There was a very interesting article by Margaret Simons in the Saturday Age [no link available unfortunately]. Taking up the theme of inner-city elites, Simons contrasted the lifestyles prevalent in outer suburbia with those in the gentrified inner city. As someone who’s previously written extensively on Mark Latham, she also referred to his insiders/outsiders distinction. However, it seemed from reading her piece that the outsiders were actually the educated. She picked up on a lot of research which demonstrates that attitudes on social and political issues are - on some key points - and often the ones which are central to the culture wars - variant between those who’ve had a tertiary education and those who haven’t. She cited approvingly ANU Sociologist Shaun Wilson’s claim that education is now a proxy for class. I’m not so sure about this - I suspect if the data were available there would have been dissonant opinions - albeit on different issues - along the same fault line 40 years ago. The key to Simons’ piece (aside from the fact that Dan Brown goes down in popularity among educated readers) was the assertion - familiar from Latham’s voluminous tracts - that those with higher levels of education are somehow less attached to Australia and more global in their outlook. The only actual evidence she could cite for this was a survey which found that 90% of Australians generally were of the view that Australia was the country that they were most happy being citizens of, while this view was held by 78% of “educated” Australians (it’s somewhat hard to interpret this properly due to a lack of information generally about the survey data).
It’s a constant of national identity - particularly in a country without a long historical tradition and where ethnicity is heterogenous - that identity is founded on the exclusion of an Other. This is very often external - hence the role of asylum seekers in the Tampa furore picked up on a long held cultural paranoia about Australia’s purported vulnerability to “swamping” by immigrants undesirable for one reason or another. But clearly the Other is often within - Islamic populations, Communists, whoever. It seems that the latest Other is educated “elites”. Somehow, Simons suggested, Carlton and Balmain (and no doubt New Farm) are not the “real” Australia. I think this is nonsense. It may be reflective of political and cultural attitudes, but surely adopting a critical attitude to one’s own government and the nature of one’s own society ought to be the foundation of any national pride and identity worth the name in a democratic society.
She doesn’t criticise the basket-weavers for being the other per se or for being unAustralian. She knows she’s a basket weaver as well.
She was exploring how she/you have become so marginalised from the political process. She is trying to find a fault in the strategy of the vocal elite in order that it may be addressed with urgency because she as much a you, Mark, wishes that the critical thinkers regain a place at the table of power.
I think she concedes far too much ground however on the intellectual position. The reality is that the real elite - the economic elite - will always have the jump on the intellectuals. It just seems worse than usual at the moment because of a particularly regressive government in conjunction with the Holy War on Terror.
Her piece stacked up beside Birmingham’s go a long way to explaining Australia today.
I know that’s what she argues on the surface, wbb, but it struck me that her sympathy for Latham’s stuff added to her worrying about the real Australia suggested that a bit of that particularly false dichotomy had sunk in to her thinking. Note the fairly qualified way I make the point towards the end of the post.
Yep, she concedes too much on our and her behalf. But in these times confidence in many things is shaken.
But bugger it, you’re right. No Appeasement! You’re With Us Or You’re Against Us.
But I like her - remember her old scratchy hen-house gardening column a few years back in the Oz?
“remember her old scratchy hen-house gardening column”
I wonder is she still lives in that little town a tad west of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains?
How do you get The Age in Brisbane? That’s one paper I wish I could find at the front door on Saturday mornings.
To answer my own question, apparently not.
“Until recently Margaret Simons lived in the Blue Mountains of NSW where she was largely self sufficient an experience that can only have helped in her search for the meaning of compost!”
http://www.forpeaceofmind.com.au/Vol5/bookreviews.cfm
Sounds about right to me.
You latte-sipping ivory tower elites had petter pull up your socks.
Go back to your basket weaving Mark!!
Mark, I think the claim is that while *you* might think that an uncritical nationalism is a bad idea (and I’d be the first to agree with you) the denizens of Caroline Springs don’t seem to. Futher, they dislike us (with considerable prompting from the Andrew Bolts and Alan Joneses of this world) for being so carping about their paradise on earth.
It’s certainly a gross overgeneralization, but there might be something to it.
Yawn. Apparently, hoi polloi think differently from the aristos. In the olden days we used to worry about what the “working class” was thinking. Plus ca change.
I thought that the article was very interesting (almost motivate me to buy her book).
She expresses something that I have sensed for a while. That while I agree with criticism about the direction Australian has taken in regards to the Australian identity, and the role of ‘outsiders’ there is an annoying sense of superiority about it all. We well educated, connected well-travelled Australians have so much more moral awareness than you, Home and Gardens/Big Brother Plasma TV-buying obsessed people living in the suburban wilderness. She mentions how she was talking to a friend about refugees and how we (inner suburban educated) think that we are morally superior. And to her astonishment she heard her friend say that yes, we are!
