Inside Australian Culture

Legacies of Enlightenment Values

By (author) Baden Offord, Erika Kerruish, Rob Garbutt, Adele Wessell, Kirsten Pavlovic Afterword by Vinay Lal Foreword by Ashis Nandy

Publication date:

01 July 2014

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783082315

“Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values” offers a critical intervention in the continuing effects of colonization in Australia and the structures it brought, which still inform and dominate its public culture. Through a careful analysis of three disparate but significant moments in Australian history, the authors investigate the way the British Enlightenment continues to dominate contemporary Australian thinking and values. Employing the lens of Indian cultural theorist Ashis Nandy, the authors argue for an Australian public culture that is profoundly conscious of its assumptions, history and limitations.

Foreword by Ashis Nandy; Preface; Part One: Getting Inside Australian Public Culture; Chapter One: The Enlightenment and Tradition in Early Colonial Society; Chapter Two: Australian Values and Their Public Culture(s); Part Two: Three Moments of the Enlightenment; Chapter Three: Moment One – An Act to Regulate Chinese Immigration, 1858; Chapter Four: Moment Two – Cubillo v. the Commonwealth, 2000; Chapter Five: Moment Three – Australian Localism and the Cronulla Riot, 2005; Part Three: Working with the Necessary Other; Chapter Six: The Closing of Public Culture to Communal Difference; Afterword by Vinay Lal

‘Through powerful analysis, the five voices in this book propose a new normative rationale to counteract the modern fundamentalisation of Enlightenment underpinning Australian public culture.’ —Susan Ballyn, University of Barcelona