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published online 3 July 2014Space and CultureTanya J. KingCanberra

Encrypted Landscapes, Nation-States: The Australian National Botanic Gardens,  

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Article

Encrypted Landscapes, Nation-States: The Australian National Botanic Gardens, Canberra

Tanya J. King1

AbstractAs visitors perambulate around the Australian National Botanic Gardens, in Canberra, relationships among citizens, environments, and the nation-state are enacted: The central is emphasized over the peripheral, the Canberran space is depicted as a literal miniature model of the wider nation, science is privileged in the design of that representation, and “nature” is appreciated as isolatable from humans but controllable by them. As with other architectural aspects of Canberra, assumptions about the relative relationships among elements of the state are reflected in the spatial positioning and delineation of the items and embodied in those who move in and around them.

Keywordsembodiment, environment, architecture, nation-state, engagement

The world in which people dwell (Ingold, 2000) consists of both those elements encountered tangibly and those that are imagined or inferred in response to elements encountered tangibly. An example of the former is a spot under a tree in a rainforest. Examples of the latter are maps depicting that particular spot, written descriptions, drawings, photographs, and miniature mod-els. Representations of a particular environment are never created without influence from the prevailing social, political, economic, religious, and other ideas and values present in the host society. As Roepstorff, Bubandt, and Kaleviet (2003) suggest in relation to the separation of “nature” and “culture,” “practices of nature are in a ‘feedback’ or ‘looping’ relationship with their environment making them both producers of ‘nature’ and products of nature” (p. 11). Much has been made of the way in which individuals and groups imagine their place in the orchestrat-ing system of the nation-state partly in response to their physical engagement with the manifesta-tions of the nation-state (Coklin, 2006; Grabham, 2007; Hanson & Stepputat, 2005; Joseph, 2008; Kapferer, 1995; Lund, 2001). In Australia, much attention has been given to the dialogue between the idea of the nation-state and the architectural structures of Canberra, particularly the design and spatial arrangement of features such as the New and Old Parliament Houses, the War

1Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

Corresponding Author:Tanya J. King, Department of Anthropology, Deakin University, Locked Bag 20000, Geelong, Victoria 3220, Australia. Email: tanya.king@deakin.edu.au

524495 SACXXX10.1177/1206331214524495Space and CultureKingresearch-article2014

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2 Space and Culture

Memorial, and the civic center of the Capital city, imaginatively named “Civic” (Firth, 2001; Freestone, 1989; Grabham, 2007; Vernon, 2005). This article will focus on the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG), and what this representation of national flora conveys about prevailing nation-state ideology and understandings of “nature.” I will highlight the role of cor-poreal movement around these spaces, and the knowledge that is imparted as people traverse the architectural environment of the gardens. My argument is this: The illusion that the broad Australian environment is knowable and manageable from a central domain of governance is reinforced by the layout of the ANBG and the physical movement of visitors through its grounds.

The article will proceed as follows. First, I will say some words about the theoretical under-pinnings of the article. An examination of Canberra will be made in two sections, or rather, on two scales. The first focuses on Canberra as it is seen from above or as it is represented on a map. Individuals move about in these large spaces imagining their location in relation to landmarks that they may not be able to see from the street. Although this large-scale organization directs the general movement of people it has a limited effect on the more refined movements of individuals. The second section, and scale, relates to those spaces that individuals encounter directly. The negotiation of these spaces often entails a corporeal element, as individuals encounter footpaths, corridors, trees, and other people. In particular, I consider the way “nature,” or nonhuman organic life, is organized and encountered in the ANBG.

Theoretical Debts

This article is indebted partially to Bourdieu (1973), Moore (1986), and particularly Lund’s (2001) work on the relationship between physical and mental structures. Although Bourdieu’s influence is implicit, and Lund’s work is used explicitly, below, I wish to begin by noting Moore’s (1986) apt description of the relationship among bodies, and the cultural and physical spaces in which they move: “The organisation of space is a cultural representation—and it is through this representation that the individual constructs both herself/himself and her/his image of the world” (p. 120). She goes on to describe these representations as “text,” as simultaneously “product and producer” of various relationships within society (p. 120).