If we think about those lines the Bolts and Akermas will have a field day for years and so will conservative ‘Liberal’ governments.
But, Guido, I don’t think that an attitude of superiority is necessary. No doubt there is some of that - but I suspect it springs from a sort of cultural capital/distinction thing. I think the actual issue is that people concerned with asylum seekers (for instance) see things in terms of a public morality - ie the issue is seen through an ethical lens. There’s no doubt that sense is present in the burbs too (although these distinctions are overdrawn - it’s simply not true that there aren’t inner urbanites who couldn’t give a toss about anything but money and themselves and for that matter suburbanites who care about refugees) but it tends more to be focussed on questions of individual responsibility - ie morality in a public sense is concerned with the apparent failings of dole bludgers, criminals etc. It’s also a social concern vs. a belief that social problems have individual causes.
Snobbery vs reverse snobbery.
“It seems that the latest Other is educated “elites”. Somehow, Simons suggested, Carlton and Balmain (and no doubt New Farm) are not the “real” Australia. I think this is nonsense.”
Though the Fountain Gate vox pops Simons did failed to show much interest in the inner city elites - it would be good to get some real polling on this issue.
She is on to something here, and I think the key is in changes to the left since the 1960s. Before then, the left’s main concern was with income inequality, which naturally made it opposed to the traditional economic elites, a relatively small % of the population. After that, the left became more concerned with the social as well as economic marginalisation of many groups. This meant that they were opposed not to a small minority, but to the attitudes held by often a large majority of the population. Probably unwittingly, the laid the foundations for elite rhetoric to be reversed.
Another important factor was the massification of higher education and expansion in professional employment. This meant that the soft left became large enough to form a significant sub-culture of its own, rarely mixing with other. Simons quoted graffiti wondering why Howard kept winning, even though the graffitist did not know anyone who voted Liberal. It was an exaggeration for humour, but there was a real point underlying it.
The cumulative result is an inner urban left culture that is socially and culturally detached from the majority culture.
My take on Simons’ piece: let’s educate them.
I think you’re right, Andrew, but the other question that’s relevant is - when did the Left give up on persuading the majority? That’s the problem, I think - where both some sort of defensive snobbery/elitism comes in in place of any effective politics.
And EP - it’s flat white sipping inner urbanites!
The irony is that its the FTA-pushing neoliberal policy elites -like EP - who are the greatest threat to Australian culture, identity and economy. And they have managed to distract battlers with unrelated bullshit(eg asylum seekers)into believeing the left (which is circumspect about economic globalisation when it comes without safeguards for non-elites) - are the new elitists. Its all complete tosh,of course, but EP, but I gotta give it to you - you’re winning the PR war.
Anyway, IMHO, this was the whole point of Tampa: to provide a psychic substitute ‘nation’ for the set of national economic and social policy controls the LPA is slowly flogging off to transnational bidders.
My quick take:
* part of the reason is that the Left’s primary political outlet, the Labor Party, no longer does so. Mind you, the right elites hide their own real agenda just as much.
* There are fewer outlets for persuasion than there used to be.
* And, you’re right, we’ve collectively wimped out on trying to persuade the unpersuaded and have resorted to chatting amongst ourselves.
Any suggestions as to where I can set up my soapbox so outer suburbanites can hear?
“I think you‚Äôre right, Andrew, but the other question that‚Äôs relevant is - when did the Left give up on persuading the majority? That‚Äôs the problem, I think - where both some sort of defensive snobbery/elitism comes in in place of any effective politics.”
The odd thing is that persuasion was a successful strategy - opinions have changed enormously on all the ’60s agenda issues - that if not now abandoned has at least been heavily diluted. It might be the subculture problem - when virtually everyone you meet agrees with your basic worldview you no longer need to be persuasive.
My theory is that the first generation of intellectual-political movements are usually the best, because they have to constantly find more persuasive ways of presenting their arguments and defending their position. Those who come later lazily adopt the conventional wisdom. It’s just as Mill argued back in the mid-19th century; you need competition in ideas to stay sharp.
Yes, there could be a bit of a sociological sub-cultural point here, Andrew.
I can’t remember where I read it recently but someone was talking about the need for the Left to think about Machiavelli rather than Gramsci as a guide for political action at times of defeat.
The other big problem, as noted above, is the lack of any viable political vehicle with the ALP’s secular turn to the right - and for that matter, the lack of any convincing alternative to neo-liberal economics.
A response to Simons in The Age this morning.
And not a bad one!