Cultural geography and cultural policy

1

Guest Editorial and Review:

          KEVIN M. DUNN

This is the first occasion on which Australian Geographical Geographical Studies Studies has devoted most of an issue to the sub-discipline of cultural geography. Perhaps the numbers of cultural geographers in this part of the world could never before have justified such a collection. This is not to say that cul cultura turall geog geogra raph phy y has has been been abse absent nt from from Austra Australia lia,, indeed indeed the sub-dis sub-discip ciplin linee has had a contin continuin uing g presenc presencee (Anders (Anderson on and Jacobs, Jacobs, in this issue). Still, the 1990s have been exciting time timess for cult cultura urall geog geograp raphe hers rs in Aust Austral ralia ia.. Their Their sub-di sub-disci scipli pline ne has experi experienced enced a phase phase of growth growth and dynami dynamism. sm. Cultur Cultural al geograp geography hy sessio sessions ns at recent recent IAG conference conferencess have have been been well attended, and the number of paper sessions has grown (5 at IAG Monash in 1993; 5 at the remote IAG Magnetic Island in 1994; and 10 at IAG Newcastle in 1995). It is entirely appropriate that this issue of the new new look ook Austral Australian ian Geograp Geographic hical al Studie Studiess shou should ld open open with with a sele select ctio ion n of pape papers rs from from this this burgeoni burgeoning ng sub-dis sub-discip ciplin linee of Austra Australia lian n geography. This issue provides one of the first forums forums for Austra Australia lian n cultura culturall geograph geographers ers to outline their directions and contributions to nonspecialist specialist colleagues. colleagues. The following following collection collection of papers can not however, be considered in any way exhaustive of the rich and varied corpus of Australian cultural geography. To get a proper

Kevin Dunn is Lecturer in Geography at The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052.

Australian Australian Geographical Geographical Studies • April 1997 • 35(1):1-11

sens sensee of the the scal scalee and and scop scopee of Aust Austra rali lian an cultural cultural geography geography requires an engagement engagement with a rang rangee of exis existi ting ng and and fort forthc hcom omin ing g text textss (And (Anders erson on and Gale Gale,, 1992 1992;; Johns Johnson on,, 1994a 1994a;; Gibso Gibson n and and Wa Wats tson on,, 1994 1994;; Stra Stratfo tford, rd, fort forthhcomi coming) ng).. The The aim aim of this this them themat atic ic issu issuee is to demonstrate demonstrate the critically critically reflexive, reflexive, politically politically engag engaged ed and and poli policy cy-re -rele leva vant nt natur naturee of work work bein being g carri carried ed out out by cult cultur ural al geog geograp raphe hers rs in Australia. The papers raise important questions about a range of government ent policies, demonstrate demonstrate some of the approaches used within cult cultura urall geog geograp raphy hy and and grap grappl plee with with issu issues es surrounding its practise in Australia. This his guest editorial also also prov rovides an oppo opport rtun unit ity y to resp respon ond d from from an Aust Austra rali lian an perpsective to some recent concerns expressed about about cultu cultural ral geogr geograp aphy hy in gene general ral.. These These includ includee the claim that that a ‘cultur ‘cultural al turn’ turn’ within within geography has seen a focus on esoteric issues to the the negl neglec ectt of more more mate materi rial al and and stru struct ctur ural al concerns. concerns. Critics Critics have claimed that the language of cult cultur ural al geog geogra raph phy y is inac inacce cess ssib ible le and and perhaps undemocratic. undemocratic. Others have questioned questioned whet whethe herr many many of the the rese resear arch ch int interes erests ts of cultural geographers can rightly be claimed as geographical. Some of these criticisms may be reasonable but others emanate from a misunderstanding of some of the core concepts used used in this this subsub-di disc scip ipli line ne,, othe others rs stil stilll are are express expression ionss of resistan resistance ce to the entran entrance ce into into huma human n geog geogra raph phy y of som some of the the insi insigh ghtts developed in cognate disciplines.

2

Vera Chouinard pointed out that this is ‘a period of the re-presentation of and re-creation of progressive research’ (1994:2). Indeed, the Cultural Geography Study Group of the IAG was formed in the context of a debate between followers of so-called old and new cultural geography (Cosgrove and Jackson, 1987; Duncan, 1990:11–24; Price and Lewis, 1993). This is not the place to re-visit this debate. Pulvirenti (in this issue) outlines some of the tenets of this new cultural geography. The first report of the Cultural Geography Study Group of the IAG, charted the Group’s research focus. The focus was upon the way in which identities were developed or socially constructed, and how they were interconnected with the construction of landscapes, places and environments (Jacobs, 1994:11). The sub-discipline also retained the traditional cultural geography brief of interpreting the cultural landscape. A review of cultural geography in Australia confirms Jacobs’ argument that contemporary members of the Cultural Geography Study Group adopt a perspective typical of the new cultural geography (Jacobs, 1994:11). Any geography which calls itself radical must ‘be about fighting to understand better how we and others can challenge social oppression’ (Chouinard, 1994:5). The authors of the papers in this issue demonstrate a commitment to exposing the way discursive and non-discursive regulatory frameworks determine the life chances of differently empowered groups. In particular there is a focus upon the way in which oppressions are justified on the basis of group identity or representations in the media. These oppressions can include marginalisation, cultural imperialism, exploitation (both in the production and distribution of surplus labour), disempowerment, violence and ecological harm. As with cultural geographers elsewhere, concern extends to other biota, to landscapes, and to the global commons (Matless, 1996:381–3). Cultural geographers in Australia quite appropriately consider themselves (privileged) advocates of the oppressed. They are critical of the dominant, and often conservative, ideas and

