Comparing The Article 'Painted Desert And' Tragedy Of Human Resources

There are many ways in which individuals and communities own culture and nature can be seen. As a result, conflicts can arise when culture and nature are bought and sold in a marketplace. These can best be seen in the articles “Painted Desert” and “Tragedy of the Commons.” In “Painted Desert” the conflict is that the Natives of Australia, also known as the Aboriginal Australians, were stripped from their land by white developers and had to regain their land by selling their art. The Aboriginal Australians weren’t ones for selling their art as seen in a Dreaming Story. A Dreaming Story was a narrative drawn in the sand that represented how their ancestors had come to Australia. Because the narrative was drawn in the sand, it would constantly

be washed away by rain. Once the white developers came to Australia, they had a government worker work with poor communities to sell crafts in order to make their community better. The mangi (the physical or spiritual trace one leaves behind) was also scraped off the land by white developers. This created a conflict for the Aboriginal Australians of having to fight for their own good life of preserving their land. As a result, they sold a large painting called Ngurrara I for over $200,000.
In the second article, the author Garrett Hardin comes up with an economic theory known as the tragedy of the commons. This theory discusses how some may act in their own self-interest and exploit common resources. This creates the conflict of a resulting individual benefiting from something, while the society pays the cost. For example, using the example of a farmer from the article, if a farmer was to dump chemicals into a river, he would benefit because it costs him less to dump the chemicals in the river rather than purifying them before disposing of it. Others have to pay the cost of the farmer’s mistake because they risk their crops being destroyed if they were to use any of the chemical-infused water from the river. The market is in contention with the intrinsic values if because if the market was to sell any common resource, then it would be seen as morally wrong.