Geoffrey Lawrence
Biographic Data
| ID | 131144 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Geoffrey Lawrence |
| GIVEN NAMES | Geoffrey |
| FAMILY NAME | Lawrence |
| SIGNATURE | LAWRENCE G |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6902-2556 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 639 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1899 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Tracking farmland investment in Australia
Tracking farmland purchases is central to interpreting transnational finance's growing power in agrarian restructuring. Australia's public Register of foreign land ownership reveals little about agrarian change, however. In presenting the first comprehensive mapping of farmland purchases made between 2008 and 2020, this paper examines the ways that financial investments are altering farm ownership patterns in Australia. First, we show that most f…
Agri-food scholarship
The future of food and agriculture in Australasia will be defined by multiple social, economic, political and environmental tensions - with climate change and social inequalities playing a central role in the re-imagining of food systems in crisis. This article argues that rural sociology will continue to be well-served by the sociological research into the farming and food industries undertaken by antipodean scholars - especially those from Aust…
Financialization for Development? Asset Making on Indigenous Land in Remote Northern Australia
Indigenous Australian landowners are increasingly seeking to develop agricultural production on their lands to improve the welfare and economic opportunities of their communities. This can require substantial capital input and, in the absence of enough government funding, Indigenous groups are turning to private investors. Development literature has explored private sector-led and 'financialized' approaches to development at a macro level as some…
Chinese state capitalism and neomercantilism in the contemporary food regime
A significant proportion of critical agri-food literature has, to date, focused on the uneven relations of power between the Global North and the Global South, and the neoliberal characteristics of the corporate food regime. This literature has often overlooked the nuances in varieties of capitalism, particularly in East Asia. China is re-emerging as a powerful state actor in an increasingly multipolar global food system. It is also an important …
Re-evaluating food systems and food security
Three major systems of producing and distributing food coexist in today's world - traditional, modernising and industrialised. While the movement from traditional to modernising to industrialised is neither inevitable nor uncontested, there are various social, economic and political forces that are acting to speed up such a transition. Neoliberal globalisation and financialisation are two of the macro-processes that are implicated in profound cha…
Grounding the financialization of farmland
Connecting resilience, food security and climate change
Defending financialization
In his review of the application of the term ‘financialization’, Christophers points to the limits of the concept in providing conceptual clarity about global change. Analytically, it is viewed as being so nebulous as to be meaningless. Theoretically, it is equivalent to ‘reinventing the wheel’: many existing ideas have more clarity and explanatory power. Strategically, it has diverted attention from the more important study of money. Its empiric…
The resilience of long and short food chains
Finance Capital, Food Security Narratives and Australian Agricultural Land
The growing involvement of financial actors in food production has been one of the major recent transformations in the global agri-food system. This 'financialization' of the agri-food sector has been observed at various levels, from commodity speculation to direct investment in agricultural production, along with farmland itself. While there has been concerted effort to track new landownership and control associated with financial actors, especi…
Flooding and food security
In early 2011 the regional city of Rockhampton was cut-off from its main sources of food supply by unprecedented flooding across the State of Queensland. Despite the existence of local and state government disaster management plans, the Rockhampton community was highly vulnerable to food insecurity during this time. We argue that this vulnerability was due both to its reliance on long food supply chains that were disrupted due to loss of transpor…
Flooding and Food Security
Governing the impacts of mining and the impacts of mining governance
Financialization
A toothless chihuahua? The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, neoliberalism and supermarket power in Australia
During the Senate Inquiry into ‘milk price wars’ in 2011, Senator Nick Xenophon accused the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) of being ‘less effective than a toothless Chihuahua’. This follows the ACCC’s lack of action regarding the reported abuse of market power of Australia’s supermarket duopoly, where an extensive inquiry into the competitiveness of retail prices in 2008 found grocery retailing to be ‘workably competitive’ …
Food Security
Watchdogs and ombudsmen
Financialization in agri-food supply chains
Retailer-driven agricultural restructuring—Australia, the UK and Norway in comparison
Introduction to symposium on the changing role of supermarkets in global supply chains
Food security in Australia in an era of neoliberalism, productivism and climate change
