| This thesis addresses the question, "What is the essence of the Murray Darling river system conundrum that is usually posed as an issue of environmental remediation?", following perceptions of problems in catchment strategy formulation regarding project selection and public consultation. The question is initially seen as having four facets (governance, public, participation, and remediation).;An initial literature review indicated that previous examination of these topics seemed insufficiently radical or comprehensive for the enquiry's purposes, seeming not to attribute full humanness to the members of the public. As a consequence, a fieldwork program of a "quasi-anthropological" nature was conducted, including passive observations, conversations with individuals and informal small group, and large formal meetings.;Interpretation of the fieldwork reports focuses primarily on the lack of attribution of full humanness to members of the public. To do so in a sufficiently people-sensitive way, a number of interpretive techniques including a "phenomenological-style" process is applied. It is found that the district houses a number of unrecognized people ("nexors") occupying linking or nexus roles who exercise personal skills and initiatives to underpin effective remediation outcomes.;Towards the end of the fieldwork program, further literature indicated that the initial four-facet nature of the enquiry should be reformulated, to include the overall nature of Western society as it appears in the district (in place of participation), and to reconstitute the concept of remediation more radically. A number of competing claims about the natures of both Western social life and social understanding in general are examined to assess their degrees of fit to the fieldwork outcomes. However, governance as a topic is broader than the ways in which it appears in the examined district, and suitable hybridizing of competing world view concepts remains unresolved in this thesis. |
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