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Book Review
| Al Rainnie and Mardelene Grobbelaar (eds), New Regionalism in Australia, Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, UK, 2005. pp. xii + 327. £55.00 cloth.
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| Jenny Lee and Charles Fahey argued in the pages of this journal in 1986 that the Australian colonial labour market was, amongst other things, a patchwork of regions each experiencing expansions and contractions according to seasonal fluctuations, the weather, movements of capital and labour, and sheer luck. Their work and other research by labour, urban and social historians created a picture of interconnected though somewhat independent regional economic hubs around which the fortunes of working people hinged. This edited collection on 'New Regionalism', despite covering contemporary Australia and coming from a different disciplinary background, is strongly reminiscent of Lee and Fahey's much-neglected insight. When unemployment is reportedly (as at March 2006) 10.9 per cent in Tennant Creek, compared to the Territory average of 5.6 per cent; 18.4 per cent in Mount Morgan compared to a Queensland state average of 5.8 per cent, and 0.6 per cent in Roxby Downs compared to a South Australian state average of 5.0 per cent then it is clear that the aggregated state and national figures mask significant regional differences. 'New Regionalism', a slippery term that threatens to become as contested as concepts such as 'community' and 'class', may provide some of the conceptual tools to unpick national and state aggregates and focus more clearly on specific and distinctive regional economies. |
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This engaging collection is based on a conference held at Monash University in 2002. The collection contains 16 chapters with a very high standard maintained across a diverse field of contributors, which includes geographers, sociologists, policy analysts, and practitioners. All attempt to explore and evaluate the increasingly popular notion that planning and policy can be usefully located at a regional level, and that this specificity is particularly appropriate given the changing nature of the global economy. Unlike the colonial economy as pictured by Lee and Fahey, the gears that govern the present day economy are not seasonal and weather-related, but regional economic policies, local economic development and tourist boards, and local governments all mediating an increasingly determinant global economy. |
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Those with labour history and industrial relations backgrounds including Bradon Ellem on labour and defining regions and Susan McGrath-Champ on regional employment relations make important contributions to this collection, naturally with material that is more likely to appeal to Labour History readers than some of the other policy or governance centred chapters. The entire collection is positioned with respect to some historical discussion of regional development policy, but the coverage in the introductory chapter is fairly superficial. Historical case studies on the rise and fall of pastoral, mining and dairying regions across Australian history would immeasurably strengthen this body of work. Before state and federal governments come to regional planning in the post-World War II period, there were a host of other relevant actors — progress associations, development leagues, active MPs, party and union branches amongst others. The effect of this limited chronological framework is to emphasise unwittingly the notion that post-1972 changes represent some kind of new departure in patterns of capitalist accumulation and distribution, something that I suspect some of the contributors at least would probably disagree with anyway. |
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Perhaps the most challenging chapter comes from geographer Phillip O'Neil, whose trenchant and sweeping criticism of some versions of the New Regionalism should give the reader pause to reflect on the implications of a set of ideas 'that matches the ideology of neo-liberalism and its elevation of independent effort as basic to successful economic organization'. 'New Regionalism', continues O'Neil, 'is an opportunity to deflect responsibility for both accumulation and distributional problems away from central government' (p. 50). In this iteration, New Regionalism would locate the problems of Tenant Creek and Mount Morgan with the local political and business elite together with the 'job seekers' themselves, whilst also removing the territory, state and federal governments from the picture. The rhetorical appeal of New Regionalism to politicians is clear, and yet the sustained focus on regional society, economy and governance are powerful tools as our economy is, as much as the late nineteenth century, subject to significant regional variations and manifest in specific spatial contexts. |
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In the era of so-called 'Globalisation' we see an apparent contradiction. Global systems of finance and capital movement sharpen regional differences at the same time as the handmaidens of globalisation, business groups and large sections of the press, impute that differences are no longer relevant in a globalised culture. Yet the contradiction only persists as long as we continue to conceptualise the economy as some placeless thing that exists in the financial pages of newspapers and web sites, and not realised in actual places like Tennant Creek and Mount Morgan. While some of the chapters in New Regionalism lack strong historical grounding, this may simply indicate that historians need to do more to convince our colleagues in other disciplines that our work is relevant. |
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| University of Newcastle |
ERIK EKLUND | |
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