Supermarkets and Agro-industrial Foods
There is increasing evidence of a weakened platform of consumer trust in mass produced food products. The resistance shown by consumers to the agro-industrial paradigm is evident in an emergent phase of reflexive consumerism, public reactions to an overly-concentrated retail sector and the rise of alternative food networks such as farmers' markets and organic box schemes. Supermarkets are responding strategically by aiming to manufacture new trus…
Food risks, old and new
New forms of food production, processing and distribution have resulted in rising consumer concern over food safety and quality. This study draws upon data from an Australia-wide survey to evaluate whether consumer perceptions towards various types of food risks differ according to demographic factors. This study has two distinct foci: those concerned with new, and those concerned with traditional, food risks. First, we investigate attitudes and …
Towards a third food regime
The Governmentality of Master Planning
The emergence of advanced liberalism as a political rationality has been accompanied by a trend towards more privatized forms of governing, in which market actors assume many of the responsibilities that were formerly state-provided. As a result, the problems of rule regarding who or what to govern and by what means are increasingly preoccupying private actors. This paper examines the privatized governmentalities of rules posed by a property deve…
Food security in Australia in an era of neoliberalism, productivism and climate change
Towards a third food regime
Neither ‘family’ nor ‘corporate’ farming
Chinese state capitalism and neomercantilism in the contemporary food regime
A significant proportion of critical agri-food literature has, to date, focused on the uneven relations of power between the Global North and the Global South, and the neoliberal characteristics of the corporate food regime. This literature has often overlooked the nuances in varieties of capitalism, particularly in East Asia. China is re-emerging as a powerful state actor in an increasingly multipolar global food system. It is also an important …
Eating 'Green
Central to the development of green lifestyles is the consumption of foods that by dint of their status as chemical-free, locally produced and/or free of genetically modified ingredients, reduce the environmental impact of food provision. Yet there are many other factors, such as health concerns, that may also encourage the consumption of 'green' foods. This paper explores the ways in which Australian consumers construct organic food - a sector o…
Financialization in agri-food supply chains
Grounding the financialization of farmland
Choosing organics
Social Interaction and Sense of Community in a Master Planned Community
Master planned communities are becoming the dominant form of new large-scale housing development in Australia. A characteristic of these developments is the focus on community as a major promotional feature. This resonates well with buyers in a climate in which community (and social capital) has become a catch-cry of governments and the private sector for a whole range of benefits. However, the case-study master planned community considered in th…
Making democracy matter
Gender and Drought
A unique collaborative, sociological study undertaken during 1995-7, explored the social construction of drought as a disaster, with farm families in two Australian states: Queensland (beef producers) and New South Wales (sheep/wheat producers). A decision was made to interview the women and men separately to test our hypothesis that there would be gender issues in any analysis of a disaster, but particularly one which has such a long-term impact…
Neoliberalism, Individualisation and Community
Since the early 1980s, Australian governments have embraced neoliberal policies as a means of improving the nation's global economic competitiveness. The impacts of such policies in regional areas have been quite profound, leading to socio-economic polarisation, population loss, and the growth of anti-globalisation sentiments. In this paper, we examine the process of regional restructuring that arises from this trajectory in Australia, and examin…
Constructing “green” foods
Global Sport? Core Concern and Peripheral Vision
Governing the impacts of mining and the impacts of mining governance
The resilience of long and short food chains
Agri-Food Restructuring
Globalizing tendencies within capitalism are leading to important alterations in the structure of agricultural production and the ways food companies are involving themselves in processing and marketing. Increasingly, finance capital and transnational agribusiness have sought ways to influence, and in some cases redirect, farming activities in Australia. The penetration of farming structures by corporate capital has been hastened by state deregul…
Introduction to symposium on the changing role of supermarkets in global supply chains
Supermarkets and Agro-industrial Foods
There is increasing evidence of a weakened platform of consumer trust in mass produced food products. The resistance shown by consumers to the agro-industrial paradigm is evident in an emergent phase of reflexive consumerism, public reactions to an overly-concentrated retail sector and the rise of alternative food networks such as farmers' markets and organic box schemes. Supermarkets are responding strategically by aiming to manufacture new trus…
The Governmentality of Master Planning
