Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/57459
Title: Experiencing Change in A Globalising Agricultural Economy: A Case Study
Contributor(s): Baker, Claire Janet  (author)orcid ; Scott, Alan  (supervisor)orcid ; Argent, Neil  (supervisor)orcid ; Walsh, Adrian  (supervisor)orcid 
Conferred Date: 2018-10-27
Copyright Date: 2018-05
Thesis Restriction Date until: 2023-10-27
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/57459
Abstract: 

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.

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.

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.

Publication Type: Thesis Doctoral
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 160499 Human Geography not elsewhere classified
160804 Rural Sociology
160806 Social Theory
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 441003 Rural sociology
441005 Social theory
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 970116 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 280114 Expanding knowledge in Indigenous studies
280123 Expanding knowledge in human society
HERDC Category Description: T2 Thesis - Doctorate by Research
Description: Please contact rune@une.edu.au if you require access to this thesis for the purpose of research or study.
Appears in Collections:School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Thesis Doctoral

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