Australian Geographical Studies

instrumentalities which provide succour to oppressions.

   Over the last few years a number of complaints have been made about inaccessible writing in human geography. Susan Christopherson warned that much of both positivist writing and Marxist theorising were alienating to new entrants and non-specialists in geography (Christopherson, 1989:87–88). An elitist theoretical enterprise had evolved, and an alienation of a significant portion of the discipline was one result. Progressive projects within geography, such as feminist geography, had not been removed from such complex language and writing, nor from such criticism (Whatmore, 1992:234). Geographers writing on postmodernism have particularly been criticised for using an arcane and tortured writing style, which is held to be undemocratic and ‘virtually incomprehensible to those not in a (fairly small) group’ (Massey, 1991:34). Nicky Gregson has persistently argued in reviews of social geography that the ‘cultural turn’ within human geography has seen the spread of a writing style, and use of terms, which are exclusionary (1993:525–6; 1995:139). Badcock (1996) mused that the ‘interpretive turn’ of postmodernism will eventually be revealed as a discredited and pretentious enterprise. Others, however, are less concerned about the use of complex or unorthodox terminology and writing styles, and are wary of demands for simple and unproblematic writing (Rose, 1995). I certainly baulk at calls for ‘harmony and order’ (Badcock, 1996:91). Let me set out a defence of complexity and show why some degree of theoretical flux is unavoidable and welcome. The phase of growth in cultural geography has been marked, unavoidably, by a complexity borne of profound reflection and theoretical sprawl. The multiplication of theory and concepts have been symptoms of self-reflection and reformulation within cultural geography. These reassessments have occurred throughout the humanities and  Institute

of Australian Geographers 1997

Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy

social sciences. Anderson has recently argued in this journal that human geographers are ‘creative disobediants’, who, rather than plough through cognate disciplines searching for insights, forge their own perspectives within trans-disciplinary spaces and furrows (Anderson, 1995:123–4). More than ‘an interdisciplinary magpie’, but a weaver of ‘transdisciplinary threads’ states Matless (1996:380). Cultural geography has benefited over the last two decades from at least three key philosophical movements: the research orientations of cultural studies; the insights of feminism, and; the philosophical reflections of poststructuralism. These influences provided new research mores; asserting the importance of identity and of the politics which surround it, challenging geography’s gender blindness, and demanding that we hold into question the readings and interpretations that we construct as academic geographers. If geographers are truly integrative (Gibson-Graham, 1996:xii) then the influences of feminism and poststructuralism have always been destined to shake the basis of cultural geography. The contemporary extent and nature of such a transformation is unclear (Johnson, 1994b). Nonetheless, this has been a period which has seen the disruption of established concepts and approaches. This has also disrupted radical approaches such as Marxism and feminism (Gibson-Graham, 1996; Pratt, 1993). One result has been a conceptual dynamism and complexity. Many of the basic tenets of poststructuralism and third wave feminisms suggest that this unsettled moment is indeed the beginning of a permanent unsettled or permanent troubled period (see Butler, 1990). In Virtual Geographies Mackenzie Wark argued that social scientists were approaching, if they had not yet arrived at, the phase of being ‘finally unfinished’ (1994:228). This is a situation in which we continually question the concepts and categories which we construct, deploy and reinforce. A constructivist position holds that categories of humanity, identities, and our other  Institute


3

conceptual orderings are contingent and dynamic, they are not natural or a primordial given (Butler, 1990; Jackson and Penrose, 1993). The papers in this issue adopt such an approach. It is a position which demands that we challenge those naturalised categories which have never previously been problematised or troubled (Kobayashi and Peake, 1994:230). For most Australian cultural geographers identities and places are constructed, and are therefore contingent and provisional. It is again part and parcel of being ‘finally unfinished’ or ‘permanently unsettled’. This then is a defensive call for flux, for dynamism, and critical vigilance. It is a call for the recognition that categories of humanity, identities, and our other conceptual orderings are all socially constructed. The challenge, however, is to have a complexity and diversity of thought that remains accessible. The papers in this issue seek to do this.