Also key to this article are the works of Descartes, Weber, and particularly Kapferer’s (1995; Kapferer & Morris, 2003) on the Australian nation-state and bureaucracy and the relationship of these institutions to actual people. Rather than considering individuals as actors in a network of other individuals, nation-state bureaucracy acts as a centralized mechanism that issues orga-nizational directives to the periphery (like a ghost in a machine). That which comprises (or “those who comprise”) the “periphery” (the citizens), are effectively anonymized by this pro-cess. They are regarded as homogenous and interchangeable extensions of the state, disembed-ded from the context of their lives. Through this process an illusion is proposed, one in which actual people are considered, known, and managed through the proxy of the imagined generic citizen. The key to the illusion is the substitution of the contextually dependent, dynamic, and complex lives of actual people with the generic, static, and the essentialized image of the generic citizen (Kapferer, 1995).

While Kapferer, and myself in other work (King, 2005; see also Dwyer, King, & Minnegal, 2008), have been concerned with the process of anonymization of people within bureaucratic institutional structures and the disjuncture between the representation of citizens and the experi-ence of actual people, my focus in this article is to detail the anonymization of the Australian landscape within bureaucratic institutional structures and the disjuncture between the corporeal experience of the ANBG gardens and the complex and dynamic environments that are repre-sented therein. Just as actual people are anonymized through the process whereby they are repre-sented within a bureaucratic institution (such as the Australian Taxation Office, the National

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Census, or the Medicare system), landscapes are anonymized through the process whereby they are represented in bureaucratic, architecturally designed environments.

The link between the physical spaces and qualities of a nation-state center, the centralized governance that takes place there, and the ideological “messages” conveyed to state subjects through their negotiation of this space became apparent to me after examining Lund’s (2001) exploration of Peruvians moving through bureaucratic spaces in order to obtain identity docu-ments. Lund describes how Peruvian peasants are compelled to move between a number of build-ings to obtain various documents that legitimize various milestones in their lives, including birth, death, and marriage. Without such documents they are regarded by the state as nonpersons, unable to work, to own capital, indeed to function as legitimate citizens. Lund portrays the move-ment of people through the physical spaces of the streets and official buildings as being mutually animating. Just as living bodies are inscribed with hegemonic “messages,” and are made legiti-mate citizens, “they are creating and legitimizing the national project through their very peregri-nations . . .” (Lund, 2001, p. 4). As they move through bureaucratic places—waiting rooms, buildings, even the paths between villages and municipal offices—these places come alive, and perform a function of the bureaucratic experience for Peruvians. I draw on Lund’s evocation of the importance of the physical manifestations of the state, and the ability of the state to compel its subjects to voluntarily physically submit to its rigid structures. My point is to underscore the pervasiveness of the concentric structures that nation-state management of natural resources are premised on.

Canberra From Above

To analyze the symbolic meanings behind Walter Burley Griffin’s design of Canberra is to tread a well-worn path forged by anthropologists, such as Colombijn (1998), as well as architects and historians (Firth, 2000, 2001; Proudfoot, 1994; Reid, 2002; Styles, 1995; Vernon, 2005). Canberra, the city, was built relatively recently, and in a period of such acute self-awareness of the relevance of the nation-state, that one may be forgiven for supposing that it was designed with the research projects of future scholars in mind!

