Counter-geographies: The campaign against rationalisation of agricultural research stations in New South Wales, Australia

This paper discusses an example of community action mounted in a rural region of New South Wales, Australia, in response to proposals by the State Government to rationalise agricultural research stations operated by the Department of Primary Industries. Informed by a Foucaultian understanding of power and the concept of governmentality, neoliberalism is theorised as being the broad governmental context in which rationalisation proposals were put forward. Recent literature drawing on this theoretical perspective has emphasised that neoliberalism is enacted through a relationship of power, and is not monolithic or inevitable. Neoliberalism is always negotiated by those seeking to govern and those who are the object of such governmental actions. This paper analyses how plans to rationalise publicly funded agricultural research stations were opposed by those seeking to keep research facilities open in the case study area. The paper discusses the methods and scope of community action and, drawing on interviews, identifies a series of discourses articulated by campaigners. Non-local actors were depicted as uncaring and insensitive. In contrast, campaigners discussed the emergence of a ‘city-country divide’ in domestic politics; the need for specialist agricultural knowledge given the region's unique geographical location; and local impacts of an economic, social and emotional nature. Central were discourses of maintaining community, tradition, and continuity in unique local places defined by their climate, biophysical environment and economy. These were ‘counter-geographies’ that sought (successfully, it would transpire) to disrupt the state's imagined geography of a homogenous and flexible administrative space in which research services could be relocated wherever most efficient. Important too were embodied resistances to the way rural industries and people were subjected. Campaigners refused to accept preferred codes of neoliberal behaviour (particularly mobility and rationality) and instead demanded respect for their careers, families and communities. Important considerations are suggested for further research on impacts and negotiations of neoliberalism. This study particularly highlights the successes—as well as contradictions and limitations—of arguments that construct rural places as socialised, unique and unfairly treated (by governments), in opposition to metropolitan dominance and ‘placeless’ neoliberalism.     

Do self‐assessment and self‐directed support undermine traditional social work with disabled people?

In recent years, self‐assessment and self‐directed support have become mainstream options within disability services. The Disabled People’s Movement has advocated the need for such change for a long time but this has been persistently resisted by many social workers. In this article, it will be argued that both self‐assessment and self‐directed support undermine traditional social work and that social workers need to begin to work alongside disabled people, rather than ‘for’ disabled people, in order to achieve substantial system change.     

Homosexual not Homogeneous: A Motivation-Based Typology of Gay Leisure Travelers Holidaying in Cape Town,South Africa

ABSTRACT

The gay traveler, a segment of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) travel market, is perceived to be a homogeneous market segment as a result of the assumption that gay men have a unique “homosexual lifestyle.” This assumption is problematic as it conceals many other important variables, and it may hinder effective destination marketing. A Web-based electronic survey was completed by 469 gay male travelers, and attribute-based benefit segmentation was carried out by applying a hierarchical cluster analysis using Ward’s procedure with Euclidean distances. The typology is based on the push and pull framework; the motivations of travelers were assessed both in terms of their socio-psychological motivations and destination attributes of Cape Town. The typology empirically suggests that gay travelers are not homogeneous, and that sexuality influences the travel behavior of a minority of gay men. Consequently, not all gay travelers or activities by these travelers can be labeled as “gay” tourism.     

Racism, IQ and Down's Syndrome

There is a consistent difference of some 15 IQ points between the test means of American black and white citizens, and there has been a fierce debate as to whether this can be best accounted for by black intellectual inferiority or by such environmental factors as prejudice and discrimination. However, even supporters of the environmental hypothesis have neglected to apply it to the population-people with Down's Syndrome - to which it is most clearly applicable, and this failure of imagination indicates the boundaries of discourse in the field of intellectual disability. The complex relationship between racism and prejudice against people with Disability is illustrated by Dr Down's use of the term 'mongolism'. Down's characterisation of people with intellectual impairment as equivalent both to children and to people of different races fits the need for a working explanation of intellectual impairment. The characterisation is none the less worthless, and we need new frames to shape our observations.     

Experimentation and Planning in Community Care

The dominant ideology in services for people with learning disabilities is clearly normalisation, or social role valorisation, as it has recently been termed. The emphasis is on the role that a person has within society. However, in Western society, what seems to be valued is power, individualism, enterprise, wealth, beauty and so on. It is not yet clear how we will be able to help people with learning disabilities to achieve such valued social roles. An alternative may be to consider whether we can design communities which value co-operation, affection and interdependence (rather than independence) and I shall describe first a fictional community which has such ideals, and then a real (albeit small) community, in Mexico, where conditions are arranged such that these ideals may be realised. I will then go on to outline some aspects of the philosophy which underpins these communities and which might be relevant to designing co-operative communities. These include the importance of setting objectives; the valuing of human diversity; the importance of viewing a person as a function of her or his social relations; acknowledging the complexity of human behaviour; and the distinction between rule-governed and contingency-shaped behaviour.     