    Deciding ‘what counts as legitimate geographical knowledge’ is constantly being debated, and debated within certain strict regulatory confines (Rose, 1993:2–4). The policing of the discipline occurs in a number of forums, both formal and informal. Take for example Crabb’s (1995) criticism of recent research publications in human geography in Australia. Crabb argued that there is a trend toward the esoteric, with work ‘beset by the latest ‘‘theories’’’ and in desperate need of a ‘solid factual foundation’ (1995:9,10). Cultural geographers working within a feminist paradigm receive the most criticism of all. Office bearers of the IAG received complaints following the publication in this journal of Robyn Longhurst’s (1994) article dealing with corporeality. Research on lesbian spaces continues to be a source of both formal (Skelly, 1994) and informal ridicule. Gender studies has faced, and still faces, an uphill battle to be recognised as real geography (Rose,1993). Such research is criticised for being trivial, of focused

4

at the wrong scale — the home (McDowell, 1992:404) or the body. These judgements of what is and is not geography will ‘function to thwart thought, to stifle and prevent exploration, to inhibit the production of the new’ (Grosz, 1995:130). These intolerances to different ideas, innovative research questions and new topics are fundamentally limiting and confining. The policing of ‘legitimate geography’, in journals, at conferences and in lunch rooms, can be an exclusionary and deeply conservative process.

    Anderson and Jacobs (in this issue) outline how cultural geography in Australia has been an ‘inherently politicised project’. Contrary to this finding are the claims circulating in international journals which assert that much of cultural geography has become esoteric or devoid of social comment and critique. The focus upon issues of identity has recently withstood criticism, mostly from the Left, as to whether it is sufficiently grounded or concerned enough with ‘material issues’. Firstly, this has been manifest in the recent debate, mostly within Professional Geographer , between what we might call ‘textualists’ and ‘materialists’. A second manifestation of this debate is the critiques by political economists levelled at those interested in identity politics. These two contemporary controversies are worthy of brief review and response. They are also demonstrative of a profound ‘creative tension’ within human geography in the 1990s, between orthodoxies of political economy established throughout the 1980s, and the emerging discursive perpsectives associated with the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1990s (Richards and Wrigley, 1996:53–5). The debate in Professional Geographer came in the wake of critical reviews of the collections put together by Barnes, Duncan and Ley (see The City as Text , 1990; Writing Worlds , 1992; Place/Culture/Representation , 1993). These texts focused on the discursive construction of identity and of places. A number of reviewers and guest editors have been critical of such a


textualist approach, asserting there is a shortage of empirics, a lack of political engagement, and the production of ‘figurative’ and ‘unreal’ geographies (Badcock, 1996; Chouinard, 1994; Gregson, 1993; Peet, 1996; Thrift, 1994). Gregson was depressed by a geography ‘seduced by text, texts and intertextuality’ and which had ‘lost the desire (and the confidence?) to say anything about this empirical social world’ (1993:529). Thrift was concerned that the textualist approach, as outlined in Writing Worlds, ‘does not give sufficient room to issues of power and oppression’, and that there is often ‘little sense of a world out there’ (1994:110). For Peet the textualist approach does not allow for an assessment to be made as to how well a theory or model relates to ‘a material world external to the theorist’ (1996:97). Badcock (1996:94) argued that the work of those urban geographers who have been influenced by the interpretive turn is suspect because of its subjectivity. But, as Walton has poignantly argued, the only external or real world accessible to us is the one which we construct through our interpretations (1995). Accepting landscape as ‘text’ (in the contemporary sense of the term) implies that what we can know is not a given, universal, ‘authentic’ world, but an epistemologically mediated reality, constructed linguistically as well as materially (Walton, 1995:62). The act of interpreting a place or a group, and any rendering we do of them, is text-like (Walton, 1995:62,64; 1996:100). However, this should not mean that there is no such thing as a real world independent of the observer, but only that we have no access to it as a pre-interpreted reality (Walton, 1995:62,64; 1996:99). A more useful approach may be to dissolve the false distinction between the symbolic and the material, and to position identities and landscapes as simultaneously culturally, socially, economically and physically constructed (Matless, 1996:386). Notwithstanding this more radical call for a ‘new materialism’, the question need not be about whether the identities and  Institute



places so depicted are real or constructed, but rather it should be about the appropriateness of the characterisation put forward. The contemporary controversy surrounding a supposed clash between ‘identity politics’ and ‘political economy’ is another manifestation of the so-called discursive / materialist tension. In recent years a new episteme referred to as ‘identity politics’, or the ‘new politics of difference’, has emerged from within cultural studies and elsewhere. Key theorists in this philosophical development have included Cornell West and Iris Young. Unlike earlier libertarian researchers, these theorists do not reject or suppress difference as part of their advocacy for subordinate groups (West, 1990) nor as part of their exposure of oppression (Young, 1990a; 1990b). These theorists recognise that group mobilisation and selfvalidation necessitate an assertion of group identity. Socialist feminist Nancy Fraser has positioned this research project as ‘recognition politics’, and demarcated it from socialist aims of redistributing surplus labour (1995). In a recent edition of New Left Review , Fraser began her assessment of what she calls recognition politics by drawing the following distinctions and dichotomies. The ‘struggle for recognition’ is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century. Demands for ‘recognition of difference’ fuel struggles of groups mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, ‘race’, gender, and sexuality. In these ‘postsocialist’ conflicts, group identity supplants class interest as the chief medium of political mobilization. Cultural domination supplants exploitation as the fundamental injustice. And cultural recognition displaces socioeconomic redistribution as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle (Fraser, 1995:68). The criticism of identity politics from the Left is that the focus upon issues of recognition, such as cultural imperialism, are a distraction from  Institute


