Vaughan Higgins

Re-discovering the social: neo-liberalism and hybrid practices of governing in rural natural resource management

Abstract Since the 1980s, natural resource management (NRM) in rural Australia has been underpinned by rationalities and technologies of governing that constitute agricultural landscapes and resource managers in economically rational terms. While it is tempting to interpret these forms of regulation as part of a broad shift away from social forms of governing, this paper argues that ‘the social’ remains of crucial significance in understanding how both natural environments and the capacities of individuals to manage these environments are constructed. Drawing upon recent work in the Foucauldian-inspired literature on governmentality and, in particular, Stenson and Watts (Urban Studies 36(1) (1999) 189–201) concept of hybrid governance, this paper examines how particular representations of ‘the social’ are assembled through strategies of NRM. Using the National Landcare Program (NLP) and Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) as examples, we consider how ‘social’ data is being incorporated into resource management strategies, and how this re-shapes both ‘the social’ and NRM as domains of governance. While the NLP and NHT incorporate concerns about social responsibility, they define these in terms of the capacity of individuals to respond to changing economic circumstances. This effectively defines land managers as socially and ecologically responsible only to the extent that they have the managerial capacities to pursue economically ‘rational’ practices. In concluding, we argue that hybrid practices of governing are indeed evident in NRM in Australia and that the concept of ‘hybrid governance’ requires further attention in understanding how rural spaces are made knowable and shaped as objects of knowledge.

Online University Education: Liberating the Student?

Throughout the world, universities are in the process of mixing ‘virtual’ and ‘traditional’ forms of course delivery in order to facilitate their move toward total ‘virtual’ learning environments. In the context of Australia, which provides the focus of this article, the move to online education is presented as inevitable in the face of increasing technological advances in information-communication technologies (ICTs) and the forces of globalization. A review of higher-education financing and policy, Learning for Life, for instance, cites technological developments (i.e. digital media, the Internet) as key determinants of change in the wider society and consequently in the Australian higher education system. The report argues that communication and information technologies will ‘lower costs, improve access, and improve the quality of educational outcomes’ in university education (Flew, 1998, p. 20). The report states:

Working around ERPs in Technological Universities

This article explores the work-arounds through which an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software system is implemented within an Australian University. We argue that while resistance is significant, the process of working around a technology can have ambiguous effects in terms of how users—in this case academics—are governed and govern themselves. Drawing upon Andrew Barry’s Foucauldian-inspired work on ‘‘technological zones,’’ we show how attempts to work-around the ERP contributed to the creation of an alternative technological zone based on cultural discourses of academic freedom aimed at resisting the standardized programs of action inscribed within the university-wide ERP. However, we demonstrate also that these work-arounds resulted in a partial convergence with the university’s advanced liberal objectives of going online to become a globally competitive university. We conclude that more research needs to be conducted into the multiple and ambiguous effects of work-arounds in the practice of governing.

Performing users : The case of a computer-based dairy decision-support system

This article draws on the concept of “performance” to argue for greater recognition of preexisting practices in the configuration of users. Through an Australian case study of a computer-based dairy decision-support system introduced via a two-day workshop to participating farmers, the article examines the assembling of imputed farmer users in the design of the software. It then explores how the designer and trainers attempt, through the decision-support system, to mobilize their network and align the imputed user with farmers preexisting performances. The case study highlights that attempts to make workable on-farm the “new” performances of users inscribed in the software are highly contingent on farmers preexisting knowledge practices. These “old” performances problematize the designers and trainers version of imputed users and contribute to partial translation of the decision-support system. A focus on performance is argued to provide a useful starting point in mapping the effects of preexisting knowledge practices on attempts to enroll users in technosocial programs.

Mapping the dynamics of new forms of technological governance in agriculture: methodological considerations

This paper reflects on the conceptual issues involved in developing a methodology to study the role of computer-based technologies, and particularly farm planning and management software, in governing the practices of farmers. It represents the first stage of a larger project that explores how farm planning and management practices are governed through, and reconfigured by, such technology. In recent years, computer software has been encouraged by a range of government and nongovernment agencies and organisations as a useful technical means of supporting farm decisionmaking and improving farmers managerial capacities, thereby improving their competitive position. The key question of this paper is how to conceptualise and study this link. Existing literature in the area tends to draw on either rationalist – technological determinist or social constructionist accounts which, we suggest, are limited in understanding such software as a type of governmental technology that has productive effects. We argue that a methodology drawing upon insights from governmentality and actor-network theory enables the role of software in programmes of agricultural governance to be more robustly explored as a sociotechnical process. Specifically, a ‘sociology of translation’ is outlined to demonstrate how computer software can be analysed as a material technology of government that constitutes and shapes the capacities of ‘users’ as calculable agents. In order to demonstrate how such a methodology might work in practice, we apply a translation methodology to decision-support software designed to improve the planning practices of dairy farmers in the State of Victoria, Australia.