Psychology, Education and the Ghost of Kaspar Hauser

It is argued that the interventions of psychology have changed their predominant goals and orientation in recent times. Previously, psychology operated practices of differentiation within the school population, preserving the 'normal' through the exclusion of the deviant. Now, the predominant orientation is one of normalisation. The ideology of normalisation is shown to 'fit' with the generalities of the 'new', social-critical developmental psychology; but the predominant model for the implementation of normalisation practices utilises behavioural pedagogies and objectives-based curricula. The question is considered of whether there might be a social-developmental alternative.     

Emotions, embodiment and the sensation of society

The study of emotions has attracted an increased amount of attention from mainstream sociologists in recent years, both because of its potential to provide an added dimension to the analysis of such subjects as social conflict, gender inequalities and the organisation of the workplace, and as a result of its relevance to theoretical and methodological debates which have long characterised the discipline. This paper suggests that some of the core questions facing this subject can be interrogated productively by engaging critically with the work of one of the most important ‘founding figures’ of the discipline, Emile Durkheim. What Collins (1988) refers to as the ‘underground wing’ of Durkheim's work has yet to be fully utilised or developed by sociologists concerned with emotions, yet it provides us with a suggestive and provocative means of reconceptualising the gulf that often exists within contemporary work on emotions as malleable and controllable, on the one hand, and that concerned with emotions as intransigent ‘somatic states of being’, on the other. As such, Durkheim's writings constitute an important resource for sociologists concerned with the ongoing project of ‘embodying’ the discipline.     

Mark-resighting analysis of a California gull population

California gulls ( Larus californicus ) of known age and sex were censused on their breeding colony in 1979, 1980 and 1984 through 1993. Ages of 235 males and 196 females ranged from 4 to 27 years. Age classes used in the analysis were limited to 17, 4 through 19, and 20 or more as a final age category because data on gulls over 20 were sparse. Survival declined with age in a way that was parsimoniously modelled with a quadratic function. Other factors, sex and time, did not explain any variation in survival. Resighting depended on age, sex and time. Younger adults skipped breeding more frequently than did older adults, and females skipped breeding more frequently than did males. There was also good evidence for time dependence in resighting probability, but its inclusion in the model occurred at the expense of interpretability and precision. In a data set such as this, resighting probability may assume more importance than a mere 'nuisance parameter'. In this study, resighting history measured attendance at the breeding ground. In turn, attendance rates may be a manifestation of reproductive strategy, which can also have consequences for survival. In this situation, there may be heterogeneity in both survival and resighting probability that is unexplained by the model. While such complexity may well be a nuisance to deal with, it can also point to important biological questions.     

Tamworth, Australia's ‘country music capital’: place marketing, rurality, and resident reactions

Since the 1970s, Tamworth has become well known as Australia's ‘country music capital’. Its annual Country and Western Music Festival has become the leading event of its type in Australia, attracting over 60,000 visitors every year. The festival, and country music more generally, have become central to the town's identity and tourism marketing strategies. This article discusses the social constructions that have surrounded Tamworth's transition to ‘country music capital’—of the ‘rural’, and of ‘country’—within the context of debates about the politics of place marketing. Textual analysis of promotional material and built landscapes reveals representations of rurality (or ‘senses of the rural’). In their most commercial form, representations of rurality converge on a dominant notion of ‘country’, quite different from the ‘countryside’ and ‘rural idyll’ in England. This dominant, or normative ‘country’ forms the basis of imagery for the festival, the Town's marketing strategy, and associated advertising campaigns by major sponsors. It is predominantly masculine, white, working class and nationalist. But links between musical style and discourses of place are complex. Colonial British histories, Celtic musical traditions and North American popular culture all inform ‘country’ in Tamworth, dissipating nationalist interpretations. Normative constructions also contrast with other, heterogeneous ruralities in Australia, that include the lived experiences of rural Australians, and on stage—in country music—where multiple ‘ruralised’ identities are performed. Even those who stand to benefit from place promotion have been uncertain about country music and ‘the country’, because of associated discourses of Tamworth as ‘hick’ and ‘redneck’. In the final section of the paper, reactions of residents to constructions of Tamworth as country music capital are discussed, via the results of a simple resident survey. In contrast to previous studies of the disempowering politics of place marketing, Tamworth residents were on the whole supportive of the new associations and images for the town, despite ‘hick’ connotations, as it has become a centre for ‘country’, and for country music. Reasons for this are explored, and resistances discussed. The result is a complex and entangled politics of national identity, gender, race and class, where meanings for place are variously interpreted and negotiated.