5

more ‘grounded’ concerns such as exploitation and marginalisation. Identity politics is positioned as lacking a materialist and a structural edge. Many geographers have been critical of the influence of discursive approaches, and of the focus upon the politics of identity, within social and cultural geography. Gregson has expressed concern that social geographers have become preoccupied with ‘meaning, identity, representation and ideology’ at the expense of a material or concrete focus upon social inequalities (1995:139). Gregson traced this to the ‘cultural turn’ in human geography, as announced in New Words, New Worlds (Philo, 1991:1–3). To others the interpretive turn in urban geography is responsible for influential practitioners losing ‘sight of the attendant human costs’ and for shedding a politics of advocacy (Badock, 1996:92,96). Harvey has argued that the recent progressive movements, broadly grouped under rubric of identity politics, have contributed to an undermining of the socialist project. This weakening of working-class politics in the United States from the mid-1970s onwards can be traced back to many causes [. . .]. one contributory feature has been the increasing fragmentation of ‘progressive’ politics around special issues and the rise of the so-called new social movements focusing on gender, race, ethnicity, ecology, multiculturalism, community, and the like (Harvey, 1993:47). Cultural geographers certainly take seriously questions of identity. Yet, while it is the case that identity is largely an outcome of signification, this does not mean that it is dismissible as tangential or non-material. Constructions of identity are outcomes of prevailing ideologies and structures, but they are also, importantly, constitutive of them. Indeed, almost every form of subjugation requires the root oppression of cultural imperialism, in which a group of people can be marked as exploitable, or marginal, or inferior (Young,

6

1990a:58–60,64). The depiction of a group of people, the place they inhabit, and they way they inhabit it, all have crucial material implications for those people (Sibley, 1995). This has been shown to be the case by Australian cultural geographers with regard to ethnic enclaves (Anderson, 1990; Dunn, 1993), whole parcels of a city marked as a socioeconomic Other (Hodge, 1996; Mee, 1994), racialised districts like Aboriginal Redfern in Sydney (Anderson, 1993), sites of privilege such as walled suburbs (Hillier and McManus, 1994) or landscapes significant to indigenous people (Jacobs, 1993). This could be taken to suggest that remedies targeted at cultural injustice may be even more fundamental than those aimed at socio-economic injustice. What is certain is that matters cultural — issues of identity, citizenship, empowerment and so on — are as structural and material as issues traditionally linked to the political economy. As Anderson and Jacobs point out in this issue it is misleading and limiting to position the economic as material and structural, while boxing agency and the local as cultural. The cultural and economic are indeed ‘mutually invasive’, and they simultaneously structure both time and in place. The power of definition is a fundamental axis around which benefits and oppressions accrue, as McLeay and Dowling (both in this issue) show at the national and local scales. The dismissal of the politics of identity as a distraction, is not only part of an economic reductionism, but it reveals a naivety about how oppressions are facilitated and naturalised. Representations of landscapes, and of environmental degradation, are critical components to any socioecological remedy (Baker, in this issue). Cultural geographers focus upon imagery, upon identity and representations. This is not, ipso facto , an evacuation of the social, material, structural or political. In a review of social and cultural geography Matless’ (1996: 385–6) revealed the immense interest and activity in the geographies of poverty and exclusion; the recent focus upon ‘spaces of citizenship’ is demonstrative of this. This is made clear in the explicit engagement with


policy matters undertaken by contributors to this issue. Fraser’s purpose in discussing identity politics was to put forward an agenda for the integration of recognition politics with that of socialism, something she considered as essential in the face of resurgent conservatism. One of the major theoretical issues within human geography remains the question of whether the ‘cultural turn’ and political economy can come to some acceptable conceptual reconciliation. In their review of British geography, Richards and Wrigley (1996:54) assert that such an interface is crucial. They point to the attempts to ‘sex the economy’, and investigations of the culture of the firm, as examples of innovative routes for tying these two research trajectories. However, the ‘integration’ plans offered from the political economists appear more like co-options. For instance, Peet’s plea was for only a limited adoption of discursive approaches within an established Marxist tradition, focussed narrowly on the way ‘[t]ext-like qualities are "written" into landscapes by labor operating within power relations’ (1996:97). Harvey’s (1989:355) version of integration was to ‘recuperate’ other progressive movements ‘within the overall frame of historical materialist inquiry’ (see Massey, 1991:54–6). Badcock’s (1996:96) prophecy is of a defeated ‘interpretive turn’, subsequently providing the academic space in which the full potential of political economy can be realised! Under these schema cultural geographers are offered the straight-jacket of a largely unreconstructed political economy. However, the response of political economists in Australian geography to this ‘cultural / interpretive / discursive turn’ has been much more encouraging than the above statements belie (Fagan, 1995). This integration has been artfully carried out by Gibson-Graham (1996:260–1), they have subjected constructs like ‘capitalism’, ‘globalisation’ and ‘class’ to the same sorts of radical rethinking and troubling which has occured with regard to gender, sexuality and race. The potential for an enriching interface, between the cultural turn,  Institute



with the focus upon discourse and the power of definition, and the redistributive goals of radical political economy, appear bright in Australian human geography.

