Community action in Australian farming and fishing communities

This chapter is concerned with the contexts and drivers of community action: it explores how communities come together in the face of externally imposed challenges, and the social processes and resources that shape community action in response to these challenges. Collectively labelled 'difficult times', prolonged drought, floods, increasing financial and occupational stress, labour intensification, government regulations and a widening division between rural and urban communities in Australia, have had a serious and detrimental impact on the physical and mental health of farmers and fishers in recent times (Albrecht et al, 2007; Alston and Kent, 2008; Hossain et al, 2008). The responses of five farming and fishing communities in Australia to the challenge of maintaining physical and mental wellbeing while facing various environmental, economic and regulatory pressures on their industries reveal the key role of industry organisations and social processes, including people we term 'boundary crossers', in the incubation of community action.