban Pollution: Cultural Meanings, Social Practices
Roots, Rupture and Remembrance: The Tasmanian Lives of the Monterey Pine
Why do certain landscapes become contested sites for claims about identity? In responding to this question, we approach landscapes as assemblages of human and non-human elements that reach beyond the confines of their immediate physical and temporal locations. Our empirical focus is a small group of pine trees in a Tasmanian suburb, where remnants of human and non-human migration are inscribed and live on in the landscape and in human memory. We …
Book Symposium on The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics by Paul B. Thompson
Sinners, scapegoats or fashion victims? Understanding the deaths of trees in the green city
Establishing a Community of Practice and Embedding Education for Sustainability at the University of Tasmania
This paper explores the creation of an institution-wide community of practice to address education for sustainability at the University of Tasmania. This exploration is discussed within the context of engagement with the wider University of Tasmania community to raise awareness of, and participation in, Education for Sustainability initiatives, to collect and identify examples of best practice and to provide advice and guidance on the development…
Risk and the Arborist in the Remaking of the Australian Urban Forest
The emerging profession of arboriculture has influenced Australian urban landscapes over the past decade. Arborists manage the urban forest as a core component of urban sustainability. We analyse qualitative interviews with 53 professionals involved in tree management in six eastern Australian cities to determine the ways in which a concern with risk management has shaped both the urban forest and the professional status and role of arborists. We…
How climate change research undermines trust in everyday life: A review
Empirical and theoretical research on trust has received little attention in climate change literature despite the central role of trust in determining responses to climate science. We reassess the challenge of climate change communication in light of recent research on trust across social, psychological, and neuroscientific disciplines. We argue that networks of explicit and implicit trust in everyday practices are a foundation of stable society…
Beyond the Mirrored Horizon: Modern Ontology and Amodern Possibilities in the Anthropocene
Early talk of the Anthropocene has been prompted by material evidence of the incoherence of ontological divisions between humanity and the rest of Earth. Yet, ironically, it has also been dominated by modern narratives about human distinction, autonomy, and dominion. Along with recrimination about the death of nature, the modern Anthropocene carries hope of human redemption through natural evolution or technological progress. The resulting narrat…
Housing and Home Unbound: Intersections in Economics, Environment and Politics in Australia
Could urban greening mitigate suburban thermal inequity: The role of residents’ dispositions and household practices
Over the past decade research on urban thermal inequity has grown, with a focus on denser built\nenvironments. In this letter we examine thermal inequity associated with climate change impacts and\nchanges to urban form in a comparatively socio-economically disadvantaged Australian suburb. Local\nurban densification policies designed to counteract sprawl have reduced block sizes, increased height\nlimits, and diminished urban tree canopy cover (U…
Not 'getting on the bandwagon: When climate change is a matter of unconcern
Extensive research into public attitudes about climate change commonly portrays those who do not express concern about this issue as unwitting victims of their own or others' biases. Characterised as apathy, ignorance, scepticism or denial, absence of concern about climate change has been presented as being rooted in an individual's lack of considered engagement with scientific reasons for concern. This 'concern deficit' is framed as a problem to…
Meaning, Belonging and Well-being: The Socio-psychological Benefits of Engaging in Private Land Conservation
While the economic and ecological benefits of private land conservation (PLC) programmes are well known, their contribution to socio-psychological well-being is less understood. Thus we applied the concept of basic psychological needs (BPN) from self-determination theory (SDT) to document these well-being impacts and understand the experience of landowners engaged in PLC programmes in Tasmania, Australia. We developed and administered an online s…
Disempowering emotions: The role of educational experiences in social responses to climate change
Imagining the Dirty Green City
The green city is being elevated to the status of a self-evident good in the theory and practice of urban sustainability. A large literature documents the linked environmental, economic and well-being benefits associated with vegetating urban systems to maximise the ecosystem function. Contemporary urban greening seeks to challenge attempts to expel nature from the city in a quest for order and control. However, by imagining nature as a new mode …
The Role of Government in a Partial Transition from Public to Private in the Expanding Australian Protected Area System
Since the 1980s in democratic societies, neoliberal reforms and neofeudal governance have transferred the delivery of many public goods and services from governments to non-government actors. Privatisation is a core neoliberal agenda, but little is known of the nature and extent of its application to nature conservation through reservation. We investigate the degree of privatisation of the expanding protected area system in our case study areas o…
Insurantial imaginaries: Some implications for home-owning democracies
Sociology (27 works) · Political science (24 works) · Environmental ethics (13 works) · Epistemology (12 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Geography (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Social science (11 works) · Ecology (10 works)