Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.
Sensitivity Warning

First Peoples

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this resource may contain images or names of people who have since passed away.

Conference paper
Description

Today, more than 50 years after the 1967 referendum, Indigenous Australians continue to suffer under the colonial legacy of European settlement. This seems particularly the case for planning: confirmed by our recent case study of transport planning practice; and researchers’ published expressions of despair at the lack of progress. We offer a Latourian perspective of a pathway for the decolonisation of planning. We contend those seeking change should look beyond the assumed structural forces and look instead at our day-to-day practices—in particular, the practices of those researchers and practitioners here present. It is among ourselves that we have the greatest capacity—and from a Latourian perspective, the only capacity—to make change. Latour argues that there are no social forces or entities such as “coloniality” or “public interest.” These are abstractions with no agency. They are the explananda—the broad social patterns that need to be explained. The explanations, and thereby the levers for change, lie in the practices and relationships among the human and non-human actors within our planning networks. Society changes when a sufficiently broad alignment occurs between such actors, turning unsettled issues into matters of accepted fact and common practice. Of particular concern to us is the gap we believe exists between: (a) the researchers on decolonisation, and their network, in their role as “critics and conscience of society” and (b) the practitioners of planning, in their role as executors of government policy in pursuit of the social good. The key question we will address is: How do we build a bridge between these networks, to make the decolonisation of planning a fact, rather than an aspiration?

Publication Details
Access Rights Type:
open