Unlike the other Australian State and Territory Capital cities, which are close to the ocean and tend to sprawl along the coastline, Canberra is a long, thin city that lies in a valley on the interior edge of the Great Dividing Range. Canberra is symbolically marked by an Axis that takes in the political, military, and civil centers of the city. The metropolis itself is divided roughly equally by Lake Burley Griffin, which spills in from the East via the Molongo River, and runs out again toward the West of the Territory. The lake is divided into three main basins: West Basin, Central Basin, East Basin. On the South side of the Central Basin lies Capital Hill—atop of which is Parliament House—the literal center of the city and symbolic center of the Commonwealth. The official buildings themselves are circled by three major roads: Parliament Drive being the small-est, then Capital Circle, then State Circle. If viewed from above, major avenues of Canberra radiate out from Capital Hill, intersecting larger circles, creating a cobweb effect. These major roadways bear the names of Australia’s capital cities—Brisbane Avenue, Sydney Avenue, Canberra Avenue, and so on—contributing to the representation of Capital Hill as the center of the nation-state. Indeed, this part of the city features emblems of national significance which extend well beyond the city limits. For example, nestled in the web of streets directly bordering State Circle are the National Library of Australia, the former National Gallery of Australia, the National Science and Technology Centre, the High Court, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the National Press Club, and more than 30 foreign embassies. Capital Hill lies at the center of city and state, surrounded by that which symbolizes and ensures the hegemony of the state: knowledge, military power, media control, and links to the wider world.

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Much of Canberra is similarly concentric in relation to both Capital Hill and also to local centers. The Avenues that radiate from Capital Hill intersect with several other major city cen-ters, which themselves are encircled by surrounding streets, and from which emanate other major streets. There are three major centers that are connected by such roadways, and form the Axis. These roads lay in a triangular formation, enclosing Lake Burley Griffin Central Basin. Two of these roadways are the only Capital Hill Avenues not named after major cities: Kings and Commonwealth Avenues. The Commonwealth Avenue and the Kings Avenue Bridges mark the West and East edges of the Lake Burley Griffin Central Basin. To the North of Central Basin, linked to Capital Hill by Commonwealth Avenue, is City Hill, the civic center of Canberra. The area is known by Canberrans as Civic, clearly distinguishing it from the political and military zones that are located nearby.

On the eastern end of Kings Avenue, behind the Canberra Nature Park, is Duntroon, which comprises the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Royal Military College. In between Duntroon and Civic, directly across Central Basin from Capital Hill, is the Australian War Memorial. Situated in an open and treed location, the War Memorial itself is an impressive build-ing, its grandeur bolstered by its domination of an otherwise uncluttered space. Anzac Parade, a wide memorial drive, lies in a direct line between the War Memorial and Capital Hill, terminat-ing at the edge of Lake Burley Griffin, at a place named Gallipoli Reach. The battle between Australian and Turkish soldiers at Gallipoli Cove, in Turkey, during the First World War, is one of the most important events in the creation of an Australian national identity (Nelson, 1997; Seal, 2004).

Australians engage Civic through their retail and dining practices. They are subject to the rules, prescriptions, and other directives that originate in Parliament House. However, the mili-tary zone impresses itself on those in Canberra more subtly, its centrality and visual prominence acting as a silent evoker of nationalist feelings among those who pass by. Sitting on the edge of the War Memorial in Canberra, one has an unfettered view down Anzac Parade, across Lake Burley Griffin Central Basin to Parliament House, and vice versa. Vernon (2005) captures the significance of Canberra’s design nicely when he writes,

The actual and symbolic occupation of land is a politicized . . . activity. This is even more acute at the national capital. Here, development of prominent sites, especially those on the Griffins’ Land Axis, cannot be anything but politically charged. (p. 27)

The design of the city center has a significant impact on those who encounter Canberra, as those passing from one side of Lake Burley Griffin to the other can only do so via the Commonwealth and Kings Avenue Bridges. To negotiate the two sides of the city, to move between the major nonresidential sites, one must move through the spaces described above. Fortunately for commuters, the city is easily traversed: The streets are wide, rarely congested, and motorists can cross the bridges and use the roads without difficulty or tariff. As permanent residents (a large number of whom are state officials), and visitors move around the center of Canberra, the civil, political, and military aspects of the nation-state are readily visible.

