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Social Studies of Science
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Deadly Dingoes

`Wild' or Simply Requiring `Due Process'?

Stephen Healy

School of History of Philosophy of Science University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia, s.healy{at}unsw.edu.au

This paper elaborates a relational framework for `political ecology', based on an analysis of a controversy over the aggressive behaviour of the dingoes on Fraser Island and brought to prominence by the death of a 9-year-old tourist in 2001. In contrast to the authorities' treatment of Fraser's environment as an essentially enduring entity, readily compliant with instrumental interventions, the `partial perspectives' of their local critics emphasize co-constitutive relationships between people and non-humans, including dingoes. This latter view — that the form, character and content of human activities and the world are intimately interdependent — resonates with Latour's `experimental metaphysics', which is intended to achieve the `progressive composition' of people and their worlds. However, while Latour's framework relies on conventional notions of knowledge at odds with these local `situated knowledges', Haraway illuminates how their experiential and affective qualities ensure the ethical character of `progressive composition'. I call this consolidation of Latour and Haraway's ideas `affirmative cosmopolitics', and briefly discuss its broader implications and resonance with Australian Aboriginal cosmology.

Key Words: Aboriginal cosmology • Australia • dingoes • Fraser Island • relational ontology • situated knowledges • wilderness

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 37, No. 3, 443-471 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312706070746
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