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Groundwork: The Social, Political and Cultural History of Land Settlement in Australia

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A Sociology of Place in Australia

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Abstract

This chapter traces the development of the matrix of ideals that led to soldier settlement policy as experienced at Goolhi after World War II. It investigates how processes of colonisation provided the political, economic and cultural bases for small-scale farming as a primary mode of land settlement and how the insertion of institutional and political power as processes of ‘civilisation’, were especially evident in the case of agriculture. State support for farming was for social, political and economic reasons and the role of the state in land settlement processes was explicit. Together with the cultural and physical legacy of a ‘colonial socialism’, the dominance of agriculture and its social implications provided the foundations of a moral-economic basis for closer settlement policy and ‘deserving’ populations.

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  1. School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

    Claire Baker

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Correspondence to Claire Baker .

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Baker, C. (2021). Groundwork: The Social, Political and Cultural History of Land Settlement in Australia. In: A Sociology of Place in Australia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6240-6_3

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