As Lund (2001) asks in relation to the Peruvian experience, what messages are conveyed to citizens as they move through the spaces of the Capital city, continually circling Parliament House, encountering Civic and the War Memorial? Certainly, there is a sense in which the politi-cal, military, and civil elements resemble the apex of modern Australian state organization, with directives emanating from the former to the latter two. As citizens move around other areas of the city they experience, through their circuitous movements, an arrangement of space in which centrifugal and centripetal forces simultaneously underscore the primacy of the center. People revolve around, focusing in on that which is common to them, such as Parliament House, validat-ing the centrality of the focal point. Simultaneously, that which is central emits an organizing force on those around it. For example, in order for the state, symbolized and actualized by

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Parliament House, to be central, there must be a mass of surrounding citizens that respond to government directives. The physical design of Canberra is reflected in the cosmology of many in the West for whom “centralized management” dictates the lives of peripheral citizens through a mixture of policing and coercion, which draws on appeals to nationalism (Anderson, 1991; Billig, 1995; Macintyre & Clark, 2003; Sahlins, 2005).

The large-scale physical organization of Canberra conveys something of the centrality of the state in the Australian cosmology, and its relationship to outlying regions. In this representation, there is a sense of civil society, of a group of people who flesh out “the populace,” and who relate to the state as peripheral subjects to a centralized system of government. This image of Australian society is fostered in the populace as they move about the spaces of Canberra, or ponder the birds-eye-view, or map, of the National Capital. This peripherality is even sensed by those who may never have been to the Nation’s Capital, but who retain a notion of Canberra’s centrality. Unlike some past and present nation-states, where those with unsanctioned power are able to control physically peripheral regions, Australian bureaucratic tools such as the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) between Commonwealth and State administrative bodies ensure a relatively accountable link between Commonwealth directives and outlying territories. It is from the center that those in charge survey the surrounding regions, gather information, make decisions based on the knowledge compiled, and subsequently set in motion directives that impact on those outlying regions.

Collmann (1988), for example, has described how the 1953 establishment of the first central-ized governing system designed to administer solely to Aboriginal people in Australia created a tangible link between administrative decisions and the physical organization of Aborigines. He notes how “population centres” of Aboriginal people, classified according to government defined characteristics, “emerged as a result of the administration’s reorganisation of the Aboriginal population” (p. 77). Those Aboriginals deemed most “assimilated” to “white Australian culture” (p. 78), typically those with some White Australian ancestry, were housed in urban centers whereas those Aboriginals whom government administrators felt “understood almost nothing about white Australian culture” (p. 78) were located away from towns and cities on cattle stations or missions. Those who resided outside the physical and administrative boundaries of the state-sanctioned residencies, particularly those who resided on the outskirts of towns, were labeled “fringe-dwellers.” This term captures the sense in which these people were simultaneously phys-ically and administratively ambiguous, though certainly peripheral to the center. Decisions made by Commonwealth bodies in Canberra can impose dramatic physical changes on those who live many thousands of kilometers from the Australian Capital.

Kapferer, too, has described how the perceived centrality of the Australian state has contrib-uted to the way groups of Australians conceive their place—indeed, their identity—in the nation. Those who live in the relatively isolated Australian region of Far North Queensland (FNQ), according to Kapferer (1995),

conceive of themselves as at the periphery of centralised state bureaucratic apparatuses. . . . It is a powerful element of the cultural or ideological construction of the region . . . as a place at the edge of the state, at the extremity of its controlling tendrils. (p. 72)

Places like FNQ are readily imagined as peripheral to the state not only because the many stages of communication and delegation between Commonwealth directives and tangible effects on residents, but also because of their physical distance from, and difference to, the hub of bureaucratic activity: Canberra. At this point I will reduce the scale at which I am describing Canberra, and consider the city from ground level. Movement through the spaces of Canberra impart a sense of structure, of how the world is, of the forms of pattern that can be expected in the world, and of the relationship between people and nature.

