Hawkesbury Harvest : panacea, paradox and the spirit of capitalism in the rural hinterlands of Sydney, Australia

This study presents a phenomenological exposition of Hawkesbury Harvest (Harvest), a community‐based, not‐for‐profit that formed in the year 2000 to address the systemic threats to farming in the Sydney Basin, threats to farm viability, and community health issues related to changes in the food system. Revealed from the perspectives of its four longest‐serving actors and taking a grounded inductive stance within an emancipatory research paradigm, the study documents and interprets Harvest’s archeo‐legacies in the Sydney development dialogue. Within institutional settings there were no linkages between policy and action and the challenges Harvest actors recognized affecting agriculture, food, farming and health. The ‘panacea’ that tourism is promoted to be by government gave Harvest access to neo‐liberal programs of support capable of creating the links, the nexus between Sydney’s future and a future for farming, and so Harvest’s first funded initiative was a Farm Gate Trail. Harvest began a process of communicative action expressed through a range of economic initiatives which created agri‐tourism, open farms, farmer markets and food events. These engaged the wider Sydney community through experiential animations in a critical and paradoxical dialogue about urban development, food, health and farming with a core message that farming in the Sydney Basin needed to be retained and protected, for the sake of both rural community and city dwellers. A repertoire of messages developed that are contingent on a dynamic engagement with Sydney’s development discourse, messages that have evolved and self‐reference Harvest in the prosecution of its dialectic. This phenomenology presents empirical evidence for Harvest as a ‘carrier’ (after Weber) of moral imperatives in support of agriculture in the Sydney Basin. As a place‐based reaction to global forces it made possible the expression of its actors’ personal ‘calling’ into service for a greater good and mobilized discourses about local food systems, regional identity, cultural landscape and local farming mythology as components in its agri‐cultural economic initiatives. This placist dialectic activated and harnessed the classic Weberian conundrum of formal versus substantive rationality, and gave expression to Weber’s own concession about rationality, that without a teleology, a values‐informed rationality, it simply reinforces what he famously described as the Iron Cage of modernity. Harvest’s mechanisms make available the expression of a spirit in capitalism, one Weber believed would be snuffed out in a secularized world, but one which we can still find in the small places that throw up resistance to the Iron Cage in forms like Hawkesbury Harvest

Hearing loss diagnosis provision of information and support: audiologist and parent perspectives

When a child is diagnosed with hearing loss, the parents are faced with many decisions that will impact their child’s future. This study aimed to obtain data to determine viewpoints on information being provided to parents of children with hearing loss from both audiologist and parent perspectives. Topics of information surveyed included information on modes of communication, Deaf culture, cochlear implants, emotional support, and state resources/laws. A survey was created and shared in Facebook groups for audiologists and parents of Deaf/hard of hearing children. The survey was completed by 91 audiologists and 111 parents. Audiologist and parent survey data was analyzed and compared to look for similarities, differences, and possible biases. The data obtained in the study showed that overall, information on the topics investigated is being provided to parents when their child is initially diagnosed with hearing loss. However, many parents felt that the information that was provided was insufficient; therefore, they did not feel confident in their decision-making process. Audiologists have the responsibility to provide parents with unbiased, extensive information for parents to successfully make informed decisions for their child. Provision of practical, comprehensive information and recommendations may lead to improved parent knowledge and confidence

Governing through choice: Food labels and the confluence of food industry and public health discourse to create ‘healthy consumers’

Food industry and public health representatives are often in conflict, particularly over food labelling policies and regulation. Food corporations are suspicious of regulated labels and perceive them as a threat to free market enterprise, opting instead for voluntary labels. Public health and consumer groups, in contrast, argue that regulated and easy-to-read labels are essential for consumers to exercise autonomy and make healthy choices in the face of food industry marketing. Although public health and food industry have distinct interests and objectives, I argue that both contribute to the creation of the food label as a governmental strategy that depends on free-market logics to secure individual and population health. While criticism of ‘Big Food’ has become a growth industry in academic publishing and research, wider critique is needed that also includes the activities of public health. Such a critique needs to address the normalizing effect of neoliberal governmentality within which both the food industry and public health operate to reinforce individuals as ‘healthy consumers’. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, I examine the food label through the lens of governmentality. I argue that the rationale operating through the food label combines nutrition science and free-market logics to normalize subjects as responsible for their own health and reinforces the idea of consumption as a means to secure population health from diet-related chronic diseases

Tourism as a mechanism for farm survival

This case study explores the linkages between tourism, community and development forces in the peri-urban zones of Sydney, Australia. The Hawkesbury Harvest Farm Gate Trail (HHFGT) emerged as a response to market, development, settlement and consumer pressures threatening the survival of farming in the region, together with connections to community health initiatives in food access, safety, security and quality that were spawned by the Healthy Cities programme and Agenda 21. The interaction created between farmers and tourists involved new challenges for farmers in production, marketing and service provision. Although challenging, community-based initiatives like the Farm Gate Trail are shown to hold great potential for sustainable development and sustainable tourism despite the attendant risks associated with small-scale, intensive agriculture, tourism management issues and the land use conflicts that are created when town and country meet in the urban fringe areas of major metropolises

Hybrid cultivars : outsourcing industry development and support to the grass roots : the case of Hawkesbury Harvest Inc., Sydney, Australia

