| Intergenerational
attitudes to environmental change While Historical Coastlines (community perspectives) will make available to the public biophysical baseline data in the form of historical images and manuscript material, it also hopes to draw some preliminary conclusions about intergenerational attitudes to environmental change in the region. While there are any number of studies that attempt this on the broad societal scale, few exist to guide the task at a local level. To make best use of modest resources a methodology has been devised which focuses on the engineering of natural systems and features. Civil engineering projects probably are the most obvious examples of humanity’s self-conscious attempts to exert control over nature on a large, and therefore noticeable scale. |
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As Taylor explains in a recent paper proposing a repositioning of engineering practice, ‘If one considers the great artefacts that are the defining symbols of engineering, they typically represent the control and domination of environment, and exude a sense of being able to rise above any earthly hold’. [Taylor:2002:11] While the infrastructure projects being considered here might not be numbered among the ‘great artefacts’ of engineering, they do represent attempts to control nature, and like most were largely undertaken to improve commerce and communication. While ‘Sculpting the Capricorn Coast’ might reveal ad hocery and policy amnesia with respect to development, historical lessons of this sort are not its primary object. The idea is to decipher the intergenerational discourse of local environmental management rather than to inflict the condescension of history on old-time residents. |
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