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Canberra From the Ground

Canberra is a pleasant city. The streets are wide, well maintained, rarely congested, and there is ample parking. Smooth bike paths and neat walking routes weave through the numerous parks, beside the lake, and under the many trees that line the wide, green nature strips. Public lawns are always immaculately manicured and private gardens are “neat and tidy.” Buildings themselves, both residential and otherwise, tend to be well maintained and orderly. Indeed, in the outer resi-dential suburbs of Canberra are housing estates dominated by homes regular in their design and styling. There is a sense of “order” in Canberra that is difficult to describe unless in the context of comparison with other large Australian cities. In Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, for exam-ple, are conspicuous geographic pockets dominated by either particularly wealthy or relatively impoverished residences and businesses. Canberra lacks the eye-sore of heavy industrial regions that lie on the periphery of other major cities. Although there are industrial estates, they are small and well manicured. It is hard to imagine the setting for Romper Stomper, the gritty Australian film about squat-dwelling social outcastes in the Melbourne industrial suburb of 1990s Altona, being set in the Canberran equivalent of Fyshwick where intact fences and tidy, if modest, land-scaping enclose the neat businesses of panel beaters, computer wholesalers and fire-works manu-facturers. Canberra is different to other capital cities in that there are few tall buildings; there is no “skyline” to speak of. As citizens move about the spaces of Canberra they learn, not only about their relationship to the nation-state but also about their relationship to nature. “Nature,” in Canberra, is carefully designed, neatly maintained, and well ordered. Nowhere is this more evi-dent than in Canberra’s ANBG.

Australian National Botanic Gardens

The design of the ANBG was proposed in 1935 by Bertram Dickson in The Dickson Report. Dickson was, at the time, Chief of the Division of Plant Industry at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR later the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation or CSIRO). Dickson’s scientific background is evident in the design of the gardens. Located adjacent to ANU and the CSIR laboratories, the gardens were to be an institution focused on the advancement of scientific knowledge of Australian flora and the preservation of these spe-cies. This preservation was to be facilitated through both the development of scientific expertise in plant management and through educating the community on the value of native flora (Dickson, 1935). The following excerpt from the Dickson Report emphasizes Dickson’s vision of the Gardens as a scientifically, objectively, structured catalogue of Australian flora. It also hints at Dickson’s awareness that the imposing presence of a state sanctioned scientific institution could significantly influence how the public understood “appropriate” relationships between Australians and Australian flora, as well as promoting national pride among those who visited the gardens.

In view of the anticipated development of Canberra as the capital of the Commonwealth with a University and scientific institutions, the Botanical Gardens should be planned to serve as an additional scientific institution and as Canberra will increasingly become a Mecca for visitors the conception of a public park with aesthetic landscape treatment should be a natural part of any scheme of development. . . . National education in floral and arboreal beautification of the home, the community and the country, is fostered by visits to botanical gardens where trees, shrubs and plants may be seen in appropriate settings and groupings.

Managers of the gardens today have remained close to the design of Bertram Dickson, with the motto, “growing, studying and promoting Australia’s flora,” adorning the gardens’ promo-tional material. The following excerpt is from the website and, again, captures an awareness among the gardens’ managers of the propensity for such state endorsed institutions to signifi-cantly influence the public’s understanding of and relationship to the natural environment.

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The fundamental functions and outcomes in education in its broad sense of increasing people’s knowledge, understanding and appreciation of plants, and thence conservation via influencing of opinion and behaviour, are classically delivered in botanic gardens by the agency of a relaxing, amenable, meaningful and attractive garden environment for the visitor. This ‘given’ must be a basic consideration in the development of thematic plans. In addition to these ‘passive’ education and amenity purposes, teaching institutions have a valuable resource for both botanical and horticultural classes through visit to the Gardens’ living collections. (Fagg, 2003)

As with the city of Canberra, as one encounters the space of the gardens one is the “passive” recipient of certain information about Australian flora, indeed, about the scientifically “appropri-ate” way to structure the world in relation to “nature.” As with the city of Canberra, the particular “messages” being imparted to those who visit the gardens reflect the cosmological orientation in which culturally salient aspects of the world occupy a significant, often central, position.

