Chris Gibson

John Connell

Professor John Connell

Sound Tracks traces the ways in which music has informed complex globalisations, the role of companies and technology in diffusion, innovation and commercialism and the wider significance of cultural industries. It links migration and mobility to new musical practices, whether in 'developing' countries or metropolitan centres, and traces the recent rise of 'music tourism'. It examines issues of authenticity and credibility, and the quest for roots within different musical genres, from buskers to brass bands, and from rap to rai. Sound Tracks emphasises music's contributions to the contradictions, illusions and celebrations of contemporary life. It situates music and the music industry within spatial theories of globalisation and local change: fixity and fluidity entangled.

Popular Music, Identity, and Place

Sound Tracks

Dr Rae Dufty-Jones

New twenty-first century economic, social and environmental changes have challenged and reshaped rural Australia. They range from ageing populations, youth out-migration, immigration policies (that seek to place skilled migrants in rural Australia), tree changers, agricultural restructuring and new relationships with indigenous populations. Challenges also exist around the 'patchwork economy' and the wealth that the mining boom offers some areas, while threatening regional economic decline in others. Rural Australia is increasingly not simply a place of production of agriculture and minerals but an idea that individuals seek and are encouraged to consume. The socio-economic implications of drought, water rights and changing farming practices, have prefaced new social, cultural and economic reforms. This book provides a contemporary perspective on rapidly evolving population, economic and environmental changes in 'rural and regional Australia', itself a significant concept. Bringing together a range of empirical studies, the book builds on established rural studies themes such as population change, economic restructuring and globalisation in agriculture but links such changes to environmental change, culture, class, gender, and ethnic diversity. Presenting original and in-depth interventions on these issues and their intersections, this book assembles the best of contemporary research on rural Australia.

Professor John Connell

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