This book interprets the predicament faced by Australia's regional people from their own perspective and proposes a means by which they can act together to find a secure future under globalisation. It argues that neoliberalism in combination with its 'real world' effects in economic policy are driving regional Australia further into social, environmental and economic decay. Gray and Lawrence advocate a new kind of regionalism with broad objectives for people to pursue. This takes discussion about rural and regional policies out of the contexts of trade and industry policies and into the realm of the social and political. Ideas developed throughout the book are drawn from rural sociology, community studies, rural geography, political economy and regional studies.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Understanding globalisation; 3. Reflexivity versus economic rationalism: bringing people back in; 4. Rural restructuring and social transformation; 5. Confusion amid protest: voices from the farm; 6. Regional restructuring and its policy impacts; 7. Regional reflexivity: confronting community dependency; 8. Beyond productivism and environmental degradation?; 9. Detraditionalisation: disempowering rural and regional communities; 10. Governance for dependency: neoliberal policies and regional Australia; 11. Rural and regional Australia: options for a new millennium.

Reviews

"The real value in this book is in its ability to unravel the many internal contradictions in neoliberal ideology through empirical example, rather than conceptual argument." Canadian Journal of Sociology Online