Urban Agriculture as a Field: Governance, communication and collective action

In this chapter, we argue that Urban Food Networks (UFNs) are a format of collective action that seeks to manage social change within the ‘field’ of urban agriculture (UA). Our intention here is to argue that a field perspective is helpful when studying UA as a facet of social life in the city. This is because fields highlight the relationships between different actors, institutions, ideas and values, and they frame UA as one way of trying to influence social routines in the city. By the same token, UA can be a reflection of dynamism in social routines in the city. City food production is organisationally complex, culturally symbolic, and politically contested. For some years, research on UFNs has been rich and this is linked partly to the wealth of micro case studies that exist. The field framework offers two distinct potentials for UFN scholarship. Firstly, it presents UFNs as an integral part of the varied picture of city food: cities include UFNs because networks of people join together to collectively respond to perceived opportunities or challenges associated with dominant food actors. Secondly, the field concept connects micro-networks with forces of influence at the macro-level suggesting that, in complex social systems such as cities, food activism is one way in which social life is re-created. Such arguments indicate the adaptability of field theory to UA in general, while an examination of UFN social media communications, reveals the empirical potentials of the concept, strengthing the potential for analytical connections between UA in ‘south’ and ‘north’

Geographical classifications to guide rural health policy in Australia

The Australian Government's recent decision to replace the Rural Remote and Metropolitan Area (RRMA) classification with the Australian Standard Geographical Classification - Remoteness Areas (ASGC-RA) system highlights the ongoing significance of geographical classifications for rural health policy, particularly in relation to improving the rural health workforce supply. None of the existing classifications, including the government's preferred choice, were designed specifically to guide health resource allocation, and all exhibit strong weaknesses when applied as such. Continuing reliance on these classifications as policy tools will continue to result in inappropriate health program resource distribution. Purely 'geographical' classifications alone cannot capture all relevant aspects of rural health service provision within a single measure. Moreover, because many subjective decisions (such as the choice of algorithm and breakdown of groupings) influence a classification's impact and acceptance from its users, policy-makers need to specify explicitly the purpose and role of their different programs as the basis for developing and implementing appropriate decision tools such as 'rural-urban' classifications. Failure to do so will continue to limit the effectiveness that current rural health support and incentive programs can have in achieving their objective of improving the provision of health care services to rural populations though affirmative action programs