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Ecotourism story

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Posted by Your Guide on May 30, 2006 4:47 PM

While studying in the UK, Jim Macbeth took a ‘chance’ job at the University of Western Australia in Perth in 1972, thinking that he could work for a couple of years in Australia before returning to Canada. Perth is that kind of place: it is easy to stay. Three years later he joined Murdoch University, also in Perth, as a foundation staff member. He has ‘survived’ with one employer because of a number of things, not least of which is that Perth is such a good place to live and the other universities in town don’t offer the sort of interdisciplinary challenges and flexibility. But, Jim has also varied the focus of his academic career every 8-10 years with the shift from sociology to tourism in the mid-1990s, both for teaching and research. That said, all of Jim’s research is informed by the ‘sociological imagination’ (C. Wright Mills) and a wider concern for communities on the one hand and the experience of individuals on the other. The latter was the focus of Jim’s Doctoral study that was informed by and contributed to the sociology of subcultures.



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