The emergence of advanced liberalism as a political rationality has been accompanied by a trend towards more privatized forms of governing, in which market actors assume many of the responsibilities that were formerly state-provided. As a result, the problems of rule regarding who or what to govern and by what means are increasingly preoccupying private actors. This paper examines the privatized governmentalities of rules posed by a property deve…
The Over-Production of us Sports and the New International Division of Cultural Labor
This article focuses on how US professional sports utilize the New International Division of Cultural Labor to supplement an overly costly local labor pool and over-supplied local market. We argue that while the classic problem of over-production is slowly eroding the sealed-off nature of US culture, the forces of its hyper-protectionist capitalism continue to characterize sports, precluding equal exchange
Neoliberalism, individualism and prospects for regional renewal
Earlier versions of regional policy have acknowledged a structural basis to spatial social inequality but more recent manifestations have implicitly denied a structural element. This is occurring amid rhetoric and action aimed at facilitating individual response to regional decline. Neoliberal individualism has been applied to regional issues, thereby translating structural problems into issues for which there only appear to be individualistic so…
Finance Capital, Food Security Narratives and Australian Agricultural Land
The growing involvement of financial actors in food production has been one of the major recent transformations in the global agri-food system. This 'financialization' of the agri-food sector has been observed at various levels, from commodity speculation to direct investment in agricultural production, along with farmland itself. While there has been concerted effort to track new landownership and control associated with financial actors, especi…
Food risks, old and new
New forms of food production, processing and distribution have resulted in rising consumer concern over food safety and quality. This study draws upon data from an Australia-wide survey to evaluate whether consumer perceptions towards various types of food risks differ according to demographic factors. This study has two distinct foci: those concerned with new, and those concerned with traditional, food risks. First, we investigate attitudes and …
Re-evaluating food systems and food security
Three major systems of producing and distributing food coexist in today's world - traditional, modernising and industrialised. While the movement from traditional to modernising to industrialised is neither inevitable nor uncontested, there are various social, economic and political forces that are acting to speed up such a transition. Neoliberal globalisation and financialisation are two of the macro-processes that are implicated in profound cha…
IV. Notes and News
CRUMBS."-By an unfortunate misprint, this work has been described in our last issue, p. 453, as the "Booklet of Counsels." Prof. Margoliouth, to whom we owe the notice, had BO opportunity of correcting the proof, or the mistake would not have been allowed to pass
General Physical Geography
Women and sport
Agriculture, Environment and Society
Rural Restructuring, Genetic Engineering and Australian Agriculture
Farm Structural Adjustment
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeoffrey LawrenceGeoffrey Lawrence is Associate Professor of Sociology at Charles Sturt University and Director of the Centre for Rural Social Research. Among his publications are Capitalism and the Countryside (1987) and Agriculture, Environment and Society (1992). He is currently carrying out research into the social implications of agricultural biotechnologies
Rural Australia
Biotechnology in Australian Agriculture
Biotechnology has the potential to impact significantly upon agriculture. However, although biotechnology is being promoted by the Australian Government and the National Farmers’ Federation, there are growing concerns about the environmental and social impacts of biotechnological applications. A survey of representatives of rural producer organisations was undertaken to assess the policy positions of those groups who will be most affected by the …
Conservation and development issues in North Australia
Rural adjustment revisited
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeoffrey LawrenceProfessor Geoffrey Lawrence is Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of the Rural Social and Economic Research Centre at Central Queensland University. Rockhampton
Global Sport? Core Concern and Peripheral Vision
Agricultural extension as social welfare
Additional informationNotes on contributorsF. VanclayFrank Vancluy is a member of the Centre for Rural Social Research and teaches sociology at Charles Sturt Univresity.Geoffrey LawrenceGeoffrey Lawrence is the professor of sociology at the Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, and was the founding Director of the CRSR at CSU. They are the authors of The Environmental Imperative: Ecosocial Concerns for Australian Agriculture, recently pub…
Predictors of Stress Among Australian Farmers
Australian farms continue to suffer economic pressure which directly and indirectly produces stress among farm family members. This study uses qualitative and quantitative data to isolate factors which predict stress, Financial condition, perception of what is at stake, the combination of on‐farm and off‐farm obligations and the general frustrations of farm life are found to predict stress among both men and women. Gender relations and attachment…
Rural Sociology – Does it have a future in Australian Universities