     In recent years the cognate (trans)discipline of cultural studies has experienced an interesting debate on the desirability of integrating a policy focus into research agendas. Much of the advocacy of a central place for policy considerations in Australia has come from Tony Bennett and Stuart Cunningham and other cultural technicians affiliated with Griffith University in Brisbane (Bennett, 1992a; 1992b). Bennett argued that the ‘field of culture needs to be thought of as constitutively governmental’, and that research should be directed to ‘concretely influence the agendas, calculations, and procedures of those entities which can be thought of as agents operating within, or in relation to, the fields of culture’ (Bennett, 1992b:32). One of the benefits of cultural theorists entering into policy debates, and being actively involved in the assessment of government initiatives and programs, has been that progressive voices have begun to be heard in arenas previously dominated by the advice of neo-conservatives (During, 1993:20; O’Regan, 1993:202–3). The call for policy engagement is laudable, providing that the definition of policy is not a narrow one centred only around policy development, government process and consultancies (O’Regan, 1993:203). As one aspect of cultural research, ‘policy’ should include a focus upon power, upon the forces of oppression and strategies of resistance. If ‘policy’ includes those matters, as well as government actions and plans, then cultural geographers will continue to be engaged in policy matters. Cultural geographers bring specific insights to assessments of cultural policy, stressing the role of everyday places, of landscapes, in the formation of culture and identity (Dowling; Pulvirenti, both in this issue). One of the clear themes which emerges from the papers in this issue is the unsatisfactory way  Institute


7

in which culture is conceptualised in much of cultural policy in Australia. Firstly, in both national and local cultural policies there are disturbing remnants of elitism. In national policies culture has been thought of as the product of ‘talented individuals’, manifest in symphony orchestras, opera and ballet (McLeay, in this issue). In local cultural plans the aim is to create places using everyday cultural forms, however the practice has had an artifactual tendency which valorises local museums, art galleries, monuments and theatres, and has been unable to recognise the everyday culture in places (Dowling, in this issue). Cultural geographers have long expressed their dissatisfaction for policies which treat culture narrowly, as only ‘race’ or ethnicity. This narrow treatment is the second limitation in the official defintions of culture. Multicultural policies, such as the Community Relations Strategy, have used categories of race and ethnicity unproblematically (Anderson, 1993). The conceptualisations of culture involved are usually superorganic, treating culture as fixed and bounded (Duncan, 1980). Anderson and Jacobs outline the limitations of this older approach. They demonstrate how cultures, such as Aboriginality, are articulated in the spaces of cities. Pulvirenti picks up on Fincher et al.’s (1993) critiques of multicultural policies in this respect. The home ownership experiences of Italian Australians reveals that the version of culture deployed in multiculturalism policy — static homogenised and essentialised — is untenable. Incredibly for a settler nation, this policy holds that culture is internationally transported, that it is hermetically sealed-off (wrapped) from the migration and settlement process, and is relocated intact. Cultural policies must be able to recognise, and embrace, the dynamic nature of culture. The elitism of some cultural policy is a significant problem, reinforcing disenfranchisements in which people are made non-citizens within the spaces they inhabit. Baker warns of the dangers of policy instruments which work from above. The local knowledges and actions of Landcare

8

groups hold out great potential for redressing ecological damage. Dowling argues that local cultural planning has similar potential; to valorise everyday cultural forms, to be a force for wider citizenry and empowerment. Australian cultural geographers can no longer settle for static and narrow conceptualisations of culture, and such limiting articulations in policy will be the targets of critique. Culture is fluid and intersubjective. Waitt shows how it is also structured by dominant ideologies, as demonstrated in dominant cultural forms such as Australian Tourist Commission advertising. Waitt highlights the contradictory versions of national identity constructed by different institutions in Australia. Ostensibly progressive encapsulations of Australia, as a diverse and dynamic entity, have been constructed by the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) and the Department of Communication and the Arts (OMA 1989; Commonwealth of Australia, 1994). However, these are undermined by other federal government agencies including the Australian Tourist Commission (ATC). The ATC version draws heavily upon Australians who are Anglo/hetero/male/‘bushies’, with a smattering of indigenous people for exotic effect, and an objectification of women for erotic effect (Waitt, in this issue). McLeay notes the insular and defensive motives behind the previous and the present federal government policies on national identity. Fear of the entry and spread of homogenous (American) culture is the premise for these recent confused articulations of national identity. Issues of national identity are crucial in that they determine who has access to citizenry, rights of participation, access to services, and the ability to utilise institutions. The previous Labor government’s dynamic and heterogeneous official construction of nationhood, and its inclusive model of citizenship had provided a base upon which to chart the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a multicultural society (OMA, 1989). However, there has been a less than satisfactory application of the Multicultural Project, and crucial areas of policy


