TY - JOUR
T1 - Interculturality, postethnicity and the Aboriginal Australian policy future
AU - Moore, Terry
PY - 2016/10/1
Y1 - 2016/10/1
N2 - Though now under some challenge, the policy orthodoxy in Australian Aboriginal affairs since the 1970s has been progressive in its social justice orientation, postcolonial in its amelioration of the colonial legacy, and culturalist in its privileging of ethnicity. In this paper I argue that its attempt to recover the past in the face of increasing postethnicity is becoming counter-productive, by stultifying cultural adaptation and compromising individuals’ capacity to engage with modernity. The notions of interculturality and postethnicity point to coexisting ancestral cultures, an imagined, symbolic national Aboriginality, and deep intersection with settler-Australia and the world, and so cultural ‘changing-sameness’ and simultaneous ‘bothness’. The paper argues that a dialectic of public policy and Aboriginal identity politics resists this lived reality, with negative effects. It proposes that a way forward is to engage more fully with the lived reality.
AB - Though now under some challenge, the policy orthodoxy in Australian Aboriginal affairs since the 1970s has been progressive in its social justice orientation, postcolonial in its amelioration of the colonial legacy, and culturalist in its privileging of ethnicity. In this paper I argue that its attempt to recover the past in the face of increasing postethnicity is becoming counter-productive, by stultifying cultural adaptation and compromising individuals’ capacity to engage with modernity. The notions of interculturality and postethnicity point to coexisting ancestral cultures, an imagined, symbolic national Aboriginality, and deep intersection with settler-Australia and the world, and so cultural ‘changing-sameness’ and simultaneous ‘bothness’. The paper argues that a dialectic of public policy and Aboriginal identity politics resists this lived reality, with negative effects. It proposes that a way forward is to engage more fully with the lived reality.
KW - Aboriginal
KW - identity politics
KW - intercultural governance
KW - interculturality
KW - postethnicity
KW - public policy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84988872541&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1468796815584422
DO - 10.1177/1468796815584422
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84988872541
VL - 16
SP - 712
EP - 732
JO - Ethnicities
JF - Ethnicities
SN - 1468-7968
IS - 5
ER -