Brian Ilbery, Paul Courtney, James Kirwan and Damian Maye
The purpose of this paper is to examine the proportion and distribution of organic produce sold through different marketing channels by a sample of organic farmers in three “core”…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the proportion and distribution of organic produce sold through different marketing channels by a sample of organic farmers in three “core” areas of organic farming in England and Wales. More specifically, it conducts a quantitative analysis of marketing concentration and geographical dispersion within different travel time zones.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative database was constructed on the marketing channels and travel time zones used by 61 organic farmers to sell their produce and purchase necessary inputs. Indices of marketing concentration and geographical dispersion (outputs and inputs) were then calculated for each farm and region.
Findings
Results indicate a high level of marketing concentration, dominated by marketing cooperatives, direct marketing and abattoir/processors. Similar levels of concentration are recorded for the indices of geographical dispersion (especially outputs). Results vary significantly between the three regions, but it is clear that organic farmers in each region make use of different combinations of marketing channels, both local and national, in increasingly hybridised and individualised supply chains.
Research limitations/implications
Many organic farmers are developing hybridised supply chains, including both local and more conventional marketing channels, and further research is needed into the identified regional differences and the reasons for developing what are often very individualised marketing chains.
Originality/value
This is the first attempt to calculate indices of marketing concentration and geographical dispersion for organic farms in different regions of England and Wales. The paper also contributes to debates on the potential impact of organic farming on rural development and the local economy.
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In this chapter, a new methodology is adumbrated for critical scholars who research education leadership. It is argued that this new methodology is necessary for two main reasons…
Abstract
In this chapter, a new methodology is adumbrated for critical scholars who research education leadership. It is argued that this new methodology is necessary for two main reasons. The first is the epistemological inadequacy of dominant functionalist education-leadership methodologies. The second is the way in which the dominant critical methodology in the critical part of the field – policy scholarship – does not enable an explicit focus on education leadership but relegates it conceptually to a by-product of education policy. This enables those critical scholars who see leadership as a ‘tainted’ concept to avoid or deny it altogether. The methodology proposed here is called critical education leadership and policy scholarship (CELPS) and comprises six features: (1) it is epistemologically critical, that is, it focuses on context and power from a post-positivist perspective. (2) CELPS locates and works with education policy in diverse contexts, including the ideological, historical, political, discursive, socio-economic, axiological and cultural. (3) CELPS understands education leadership and policy as mutually constitutive. (4) CELPS enables the ontological deployment of the terms leader and leadership without committing to a project of reification. (5) CELPS requires the explicit theorisation and/or conceptualisation of its objects and assumptive architecture. (6) CELPS makes room for new or diverse approaches, agendas, methods, aims and foci. This chapter makes an important contribution to the critical field’s capacity to address extant and emergent problems in education empirically, as well as conceptually.
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Michael Gove is a controversial figure, not least due to his time as secretary of state for education under the Cameron coalition government from 2009 to 2013. Gove’s…
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Michael Gove is a controversial figure, not least due to his time as secretary of state for education under the Cameron coalition government from 2009 to 2013. Gove’s internationalising policy claimed to be addressing the attainment gap between rich and poor, supporting a workforce for the global markets. Gove appealed to all educational leaders by sending them a Gove-signed King James Bible, and he set up a Victorian school desk as the primary display artefact in the Ministry of Education. These two artefacts provide the analytical lens from which the claims and consequences of Gove’s education policy reforms were experienced by educational leaders and schools. This chapter aligns with the editorial line of this book in three ways. First, it acknowledges context as the most important aspect of understanding reform, in this case the neoliberal market economy of Britain in the 21st century. Second, it affords insight into how the selective use of data and political rhetoric acted as a vehicle for power in and through social relations. Finally, it reveals where disadvantage lies and provides impetus for further research and scholarship to mitigate it.
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How parents experience school governance is increasingly shaped by its changing requirements as well as their positioning by leaders and policy makers within a marketised…
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How parents experience school governance is increasingly shaped by its changing requirements as well as their positioning by leaders and policy makers within a marketised education system. In order to make sense of these experiences, they are situated within a wider policy context in which both neoliberalism and increased centralisation are juxtaposed. Policy has a significant influence on leadership, yet the relationship between them is complex, and while the impact of the former on the latter is clearer, this is less so in terms of the extent to which governance (as a form of leadership) shapes policy, and this is explored further in this chapter. It considers the prescriptive nature of current policy and how this not only hinders the ability of governance to influence policy but facilitates and reproduces the neoliberal ideology underpinning it. The implications of neoliberalism and increased centralisation, with their associated policy technologies, such as performance management and accountability for school governance are considered, including the underrepresentation of certain parents and the ‘professionalisation’ of governing boards. Through a critical exploration of this professionalisation of governance, this chapter makes an original contribution to our understanding of the complex relationship between leadership and policy. It uses Foucault’s work as a conceptual framework, drawing on his tools of governmentality, discipline and surveillance. It has significance not only in terms of governance in the school system in England, but within the wider global policy context in which the influence of both market-oriented policies and centralised policies is evident.
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Thinking with Bourdieu’s field theory, this chapter critically examines how corporatised multi-academy trust (MAT) governance has secured parental engagement as a corporate…
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Thinking with Bourdieu’s field theory, this chapter critically examines how corporatised multi-academy trust (MAT) governance has secured parental engagement as a corporate activity to acquire, regulate and naturalise parents, strengthening the position of the organisation and those leading and governing in the MAT. The embodiment of corporate practice within the field has ensured that the ways of thinking, being and doing of institutions and those that govern them, both secure and are secured by recognition of corporate practices as ‘natural’ and legitimate. I make both a theoretical and empirical contribution to the field. First, theoretically, I contribute to Bourdieu’s field theory by extending it to include how corporate practices diminish the agency of parents in dominated positions in the field, in that parents are acquired, regulated and naturalised to secure the field’s logic of practice. Second, I make an empirical contribution to the arguments concerned with the position and stance of actors in a corporatised field with the reframing of parental engagement as a corporate activity concerned with acquisition stability. Further these arguments empirically contribute to the literature concerned with the positioning of parental engagement in a corporatised field providing a model that allows for critical analysis of educational leaderships engagement with parents in a corporatised field. In making this contribution, I offer a model to explain the corporatised framing of parental engagement as it seeks to acquire, regulate and naturalise the practices of parents in their engagement with the MAT and its schools.
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This chapter presents data and analysis to conceptualise the role of the executive principal, and how the executive principal practises leadership in formal school partnerships in…
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This chapter presents data and analysis to conceptualise the role of the executive principal, and how the executive principal practises leadership in formal school partnerships in China. To achieve this, this research draws on Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, enriching it through interplay with Chinese notions of morality. This research is anchored in one innovative educational organisation – the Education Collective (EC). The EC is a large-scale and multi-level educational organisation formed by two or more schools or campuses guided by a common concept and bound by a contract. Education collectivisation has now become the mainstream model of running compulsory education in China. The head of the EC, often referred to as the executive principal, is the legal representative of each EC and is responsible for the entire collective.