Being All Equal: Identity, Difference and Australian Cultural Practice

Description

- Is there such a thing as an Australian national identity? Or is Australia just a melting pot of different peoples and cultures without a common culture? - What is distinctive and what is universal about everyday life in Australia? In a post-colonial age of globalizing economies, the political quest for national 'identity' is increasingly urgent. This topical book traces the ways in which the Australian state and its people struggle to represent the social and cultural practices of everyday life in an attempt to draw meaning from diverse understandings of pasts, presents and futures. Class, gender and ethnicity are shown to underpin this popular debate, fuelled by shifting interpretations of egalitarianism and individualism. The author -- a prominent Australian sociologist -- investigates how a nation's identity is created through its folk heroes and folk festivals, civic and domestic architecture, education, politics and art. Ned Kelly, Parliament House, the Melbourne Cup and the Adelaide Grand Prix are all interrogated for the light they shed on Australian ideologies and institutions. This book will be fascinating reading for those who seek a deeper understanding of how a national identity can be moulded and redefined.

Judith Kapferer Freelance Sociologist,formerly Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Education, Flinders University of South Australia

'Being All Equal is a timely critique of repressive ideologies and practices that masquerade as populism or egalitarianism. By dissecting the motivations that animate the superficially bland inclusiveness of liberal nationalism, Judith Kapferer has made of Australian cultural politics a globally apposite object-lesson for political and social theory. Especially telling is her treatment of suburbia, which, in its unsettling capacity to excite both contempt and desire, emerges in this book as a central metaphor of the discursive alchemy of late capitalism and exposes the self-effacing sources of nationalist hegemony.' Professor Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University 'Kapferer's Being All Equal, constitutes a readable, engaging and insightful, if theoretically somewhat limited discussion of contemporary projects of nation-building in Australia and how they might relate to the contemporary Australian state and people...'A significant strength of Kapferer's monograph is her attention to aspects of everyday leisure and work, such as the Show, as the grounds and material for identity formation. As such, she moves considerably beyond a predominant body of literature that investigates Australian national culture and identity solely through published media such as literature and film. Kapferer consequently produces a wealth of ethnographic detail that will be particularly interesting to readers unfamiliar with Australian cultural practice but concerned with the characteristics of activities such as public festivals.' Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO)