Promotional Information

Also available in hardback, 9781859731017 GBP55.00 (November, 1996)

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE A Profession of Being All Equal CHAPTER TWO Ideology and Public Culture: The Work of Mythology CHAPTER THREE The Discourses of History: Larrikins, Scarlet Women and the Apparatus of Capture CHAPTER FOUR Cultural Space: The Production and Consumption of Symbolic Goods CHAPTER FIVE A Fortunate Style of Life: The Accumulation of Symbolic Capital in Suburbia CHAPTER SIX Power, Knowledge, Practice: Common Sense and Received Wisdom CHAPTER SEVEN The Dream of Community: Bread, Circuses and Ideology CHAPTER EIGHT Presenting the Nation to the People: Commodity and Community CHAPTER NINE The Architecture of Identity: Parliament House and the Stockman's Hall of Fame CHAPTER TEN Exploring Community, Imagining Society CHAPTER ELEVEN Community, State, Nation, Power and Praxis CHAPTER TWELVE A Nationalist Interlude EPILOGUE Such is Life

About the Author

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

Reviews

'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)