such as anti-racism programs remain in their infancy. McLeay expresses concern that the election of the conservative Howard Coalition government in March of 1996 has ended the official embrace of cultural difference. The politics of sameness now have the ascendancy and inclusive citizenry seems further imperilled. Once again, the definitions of Australian national identity are being constructed out of what ‘we’ are not (not Asian, not Aboriginal), rather than what ‘we’ are (diverse, heterogenous, dynamic). Once again, the citizenship of indigenous and Asian Australians is being publicly questioned (Hanson, 1996a,b). Richard Baker shows how communities, with their shared understandings and affiliations are being tapped as a resource to address environmental degradation. He has taken up the Matless gauntlet (1996:380 citing Latour, 1993); Landcare is treated as ‘simultaneously naturalized, sociologized and deconstructed’. Landcare groups are culturally and physically defined local environmentalisms, which represent great potential, however, they are clearly under-resourced. Baker advocates a stronger commitment from central government to the landcare social-environmental movement. However, this assistance has to occur without the stifling influence that such top-down actions usually entail. ‘Landcare bureaucracies’ need to recognise, valorise and nurture the ‘Landcare communities’ without controlling them; such control would be resisted, and the potential of Landcare would be lost. This movement has been ostensibly a cultural one, a diverse and locally specific phenomenon, which holds the possibility of profound transformative impacts: the remedying of Australia’s extensive environmental degradation. The links between the discursive and nondiscursive construction of environmental damage, and the outcomes in terms of who pays for that damage, await more attention from Australian geographers (Fagan, 1995:5). Burgess has outlined the utility of examining the processes and outcomes of environmental ‘battles’ (1992). Barkley’s (1995) decon Institute



struction of a local land-use dispute in northern NSW demonstrated how the rhetoric of sustainable development is deployed by protagonists as a source of legitimation. Alviano and Mercer have recently warned that in Australia ‘we shall almost certainly see a greatly increased polarisation between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, both in terms of access to economic resources and environmental goods like clean air, water, space, and the absence of noise’ (1996:113). The less powerful will be required to suffer the ‘ecological consequences of others’ actions’ (Harvey, 1993:56). Forster wrote that it will be the affluent communities in Australia who are able to insulate themselves from negative externalities, ‘leaving lowincome communities in charge of their own problems but without enough resources to tackle them’ (1995:126). Cultural geographers in Australia are appropriately tooled to engage with these issues. Not mentioned here has been the work with groups whose oppressions are only recently coming to light, such as the disabled and others who are ‘in care’ (Gleeson, 1996a). As Gleeson demonstrates their plight is becoming visible as a result of both deinstitutionalisation and institutional neglect, but it is exposing a deeper problem which is traceable to the way these people have been labelled or constructed (Gleeson, 1996b; contra Badcock, 1996:92). There is also a committed stream of research on the disempowerment of indigenous people, and there has been a critical assessment of the reticence of public and private institutions to recognise their rights and traditions (Anderson and Jacobs, in this issue; Jackson, 1995; Jacobs, 1993). The oppression of dissident sexualities, and the unquestioned assumptions in our built form of heterosexuality, have come under the scrutiny of cultural geographers (Hodge, 1995; Johnson, 1993). Tasmania’s repressive anti-gay laws, which encourage intolerances and violence, were critically examined at the IAG Conference in Hobart in January 1997. The wider issue of the construction of gender remains central to the research agendas of many  Institute


9

Australian geographers. These include critiques of dominant and problematic versions of masculinity (Winchester, forthcoming), of femininity (Mee, 1994), and of the subjugation of subordinate constructions of gender.

 By way of summary, and without being prescriptive, the papers in this issue demonstrate three ways in which cultural geographers are engaged in progressive transformative projects. Firstly, they have embraced critically reflexive approaches in which conceptual orderings and categorisations are considered to be contingent and political. Secondly, they are focussed upon exposing and unsettling problematic ideologies, particularly those which are not normally questioned or which are taken for granted. This requires constant surveillance of the powerful ideas and instruments which emanate from the regulatory frameworks of hetero-patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism. The politics of resistance is given theoretical recognition and encouraged at systemic, individual, household and local scales. Cultural geographers attempt to voice the concerns of the less powerful and marginalised. They do this, as best can be done by utilising a range of methodologies and writing techniques. Thirdly, as is obvious from the papers in this issue, they make recommendations, and more direct interventions, on the formulation of more appropriate institutional structures for postcolonial and culturally diverse society. They monitor and scrutinise governmental responses to, and remedies for, oppressions. The research reviewed above should be enough to justify the claim that Australian cultural geography is overtly critically reflexive, has a constant and wary eye focused upon the forces of oppression, and is often policy engaged. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This special issue owes much to the constructive comments of the referees and the general guidance of Kay Anderson. The issue would have been of a fundamentally lesser quality without her asssitance. Gratitude is also due to Robyn