Hawkesbury Harvest (Harvest) emerged in the year 2000 to address issues of farm viability, sustainability and health in the local government area of Hawkesbury City, on the north western outskirts of Sydney, Australia. It attracted a group of people from within the community who were passionate about a heritage landscape changing in the face of urbanization, and concerned about family farm viability in the face of global food systems and their market structures. These two dynamics were perceived as contributing to the loss of farms, health and lifestyle disease, and food equity disparities within the community. Hawkesbury Harvest was and remains something of a 'fringe' initiative. It literally came into being on the periphery of the City, in the urban growth zones of the Sydney basin. It is one driven by a small group of fringe dwellers, small-holding farmers clinging to what had become an unviable mode of farming in the face of pressure to relinquish their farms to developers. Development agendas for retaining farm lands in the Sydney basin and policy initiatives designed to protect the small family farm did not attract government attention and effort, whereas tourism did and this made action around the viable farms in the region possible. Hawkesbury Harvest bridged the gap, filling a void created by a policy and action vacuum. In the years since it first emerged, it has transitioned from a functionally-driven entity into a strategic one with influence in the mainstream debates on food, farming, health and urbanization in Sydney, with wider contributions into state and national policy arenas in agriculture, health and tourism. Harvest is a salient example of the hybrid cultivars in governance and industry development, the pseudo-governmental actors that have emerged in community during the last decade to service gaps in sustainable development agendas at the local level

Peer moderation of group work in a hospitality program : issues and reflections

This paper describes and discusses the role of peer assessment as a tool in allocating individual grades for group activities in hospitality education. Issues arising and reflections based on the use of peer assessment are then explored. The paper starts by describing the instrument used. Some of its features including validity and confidentiality are discussed. The focus of the paper is to reflect on issues that have arisen from the use of peer evaluation as a tool in hospitality education. These issues have been identified as those of equity, cross-cultural appropriateness, administration and, control and responsibility for both staff and students. Despite the added complexities, peer assessment in hospitality education is a worthwhile tool that fosters important industry-relevant skills, attributes and attitudes in students. This paper seeks to encourage the use of peer assessment in the assessment regime for group work and promote it as a moderating influence, not just in the hospitality context, but in other discipline areas reliant on “team work” approaches

The emergence of urban agriculture : Sydney, Australia

Across the world the phenomenon of urban agriculture (UA) is defining itself after emerging from a mainly grass-roots response, evidenced in the Sydney Metropolitan Region by the Hawkesbury Harvest phenomenon and the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, to powerful global forces which are negatively and paradoxically impacting on the quality of life of urban and farming communities. In the developed world these major forces include: (1) urban sprawl and its progressive sterilization of agricultural lands; (2) the supermarket dominance of food chains; (3) the fast food industry and associated health problems such as obesity; (4) globalization. The community-based promotion and marketing of local agriculture is causing some governments and public and private organizations throughout the world to recognize UA as a strategic mechanism to enable urban communities to deal with food security in the context of neo-liberalism, climate change, pandemics, natural disasters, human and environmental health, carbon footprint, biosecurity/terrorism, peak oil, waste management, and landscape and natural resource management. This paper explores the history of UA in the Sydney region. It is a narrative that allows for UA in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan area to draw on the experiences of other developed countries where UA is establishing its position

Urban agriculture: The new frontier

The State of Australian Cities (SOAC) national conferences have been held biennially since 2003 to support interdisciplinary policy-related urban research. This paper was presented at SOAC 2 held in Brisbane from 30 November to 2 December 2005. SOAC 2 was hosted by the Urban Research Program at the South Bank campus, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. The principal intention of the conference was to lead a dialogue between leading researchers on the state of Australian cities and where they might be headed. SOAC 2 was designed to lead to a better understanding of the research needs of Australian cities and to provide those in the public and private sectors with a better appreciation of the current state and capacities of researchers. SOAC 2 brought together participants from a wide range of fields, including: academics, researchers, policy makers, private and public sector practitioners, leaders in government, social commentators and the media. Conference papers published fromSOAC 2 were subject to a peer review process prior to presentation at the conference, with further editing prior to publication

Implementing a triple bottom line approach to monitor the impacts of tourism in Manly

This paper outlines the development and findings of an alternate approach to tourism impact evaluation using a values-based, consensus model of triple bottom line assessment undertaken for strategic planning purposes in Manly. Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approaches are a form of assessment that attempt to measure the impact (costs and benefits) of any development or activity (Elkington, 1997). These include ecological, social and economic elements. In this case, the adopted approach assessed the impact of tourism activities on host community values of place. The results generated a snapshot of community sentiment and understanding of the interaction between tourism and the host community on environmental, social and economic values of Manly

Port hierarchy and concentration: Insights from the Mediterranean cruise market

The cruise industry provides a tourism service that is performed entirely by means of transportation: the vessel. Although different characteristics of the cruise industry are well documented in the related academic literature, the role and influence of ports (and port cities) in defining cruise organisation is relatively understudied. Using public official data collected from all the major cruise groups operating in the Mediterranean Sea, we investigate the role of the different ports (and cities) within different itineraries. The analysis highlights that although there is some sort of hierarchical structure among some main ports included in the Mediterranean cruise routes, the majority of the ports of call are in a somewhat vulnerable position within the cruise transport network. Moreover, the study discusses how ports\u2019 characterising elements, such as excursion packages, have a strategic role in ensuring the inclusion of peripheral ports within the cruise network