The Difference Identity Makes
Indigenous Cultural Capital in Australian Cultural Fields
Through the struggles of Indigenous Australians for recognition and self-determination it has become common sense to understand Australia as made up of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and things. But in what ways is the Indigenous/non-Indigenous distinction being used and understood?
In The difference identity makes thirteen Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics examine how this distinction structures the work of cultural production and how Indigenous producers and their works are recognised and valued.
The editors introduce this innovative collection of essays with a pathfinding argument that 'Indigenous cultural capital' now challenges all Australians to re-position themselves within a revised scale of values. Each chapter looks at one of five fields of Australian cultural production: sport, television, heritage, visual arts and music, revealing that in each the Indigenous/non-Indigenous distinction has effects that are specific.
Production Details
- Paperback
- 215mm x 140mm x 18mm
- 308pp
- Released May 2019
- ISBN 9781925302837
Excerpt
Contents
About The Author
Fred Myers is the Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University, and he lives in New York. Myers has been involved in research with, living with, and writing about, Western Desert Aboriginal people since 1973. His work over the last fifteen years has been focused principally on studying and explaining the significance of art and material culture as a point of articulation – aesthetic, political, developmental -- between the values and expectations of Indigenous people and institutions of the outside world. His books include Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines (1986) and a book on the acrylic painting movement, Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art (2002). Relevant edited volumes include The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Anthropology and Art (co-edited with George Marcus, 1995), and The Empire of Things (2001). Experiments in Self-Determination: Histories of the Outstation Movement in Australia (co-edited with Nicolas Peterson, 2016) and a film, Remembering Yayayi were the products of an earlier Australian Research Council Linkage grant. Most recently, he co-edited with Lawrence Bamblett and Tim Rowse, The Difference Identity Makes (2019) and with Tony Bennett, Deborah Stevenson, and Tamara Winikoff, Australian Art Field (2020).
About The Cover
Cover image: Jack Charles plays Moses in Black Comedy Series one.