10 Dowling, who has also contributed editorial advice. Thanks also to Murray McCaskill, Pauline McGuirk and Richard Baker for comments on manuscripts, and to the various contributors to this special issue. REFERENCES Alviano, P. and Mercer, D., 1996: The Dandenong Offensive Industry Zone: a case study in environmental conflict, Australian Geographer , 27(1), 101–15. Anderson, K., 1990: ‘Chinatown re-oriented’: a critical analysis of recent redevelopment schemes in a Melbourne and Sydney enclave, Australian Geographical Studies, 28(2), 137–154. Anderson, K., 1993: Otherness, culture and capital: ‘Chinatown’s’ transformation under Australian multiculturalism, in G.L. Clark, D. Forbes and R. Francis (eds) Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 68–89. Anderson, K., 1995: In the place of trans-disciplinary space, Australian Geographical Studies , 34(1), 121–5. Anderson, K. and Gale, F., (eds) 1992: Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire. Badcock, B., 1996: ‘Looking-glass’ views of the city, Progress in Human Geography, 20(1), 91–99. Barnes, T.J. and Duncan, J.S., (eds) 1992: Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text & Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, London, Routledge. Barkley, E., 1995: Articulations of Sustainable Development: The Byron Bay Club Mediterranee Controversy, B.A. Honours thesis, School of Geography, The University of New South Wales. Bennett, T., 1992a: Useful culture, Cultural Studies, 6(3). Bennett, T., 1992b: Putting policy into cultural studies, in L. Grossberg, C. Nelson and P.A. Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies, New York, Routledge, 23–34. Burgess, J., 1992: The cultural politics of nature conservation and economic development, in K. Anderson and F. Gale (eds) Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 235–51. Butler, J., 1990: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, Routledge. Chouinard, V., 1994: Reinventing radical geography: is all that’s Left Right?, Society and Space, 12(1), 2–6. Christopherson, S., 1989: On being outside ‘the project’, Antipode, 21, 83–9. Commonwealth of Australia, 1994: Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy , Canberra, Department of Communications and the Arts. Cosgrove, D. and Jackson, P., 1987: New directions in cultural geography, Area, 19(2), 95–101. Crabb, P., 1995: ‘Les professeurs de ge´ographie savent ou` ils vont’ Or do they?, Geographical Education, 8(3), 9–12. Duncan, J.S., 1980: The superorganic in American cultural geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 70(2), 181–98.

Australian Geographical Studies Duncan, J.S., 1990: The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Duncan, J.S. and Ley, D., (eds) 1993: Place/Culture/ Representation, London, Routledge. Dunn, K.M., 1993: The Vietnamese concentration in Cabramatta: Site of avoidance and deprivation, or island of adjustment and participation?, Australian Geographical Studies, 31(2), 228–45. During, S., 1993: Introduction, in S. During (ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader , London, Routledge, 1–25. Fagan, R., 1995: Economy, culture and environment: perspectives on the Australian food industry, Australian Geographer , 26(1), 1–10. Fincher, R., Campbell, I. and Webber, M., 1993: Multiculturalism, settlement and migrants’ employment strategies, in G. L. Clark, D. Forbes and R. Francis (eds) Multiculturalism, Difference and Postmodernism, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 103–125. Forster, C., 1995: Australian Cities: Continuity and Change , Melbourne, Oxford University Press. Fraser, N., 1995: From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘Post-Socialist’ age, New Left Review, 212, 68–93. Gibson-Graham, J.K., 1996: The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy , Cambridge, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishers. Gibson, K. and Watson, S., (eds) 1994: Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in Contemporary Australia, Sydney, Pluto Press. Gleeson, B., 1996a: A geography for disabled people?, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers , 21(2), 387–96. Gleeson, B., 1996b: Strategies of avoidance: a perspective on Australian community care, Urban Research Program — Newsletter , 27, 2–3. Gregson, N., 1993: ‘The initiative’: delimiting or deconstructing social geography?, Progress in Human Geography, 17(4), 525–30. Gregson, N., 1995: And now it’s all consumption?, Progress in Human Geography, 19(1), 135–41. Grosz, E., 1995: Space, Time and Perversion, Sydney, Allen & Unwin. Hanson, P., 1996a: Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 1996–97 Second Reading, Member for Oxley, 10 September, 3860–3, Australia, House of Representatives Debates. Hanson, P., 1996b: Adjournment Debate, Aboriginal Affairs, Migration, Member for Oxley, 31 October, 6195, House of Representatives Debates. Harvey, D., 1989: The Condition of Postmodernity , London, Basil Blackwell. Harvey, D., 1993: Class relations, social justice and the politics of difference, in M. Keith and S. Pile (eds) Place and the Politics of Identity , London, Routledge, 41–66. Hillier, J. and McManus, P., 1994: Pull up the drawbridge: fortress mentality in the suburbs, in K. Gibson and S. Watson (eds) Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in

