Cathy Hope

Ecological Connections: Reimagining the Role of Farmers' Markets

Abstract Fears raised about future food security have increasingly politicised the food system, challenged traditional notions of an urban/rural divide and highlighted the growing disconnection between people and their food. In Canberra, the issue of food has spawned both national policy responses as well as new personal engagements most overtly expressed in a ‘turn to the local’ through growing one’s own food, purchasing it at farmers’ retail outlets and, perhaps most significantly, shopping at farmers’ markets. In all of these practices, we can glimpse new articulations of human/nature relationships grounded in notions of well-being. Through a focus on the farmers’ markets this research draws on analysis of ethnographic and organisational data to examine the multiple ways in which the staging of this food-based exchange can construct and facilitate more productive engagement with practices of ecological well-being which move beyond notions of caring for the environment. Through the Capital Region Farmers Market, we explore the potential for embodied engagement in the food system to actively (re)connect people to the communities, land and the environment which yields their food. In so doing, we investigate the potential of these sites to promote more ethical ecological understandings and practices.

The battle to open Australia's airwaves: the Whitlam government and youth station 2JJ

Australias public youth radio station, Triple J, turns forty in 2015. The station was one of the few achievements to arise from the Whitlam governments intended bold, wide-sweeping media reforms. Radio was seen as a vehicle for strengthening the nations democracy through improving citizen access to, and participation in, national political and cultural debate. Expansion of the media industry was also viewed by the Whitlam government as key to increasing employment opportunities. However, the challenging political environment, debates about the technical capacity for media expansion, and an economic recession reduced the grand plan for broadcast reform to something much more cautious, including 2JJ, a rock-style station. Since then, 2JJ has undergone multiple transformations in response to changing technologies, political agendas and audience tastes. In 1980, Double Jay moved to the FM band and became known as Triple J. By the late 1980s, Triple J was broadcasting beyond Sydney to capital cities and then, throughout the 1990s, rolled out to regional Australia to realise the National Youth Network. This paper considers the rather fraught campaign by the Whitlam government to open Australias airwaves, which eventually led to the birth of Australias first youth radio station.