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Many Australians would concur with the view of the novelist Tim Winton that we have an ‘almost supernatural fear and hatred’ of sharks. Especially in the wake of fatal attacks by great white sharks (on average once or twice per year), the extent of fascination and fear within the population at large is undeniable. This paper rejects the frequently encountered explanation that this is because we have an ‘instinctual’, ‘hard wired’ and ‘primal fear’ of wild animals that can kill people. Its focus instead is on the contemporary cultural interpretations of great whites and their behaviour which come to the fore when fatal attacks take place.

One of the analytic points made about \"contested spaces\" is that they can bring to the fore the tacit cultural understandings and unexamined ideological frameworks which, precisely by virtue of their being tacit and unexamined, are integral to the routine flow of everyday life. This paper amplifies the proposition ethnographically by selectively examining an extended conflict over the Irish state's intention to build an interpretive center at Mullaghmore, a mountain in the west of Ireland. It is argued that at one level local people were at odds over whether the mountain was land or a landscape, whilst at another level they were divided over appropriate ways of living in this peripheral setting in the final decade of the twentieth century. It was only in the process of contesting Mullaghmore as space, however, that these cultural differences and ideological divisions became explicit and open to public critique.

The political ritual generated by Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean annually captures the Australian imagination and at least the attention of international audiences. This article examines how Australia has become the self‐appointed guardian of Antarctic whales whilst Japan remains resolutely pro‐whaling.

Since I have spent several years observing the social changes within a small Irish village where not attending meetings was as much a political statement as being there (Peace, A World of Fine Difference), I have come to regard this as a methodological imperative rather than an option. The most important purchaser is Russia where kangaroo meat is used as beef substitute filler in cheap sausage products, a level of dependence that caused havoc in the industry in 2009 when Russia banned all kangaroo meat imports due to the threat of e-coli contamination.2 Kangaroo meat was a significant subject of national debate in late 2008 when the senior government advisor and prominent economist, Professor Ross Garnaut, presented the final report of his climate change review (Garnaut) to the Federal Government. In official discourse, it was obligatory to explain that they were now pests by virtue of rapid population growth, declining health and, most telling, their susceptibility to disease. Since customary rangelands could no longer support their increasing numbers, kangaroos were taking on an 'unnatural' condition, and were therefore becoming increasingly disposable. According to this 'evolutionary logic', the average Australian was thus justified in following his or her instincts where red meat consumption was concerned.

At a time when it is all the more necessary to reduce levels of meat production in order to restrict greenhouse‐gas emissions from the livestock industry, the combined insights of neo‐evolutionary thinking and cultural anthropology have been drawn upon in a major marketing campaign in Australia to significantly increase levels of meat eating.

Discourses concerned with the perceived global environmental crisis have increased dramatically over the past couple of decades. This review consists of an ethnographic analysis of the principal components of environmental discourses as well as a discussion of the approaches employed to analyze them. These include linguistic discourses (ecolinguistics, ecocritical linguistics, discourse analysis) as well as approaches developed within other disciplines (anthropology, literary studies, philosophy, and psychology). Over the years, the structural properties of environmental discourses have developed into a distinct discourse category. It remains unclear to what extent the numerous environmental discourses and metadiscourses significantly contribute to improving the health of the natural environment.

The biannual mega-event of Terra Madre is now established as the political flagship of the Slow Food movement. It assembles in Turin the leading cosmopolitan figures of this neo-tribal, post modern organization, along with several thousand of its ordinary members, who were drawn in 2006 from the ranks of food producers, cooks and academics. The most significant secular rituals of Terra Madre involve the theatrical celebration of its global character, beginning with the assembly of representatives from some 1600 “food communities” distributed throughout the world. Equally important are the many smaller scale activities in which the details of the movement's politics are articulated and embellished, at times in strikingly rhetorical ways. In this paper, which is based on ethnographic research, the theatrical and rhetorical qualities of Terra Madre as a political spectacle are explored in some detail. It is argued, in conclusion, that what is inadvertently exposed are some of the political myths which lie at the core of the Slow Food movement's contemporary philosophy.

Although social anthropologists are taking an increased interest in tourism in Australia, not much attention has been paid thus far to the sites from which visitors take off into the bush, wilderness or nature. Tourist resorts and lodges are not simply the locations in which basic needs are met before more energetic activities begin. Especially in ecotourist settings, important ideological claims are made about their built environments as well as the everyday practices and localised activities which are ongoing in these discursive sites. This paper provides an ethnographic analysis of one such ecotourist resort. It aims to detail the myths which are manufactured about its relation to the island environment in which it is situated, and to the world beyond.

Such is the ubiquity of environmentalism as a significant community experience throughout the world that most anthropologists will nowadays find themselves attending to the concerns their respondents have for the environments which surround and sustain them. In this article, we take stock of some of the issues addressed, and the achievements realized, by environmental anthropology to date. First, we emphasize that there is already a literature which stands as testament to the variety of environmental issues - water, whales and the weather, for instance - on which anthropologists have original insights to offer. Second, we argue that an important anthropological focus is on how ordinary people think and talk about their environments, especially when faced with external forces that have to be responded to in innovative and creative ways in order to be effective. It is not the view from above or below, but the view from within environments that matters most in local settings, which anthropologists have been concerned to unravel. Third, we emphasize that the Asia Pacific region constitutes an exceptionally rich field for anthropological research. Studies already carried out in places as diverse as Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, Indonesia, Chile and the Torres Strait make categorically clear that local and regional environmental concerns and conflicts are influenced by history, religion, Indigeneity, ethnicity, gender and other considerations that deserve critical anthropological enquiry. It is a crucial message that is endorsed and amplified by our fellow contributors in this special issue.