 Institute


Cultural Geography and Cultural Policy Contemporary Australia, Sydney, Pluto Press, 91–107. Hodge, S., 1995: ‘No fags out there’: gay men, identity and suburbia, Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, 1(1), 41–8. Hodge, S., 1996: Disadvantage and ‘otherness’ in western Sydney, Australian Geographical Studies , 34(1), 32–44. Jackson, P. and Penrose, J., (eds) 1993: Constructions of Race, Place and Nation, London, University College London Press. Jackson, S., 1995: The water is not empty: cross cultural issues in conceptualising sea space, Australian Geographer , 26(1), 87–96. Jacobs, J.M., 1993: Shake ‘im this country’: the mapping of the Aboriginal sacred in Australia - the case of Coronation Hill, in P. Jackson and J. Penrose (eds) Constructions of Race, Place and Nation, London, University College London Press, 100–18. Jacobs, J.M., 1994: Cultural geography study group, IAG Newsletter , 30, 11–12. Johnson, L.C., 1993: Text-ured brick: Speculations on the cultural production of domestic space, Australian Geographical Studies, 31(2), 201–13. Johnson, L.C., (ed.) 1994a: Suburban Dreaming: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Australian Cities , Geelong, Deakin University Press. Johnson, L.C., 1994b: What future for feminist geography?, Gender, Place and Culture , 1(1), 103–13. Kobayashi, A. and Peake, L., 1994: Unnatural discourse. ‘Race’ and gender in geography, Gender, Place and Culture, 1(2), 225–43. Longhurst, R., 1994: The geography closest in - the body [. . .] the politics of pregnability, Australian Geographical Studies, 32(2), 214–223. Massey, D., 1991: Flexible sexism, Society and Space, 9, 31–57. Matless, D., 1996: New material? Work in cultural and social geography, Progress in Human Geography , 20(3), 379–91. McDowell, L., 1992: Doing gender: feminism, feminists and research methods in human geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers , 17(4), 399–416. Mee, K., 1994: Dressing up the suburbs: respresentations of western Sydney, in K. Gibson and S. Watson (eds) Metropolis Now: Planning and the Urban in Contemporary Australia, Sydney, Pluto Press, 60–77. O’Regan, T., 1993: (Mis)taking policy: Notes on the cultural policy debate, in J. Frow and M. Morris (eds) Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader , St. Leonards, Allen & Unwin, 192–206. Office of Multicultural Affairs, 1989: National Agenda for a Multicultural Australia . . . Sharing Our Future , Canberra,

 Institute


11 Australian Government Publishing Service. Peet, R., 1996: Discursive idealism in the ‘Landscape-asText’ School, Professional Geographer , 48(1), 96–8. Philo, C., 1991: Introduction, acknowledgements and brief thoughts on older words and older worlds, in C. Philo (eds) New Words, New Worlds: Reconceptualising Social and Cultural Geography, Proceedings of the IBG , Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Sept., 1–13. Pratt, G., 1993: Reflections on poststructuralism and feminist empirics, theory and practice, Antipode, 25(1), 51–63. Price, M. and Lewis, M., 1993: The reinvention of cultural geography, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 83(1), 1–17. Richards, K. and Wrigley, N., 1996: Geography in the United Kingdom, 1992–1996, The Geographical Journal, 162(1), 41–62. Rose, G., 1993: Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, Cambridge, Polity Press. Rose, G., 1995: The interstitial perspective: a review essay on Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture, Society and Space, 13(3), 365–73. Sibley, D., 1995: Geographies of Exclusion, London, Routledge. Skelly, C., 1994: Earth system science - the new geography?, plenary paper delivered to the IAG Conference , Magnetic Island, Sept 25–29. Stratford, E., (ed.) forthcoming: Australian Cultural Geographies, Melbourne, Oxford University Press. Thrift, N., 1994: Review of Writing Worlds, Antipode, 26(1), 109–11. Walton, J.R., 1995: How real(ist) can you get?, Professional Geographer , 47(1), 61–5. Walton, J.R., 1996: Bridging the divide — a reply to Mitchell and Peet, Professional Geographer , 48(1), 98– 100. Wark, M., 1994; Virtual Geographies: Living With Global Media Events, Bloomington, Indiana University Press. West, C., 1990: The new cultural politics of difference, October , 53, 93–109. Whatmore, S., 1992: Epilogue, Antipode, 233–7. Winchester, H.P.M., forthcoming: Contested terrain and derogatory discourse: lone fathers’ defence of hegemonic masculinity, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. Young, I .M., 1990a: Justice and the Politics of Difference , Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. Young, I .M., 1990b: The ideal of community and the politics of difference, in L. Nicholson (ed.) Feminism / Post-modernism, New York, Routledge, 300–23.

Cultural geography and cultural policy

Recommend Documents