News Release:
Economic policies causing 'insecurity, division'
| Date 4/12/03 No 226/03 Instead of "making the people work for the market" Australia should be "making the market work for the people", one of the opening speakers at a national sociology conference told delegates at the University of New England today. Michael Pusey, Professor of Sociology at the University of NSW, said that big corporations were "the only winners" from economic rationalism. For the rest of society it was creating "mass insecurity, division and resentment" as well as "undermining quality of life", he said. Professor Pusey was speaking at the opening session of the annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA). The conference has brought to Armidale more than 200 sociologists from around Australia and from as far afield as New York. Professor Judith Stacey, from New York University, was the other presenter in the opening session, titled "New Times, New Social Divisions?" She spoke about the "politics of marriage" in an era of economic rationalism, examining some of the implications of the movement for "gay marriage rights" within this context. "In the globalised, free-market economy, marital status seems likely to supplant sex orientation as a primary axis of social division," she said. The three-day conference includes a public forum at eight o'clock tonight in Armidale Town Hall. Titled "The End of the Rural?", the forum will address vital issues such as the impact of free-market policies on rural Australians, and the implications of such policies for the future.
|
One of the main speakers at the forum, Professor Geoffrey Lawrence, Head of the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, will emphasise the need for new regional policies in Australia to counteract the damaging impact of free-market policies. Other speakers at the forum will be Rick Farley, former Executive Director of the National Farmers' Federation and now Chairman of the NSW Resources and Conservation Assessment Council, and Jan FitzGerald, President of Australian Women in Agriculture. The convener of the conference, Dr Peter Corrigan from UNE's School of Social Science, said the forum was a good example of constructive engagement with the public by the academic discipline of sociology. Speaking at the conference's opening ceremony, Dr John Germov, President of TASA, emphasised the importance of such an engagement for the future of the discipline, and of TASA itself (which marks its 40th anniversary this year). Professor Randall Albury, UNE's Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic), said the breadth and depth of the conference program was an indication of the discipline's continuing "intellectual commitment". Media contact: Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 3049 or Dr Peter Corrigan, School of Social Science, UNE, Armidale (02) 6773 2179. Photographs from the conference are available. Please contact Jim Scanlan on (02) 6773 3049. |
