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Geographers are increasingly grappling with the theoretical and practical implications of integrating an ethics of reciprocity into undergraduate learning and teaching. This paper draws on the unexpected experiences of a third-year human geography research methods fieldtrip to examine the process of balancing undergraduate student learning and assessment outcomes, with tangible outputs often-desired by Indigenous tour operator partners. Reflections from students and academic staff highlight the challenges of realizing ideals of reciprocity within the complex and ever shifting cross-cultural research context.

The localisation of food production, particularly in the form of urban/peri-urban agriculture, is only gaining increasing public and political attention in industrialised nations such as Australia amid growing concerns about urban sustainability. Small-scale family farmers on the peri-urban fringe of cities such as Sydney, Australia's largest city, are considered key actors in the creation of a more sustainable and just urban food system by those advocating for food system change. The assumed alterity of such small-scale farmers from the so-called 'mainstream' food system, however, has led to a focus on localised threats such as urban development and solutions such as alternative food networks. This localised focus risks neglecting the way in which small-scale family farmers, such as those on Sydney's urban fringe, are directly connected to and reliant on the mainstream for their economic viability. Emphasising the importance of issues such as supermarket power and consumer choice, this paper illustrates that it is necessary to examine the continuing connection between the mainstream system and 'local', small-scale producers to achieve food system change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, as in other Western countries, peri-urban farmland is increasingly being considered a public good, contributing to urban sustainability and climate change mitigation. To retain local food production, advocates have called for the implementation of farmland protection policies that restrict urban development, such as exclusion zoning. Many such policies have been abandoned due to protests, often from the very people the policies are ostensibly intended to protect - farmers. Examining the failure of Sydney's latest 'green zones' through a political ecology lens, this paper challenges the prevailing narrative that these protests indicate a lack of community support for the ideal of farmland protection. The failure of the green zones was one of political process, specifically the lack of consultation with Sydney's culturally and linguistically diverse small-scale farmers, rather than community rejection of the principle of protection. Interview responses from farmers suggest that a bottom-up approach to policy-making would have yielded alternative and more successful approaches to maintaining farming on the fringe. This paper concludes that ensuring small-scale farmers have access to and agency in the environmental decision-making process generates options for farmland protection policy that move beyond a housing-versus-farming dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western cities are becoming increasingly culturally diverse through the intersection of processes such as international migration and the political resurgence of Indigenous peoples. The challenge remains, however, to shift from physical copresence to equal rights to the city. This article explores this challenge in an empirical case study of Aboriginal participation in plans for urban development on the fringe of Sydney, Australia’s largest city. The findings from this research highlight the limits of official attempts at recognition that focus on a narrow definition of culture to the detriment of economic and political equity. It provides empirical support for a reconceptualization of recognition to incorporate redistribution in order to redress historical marginalization and dispossession that currently limit participation in the urban polity for diverse groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]