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeoffrey LawrenceGeoffrey Lawrence is Foundation Professor of Sociology, Head of the Department of Social Sciences, and Director of the Rural Social and Economic Research Centre at Central Queensland University. He has written widely about rural social issues in Australia and has conducted numerous national social research studies. He has had a long and dose affiliation with Charles Sturt University’s Ce…
Out of the Shadows
The sociology of sport in Australia has reached a key point in its development A critical tradition in the subdiscipline has been established over the last decade, but its intellectual and institutional progress has been uneven. This article briefly traces the emergence of critical sports sociology in a country outside the major centers in the UK and U.S., its break with functionalist approaches, and its attempts to overcome the neglect of local …
Agriculture, Environment and Society
Part 1 Agriculture and environment in Australia - a critical overview: the history of natural resource use in rural Australia - practicalities and ideologies, S. Dovers an ecological unsustainable agriculture, C. Watson agriculture production and environmental degradation in the Murray-Darling Basin, G. Lawrence and F. Vanclay the semantics of forest cover - how green was Australia?, J. Cary and N. Barr environmental management and capitalist agr…
Healthy For You, Healthy For the Environment
Additional informationNotes on contributorsGeoffrey LawrenceGeoffrey Lawrence is Foundation Professor of Sociology and Executive Director, Institute for Sustainable Regional Development, Central Queensland University.Kristen LyonsKristen Lyons is a Doctoral student in Sociology and a Member of the Centre for Social Science Research, Central Queensland University.Stewart LockieStewart Lockie is Lecturer in Sociology and Associate Director, Centre …
Introduction. The Global Restructuring of Food and Agriculture
This special edition of Rural Sociology focuses on processes of agri-food restructuring in Australia and New Zealand. The authors in the collection are all members of the Agri-food Research Network,a loose grouping of researchers who came together in 1993 in order to analyze the roles and relationships of agri-food industries in the Australasia region during a period of major change. The researchers were drawn from a wide range of disciplines, bu…
Agri-Food Restructuring
Globalizing tendencies within capitalism are leading to important alterations in the structure of agricultural production and the ways food companies are involving themselves in processing and marketing. Increasingly, finance capital and transnational agribusiness have sought ways to influence, and in some cases redirect, farming activities in Australia. The penetration of farming structures by corporate capital has been hastened by state deregul…
Constructing “green” foods
Contingent or Structural Crisis in British Agriculture
The British agricultural sector is either already in or rapidly approaching some sort of crisis. Two features are particularly significant in the political response to the current situation. First, there is an increasingly neoliberal approach to agricultural policy. Second, agricultural policy per se is being subsumed with wider rural policies. In this paper we question the rationality of both these trends, both theoretically through 'new wave re…
Gender and Drought
A unique collaborative, sociological study undertaken during 1995-7, explored the social construction of drought as a disaster, with farm families in two Australian states: Queensland (beef producers) and New South Wales (sheep/wheat producers). A decision was made to interview the women and men separately to test our hypothesis that there would be gender issues in any analysis of a disaster, but particularly one which has such a long-term impact…
Globalization and Sport
Sport is the most universal feature of popular culture. It crosses language barriers and slices through national boundaries, attracting both spectators and participants, to a common lingua franca of passions, obsessions and desires. This book brings to light the connections between sport and culture. It argues that although sport is obviously a source of pleasure, it is also part of the government of everyday life. The creation of a sporting cale…
Consuming ‘Green’
One of the key features of the recent dramatic growth in the organic food industries is the extent to which this is demand driven, suggesting the need to focus analytical attention more closely on the agency of consumers within organic food networks. In this paper we begin by drawing from focus groups undertaken with consumers throughout Australia to examine the meanings of food they identify to be important. In order to examine the significance …
A cultural economy study of beef as a commodity
This paper provides a preliminary analysis of research being undertaken in the Central Queensland region exploring beef as a commodity. The research takes as its starting point the desirability of understanding the relationships between production and consumption of agricultural commodities. It is also concerned with emerging ways in which food and agricultural networks are conceptualised and the changing discursive and material construction of b…
Political science (42 works) · Economics (40 works) · Agriculture (31 works) · Business (29 works) · Geography (27 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Law (21 works) · Rural development and sustainability (17 works) · Law (16 works) · Organic Food and Agriculture (16 works)