Experiencing Change in A Globalising Agricultural Economy: A Case Study

Abstract

<p>This thesis is a case study of a small agricultural community in north-western New South Wales, located on the edge of the Liverpool Plains. The community was established as part of the returned soldier settlement program post-World War II. The government compulsorily acquired the land from a large pastoral company in order to reshape settlement patterns toward small-scale farming types. This represents Moment One: the height of nation-building efforts after the War, which included initiatives to both populate the landscape with preferred social forms and to increase agricultural production. This thesis traces the subsequent history of the area as it moves toward Moment Two: the contemporary experience of intensifying exposure to global markets and the retraction of direct state support for agricultural production. </p> <p>These two moments are captured through in-depth qualitative data. The first moment includes first-hand accounts of the enactment of the state-directed returned soldier land settlement scheme using oral history sources. The second includes in-depth interviews with farmers both in-place and ex-place. Set against a sociological history of Australia, this research looks at the way in which processes of change are embedded in social contexts and enacted by agents operating within particular cultural understandings of the individual and of the state. </p> <p>This thesis is not simply an in-depth community study, rather it serves to enrich our understanding of how large-scale changes impact upon individuals’ lived experience, their relationship to place and their orientation toward work and the land. For this reason, this thesis also addresses classical and contemporary theoretical debates in economic sociology concerning the commodification of land, the disembedding of the economy and the changing role of the state. To this end, the thesis has been framed in Polanyian terms. </p>