Guest Editorial Rural governance in Australia: Changing forms and emerging actors

This special edition of Rural Society on rural governance in Australia is both timely and long overdue. For more than two decades now, we have witnessed an increased complexity in the way contemporary rule is exercised in Australia - and elsewhere - as a growing range of community, business and other non-government actors become increasingly involved in processes of decision-making and service delivery that were once considered the domain of the state. In this sense, governance is not a recent phenomenon, and scholars and policymakers have been deliberating on the directions of these changes for more than ten years. While initial writings on governance had a tendency to focus almost exclusively on its urban manifestations, it is now well accepted that the nature and impact of rural governance is equally profound and therefore worthy of more careful consideration1.In searching for an appropriate definition of governance, Stoker (1998, p. 38) sums it up nicely in suggesting that governance:...refers to the action, manner or system of governing in which the boundary between organisations, and public and private sectors have become permeable.Yet, underlying this neat definition is a raft of changes, which are neither straight forward nor necessarily underpinned by a coherent political rationality. It is for this reason that we consider the publication of these eight papers on rural governance especially timely, since they take stock of the present theory and practice of rural governance in Australia and attempt to capture the diversity of the ensuing institutional arrangements through which rural economic, social and environmental policy is enacted. We learn from these papers that the ostensible shift from government to governance does not, as once suggested, involve a decline in the importance of state authorities. Indeed, government remains heavily present in contemporary forms of governance, via the ongoing structures of Australias federated system, and the continued role of state, federal and local government agencies in policy formulation and delivery. What this suggests is that the government-governance relationship needs to be theorised more carefully and the papers in this volume provide a useful starting point for this activity.We also learn from this special edition that the inclusion of the community in governance arrangements is not entirely unproblematic either. While it would seem that governance has the potential to be more democratic in its processes and outcomes than conventional forms of government, this is by no means inevitable. To begin with, the level of resources and authority devolved to local citizens needs to be commensurate with the degree of responsibility placed upon them. Moreover, it has long been recognised that communities are not homogenous or harmonious entities with shared sets of interests, and this becomes readily apparent when we consider the broad range of actors who are now expected to reach consensus on matters over which they have diverging and competing interests. Several of the papers in this volume address this very issue and show how conflict, exclusion, and unequal power relations between stakeholder groups can undermine a general commitment to democracy if left unchecked.This is illustrated clearly by the opening three papers of this volume. In the first, Lionel Pero and Tim Smith reflect that in the sphere of natural resource management (NRM), traditional dialogue between state agencies and peak farming or commodity groups has now been extended to include a much broader range of nontraditional rural actors. In this context, finding consensus solutions that take into account the diverse views of these different groups becomes increasingly problematic, with Pero and Smith advocating multisector dialogue as a way of facilitating more inclusive forms of natural resource governance. Drawing on a comparative analysis of two regional NRM bodies in Queensland, the authors warn that even when there is a strong commitment to multi-sectoral dialogue, its enactment may be undermined by the broader political social and NRM contexts in which the groups operate. …

Introduction: Governing the rural

Recent decades have witnessed the transition from the government of rural areas towards processes of governance in which the boundaries between the state and civil society are blurred. As a result, governance is commonly linked to bottom-up or community-based approaches to planning and development, which are said to empower rural citizens and liberate them from the disabling structures of top-down government control. At the same time, however, a range of other actors beyond the local level have also become increasingly influential in determining the future of rural spaces, thereby embedding rural citizens within new configurations of power relations. This book critically explores the social causes and consequences of these emerging governance arrangements. In particular, the book seeks to move beyond questions of empowerment in governance debates and to consider how new kinds of power relations arise between the various actors involved. The book addresses questions concerning the nature of power relations in contemporary forms of rural governance, including: how community participation is negotiated and achieved; the effects of such participation upon the formulation and delivery of rural policies; the kinds of conflicts that arise between various stakeholder groups and the capacity of each group to promote its interests; and the prospects of this new approach for enhanced democratic governance in rural areas.