Christine Eriksen

In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes. This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies at the interface between city and beyond. It does so through an examination of two regions where wildfires are common and disastrous, and where how to deal with them is a major political issue: southeast Australia and the west coast United States. It follows women’s and men’s stories of surviving, fighting, evacuating, living and working with wildfire to reveal the intimate inner workings of wildfire response – and especially the culturally and historically distinct gender relations that underpin wildfire resilience. Wildfire is revealed as much more than a "natural" hazard – it is far from gender-neutral. Rather, wildfire is an important means through which traditional gender roles and power relations are maintained despite changing social circumstances. Women’s and men’s subjectivities are shaped by varying senses of inclusion, exclusion, engagement and disengagement with wildfire management. This leads to the reproduction of gender identities with clear ramifications for if, how and to what extent women and men prepare for wildfire.

Landscapes of Uncertainty

Gender and Wildfire

Susan Ballard

This book explores how fire, plants and people coexist in the Anthropocene. In a time of dramatic environmental transformation, the authors examine how human impacts on the planetary system are being felt at all levels from the geological and the arboreal to the atmospheric. The book brings together the disciplines of human geography and art history to examine fire-plant-people alliances and multispecies world-making. The authors listen carefully to the narratives of bushfire survivors. They embrace the responses of contemporary artists, as practice becomes interwoven with fire as well as ruin and regrowth. Through visual, textual and felt ways of being, the chapters illuminate, illustrate, impress and imprint the imagined and actual agency of plants and people within a changing climate — from Aboriginal ecocultural burning to nuclear fire. By holding grief and enacting hope, the book shows how relationships come to be and are likely to change due to the interdependencies of fire, plants and people in the Anthropocene.

Christine Eriksen

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