As you can see on the map, reproduced from the ANBG website, the gardens are shaped in a vaguely rectangular fashion and the entrance to the gardens is the closest point in the grounds to both Capital Hill and Civic (Figure 1). Note, also, that the orientation of the gardens is provided in relation to these two, key, city features. The Gardens feature neat and orderly walkways that meander in organically shaped loops. Visitors are cautioned to remain on the designated paths in

Figure 1. Australian Government, Australian National Botanic Gardens, 2013, map.Source. Image courtesy of the Australian National Botanic Gardens. Retrieved from http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/visiting/exploring/index.html

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Figure 2. Australian Government, Modified by the author from Australian National Botanic Gardens, 2010, map.Source. Image courtesy of the Australian National Botanic Gardens. Retrieved from http://www.anbg.gov.au/maps/ANBG-map-colour-2006-02-02.pdf

order to avoid damage to the plants. From the Visitor Centre, Education Centre and the Café, the “Main Path” loops around the middle of the gardens, taking in the major features. Other walk-ways intersect with the Main Path, leading the visitor either within the primary route, or beyond the boundaries into other areas. The pathways help distinguish between the different areas of the Gardens, each characterized by a particular “thematic interpretation.”

“Thematic interpretation” is a key element of the educational function of the gardens. According to the Australian National Botanic Gardens Plan of Management 2002-2008, “The overall aim is to provide recreational and learning experiences for visitors, and opportunities for scientific study, through the development of interpreted thematic plant displays” [italics in original] (Fagg, 2003).

In these thematic subzones, particular aspects of Australian flora are identified, delineated, and presented for observation and contemplation. The names of these “themes” have changed slightly over the years, though have consistently included geographic, taxonomic, and self-consciously “cultural” categories. Examples of geographic locations include the Tasmanian gully and rainforests, the Sydney region gully, and the Western Mallee (Figure 2). Presentations

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grouped by species or taxonomy include the eucalypt lawn and the myrtaceae display. At the time of writing, a theme labeled “ethnobotanic” refers visitors to “growing plants used by Australia’s indigenous people for food, medicine and fibre”; future plans exist for a “cultural and historical” theme which groups “plants with historical or cultural significance” (ANBG, 2014).

Within these themed areas, the individual plant species are marked with plant-identification tags that display information about the specimens, including genre, Latin name, and so on. From the gravel walking tracks, visitors can observe the plants, in their themed groupings, and fitted with metal tags (Figure 3). The structured and highly organized layout of the space clearly con-veys a sense that the gardens present a scientifically authenticated account of Australian flora. Indeed, in some garden-beds, the plants seem to be overrun by the tags that identify their scien-tifically authenticated features. According to the Australian National Botanic Gardens literature, “Interpreted thematic plant displays . . . will continue to feature Australian plants in a broad sci-entific, cultural and horticultural context, based on scientifically authenticated information” (Fagg, 2003).

Around the perimeter of the Gardens (except the side bordered by the CSIRO), is a “Buffer Zone” comprising untended secondary growth (previously under use as a dairy farm). Unlike the more carefully monitored central area, visitors are allowed to wander around the Buffer Zone unfettered. As one Visitor Centre employee commented, “[The public] don’t have to worry about standing on small plants [in the Buffer Zone].” Though the plants in the Buffer Zone are repre-sentative of “naturally” occurring local plant species, the Buffer Zone has only a fraction of the species contained in the central part of the gardens, challenging the goal of showcasing biological

Figure 3. Plants with labels or labels with plants, 2002, photograph.Source. Author.

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diversity. Containing only endemic plants, the area is less significant as an emblem of national indigenous flora. Lacking thematic interpretation, the Buffer Zone is arguably less appropriate as a tool for scientifically authenticated education. The area is physically less accessible to the pub-lic as a source of “passive” education. On the list of priorities for future development, this Buffer Zone is listed as a “low priority.” In the spatial, and future management, design of the gardens, that which is most heavily culturally interpreted is deemed central to the representation of nature, whereas the Buffer Zone is both literally and culturally peripheral. (This map has been recently superseded by one that does not specifically label the various zones. See link to Figure 1 for details.)

