THE PROFESSIONAL FARMER

The Australian farmer faces important and interconnected management challenges on both the economic and ecological fronts. To confront these challenges effectively, farmers would be well advised to constitute themselves as a professional body along the lines of the Bar Association. Making farming a professional activity in this sense would provide a number of important benefits and advantages. It would facilitate the provision and delivery of the needed educational resources for economic and ecological land management, and help farmers avoid the pressures of heavy‐handed government centralism. At the same time, such professionalism would encourage more efficient use of sector resources by minimising the need for direct political lobbying and intra‐farm group competition for membership. As a professional body, farmers could hope for increased public standing and the economic clout that would come from having control over the supply of skilled land managers.     

The mourning after Hillsborough

There are continuing claims that in our society death is a taboo subject, and that bereaved people have lost touch with mourning rituals. This view seems to be challenged by the extensive mourning rituals on Merseyside in the fortnight in April 1989 following the Hillsborough tragedy, and by the simultaneous media debates about what would constitute appropriate mourning. The article analyses both the media debates and the rituals in order to ascertain whether these contradict the ‘taboo’ thesis, or whether they were unique to Merseyside and/or to a particular disaster.     

The theoretical underpinnings of Chicago sociology in the 1920s and 30s

This paper looks at the work of the Chicago School in the 1920s and 1930s from the standpoint of the debate between positivism and its critics within the discipline of sociology. It is argued that, despite appearances to the contrary, Chicago sociology at this time is based on a rejection of the principles of positivism. It is an attempt to apply the principles of interpretative understanding to the practical problems of empirical research.     

Teacher training and multiculturalism in a transitional society: the case of the Slovak Republic

The authors explore a number of issues surrounding multicultural education in “societies in transition”, emerging from their experiences during a TEMPUS project that took place in the Slovak Republic. The TEMPUS project entailed the development of a multicultural education curriculum for teacher trainers, as a response to the conditions for entry into the European Union. The paper provides background information on the position of ethnic minorities in Slovakia, in particular the Hungarian and Roma population and the development of policies, especially in education, for combating racism. In examining the challenges to educators in developing a more open system than the command education of the recent past, issues such as the predominance of traditional pedagogies, multiculturalism and antiracism, the problems of “other isms” and of giving voice to minorities are considered.