The interpreted themes convey something of the social context in which the gardens are con-structed as an objective representation of Australian flora. Of course, the garden staff cannot gather a completely comprehensive collection of Australian flora and present it in a way that accurately represents every floral and cultural aspect of Australia. They cannot, for example, cap-ture all of the issues pertaining to the logging of regions of Tasmania, nor the dynamic valuation of native plants for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, nor the somewhat fraught rela-tionship with the floral environment experienced by Australian farmers. A careful study of the themes themselves, of how “nature” is scientifically authenticated, classified, tagged, and pre-sented, could tell us something of the way those aspects that are, and are not, presented are valued. However, I draw attention to the very fracturing and delineating, the isolation of the themes and individual species, and their presentation in such a way as to convey the sense that they authenti-cally represent that which lies thousands of kilometers away. By showcasing tiny representative samples of Australian flora in a space traversable on foot in a matter of hours, the gardens act as a miniature of the entire Continent. Like privileged spectators, the public can wander around the paths surveying a floral representation of a much larger area, gaining an understanding of what these outlying regions comprise without actually being there. What the experience of visiting the Australian National Botanic Gardens “passively” suggests is that nature can be pleasant and safe, orderly, observed from afar, knowable by science, appropriately managed by those with scientific authority, and delineated into essentialized elements, isolable, first, from other ecological ele-ments and, second, from the social interpretation of those elements.

Conclusion

Returning to Roepstorff et al.’s (2003) suggestion that “nature” and “culture” influence each other, I note that Australian citizens are limited in how much they can alter the physical spaces of Canberra. Rules, laws, police, and bureaucratic frameworks hold firm the design of the city and its public landscapes. I could, for example, physically rearrange my home garden in any way I choose, despite the potential ramifications of others encountering this space as a cosmological aberration. However, to chop down a tree—indeed to plant one—in the center of Canberra would require more than simply my will to do so but also the negotiation of various administrative checks that prevent capricious change. Evolving social values and attitudes to the state, or to nature, are not readily imprinted on physical environments such as the ANBG but must be fil-tered through the interpretive lenses of those who maintain its design. By contrast, the influence of the garden environment on visitor understandings of nature can be subtly conveyed during a casual stroll.

While I am not suggesting that all those who visit the gardens are dupes, that they passively accept the symbolic “reality” of the gardens as objective reproductions of distant experiences, the process of visiting the gardens has correlations with the experience of moving through the spaces of Canberra itself. Common cosmological themes emerge that add to the overall “message” imparted to those moving around the spaces of Canberra as well as those who are subject to the governance that emanates from the state Capital. Common is the privileging of the central over

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the peripheral, the construction of the space as a centralized representation of the entire nation and the recourse to privileged (scientific) authority to order the world. Also common is an appre-ciation of nature as an ordered, isolatable, and controllable commodity, somewhat separable from the influences and impacts of humans.

I conclude with a comment about the broader importance of investigating these structured spaces in which understandings about the natural environment are passively imparted. For those of us who are concerned with the underlying assumptions made by the Australian government in their centralized management of the Commonwealth’s, indeed the planet’s, natural resources, developing an understanding of how nation-states represent and impart knowledge about “nature” through built architectural environments like the Australian National Botanic Gardens is much more than an opportunity for scholarly exploration, but potentially contributes to a more reflex-ive understanding of the knowledge that is passively imparted as people perambulate through the “environmental texts” located in Australia’s capital cities.

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to all those who participated in the 2007 Australian Anthropology Society conference, Transforming Economies, Changing States, Australian National University, Canberra, and to Daniel Ooi, Yasmine Musharbash, Claire Knowles, and Mathew Turner for helpful comments and advice. Special thanks go to the employees of the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra.

Author’s Note

A version of this article was presented at the 2007 Australian Anthropology Society conference, Transforming Economies, Changing States, Australian National University, Canberra.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-cation of this article: This article is partially based on fieldwork supported by an Australian Research Council grant awarded to Monica Minnegal and Peter Dwyer, and by a research scholarship (MRS) awarded to me by the University of Melbourne.

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Author Biography

Tanya J. King is a Senior Lecturer in anthropology at Deakin University, Australia. Her research interests include natural resource management and policy implementation, commercial fishing, and the social con-struction of environmental realities.

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