Popular understandings of 'UnAustralian': an investigation of the un-national

In social science the 'national' has been studied extensively, but comparatively little attention has been given to the 'un-national'. The article takes up this challenge in an Australian context. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, investigation is centred around the keyword 'UnAustralian'. Participants in focus groups were asked to nominate and account for what they thought of as 'UnAustralian' people, places, values, activities, groups and organizations. Analysis of the data revealed that two factors underpinned an attribution: incivility and foreign influence. Contemporary uses revolve around outcomes from globalization and can be contrasted with the centrality of class politics to deployments of the concept in the first part of the 20th century.

Diversity and commonality in national identities: an exploratory analysis of cross-national patterns

Issues of boundary maintenance are implicit in all studies of national identity. By definition, national communities consist of those who are included but surrounded (literally or metaphorically) by those who are excluded. Most extant research on national identity explores criteria for national membership largely in terms of official or public definitions described, for example, in citizenship and immigration laws or in texts of popular culture. We know much less about how ordinary people in various nations reason about these issues. An analysis of cross-national (N = 23) survey data from the 1995 International Social Science Program reveals a core pattern in most of the countries studied. Respondents were asked how important various criteria were in being 'truly' a member of a particular nation. Exploratory factor analysis shows that these items cluster in terms of two underlying dimensions. Ascriptive/objectivist criteria relating to birth, religion and residence can be distinguished from civic/voluntarist criteria relating to subjective feelings of membership and belief in core institutions. In most nations the ascriptive/objectivist dimension of national identity was more prominent than the subjective civic/voluntarist dimension. Taken overall, these findings suggest an unanticipated homogeneity in the ways that citizens around the world think about national identity. To the extent that these dimensions also mirror the well-known distinction between ethnic and civic national identification, they suggest that the former remains robust despite globalization, mass migration and cultural pluralism. Throughout the world official definitions of national identification have tended to shift towards a civic model. Yet citizens remain remarkably traditional in outlook. A task for future research is to investigate the macrosociological forces that produce both commonality and difference in the core patterns we have identified.

'Why does cultural studies want history?'

Cultural studies has often been accused of maintaining too strong a focus on the contemporary and the immediate as a result of its primary interest in popular culture and the media. The role of history, such criticisms suggest, has been displaced by this contemporary emphasis. Nonetheless, much cultural studies work takes a principled stand on the necessity of historicising the products of its research. Consequently, it is worth asking, with British historian Carolyn Steedman--'why does cultural studies want history?' This article begins to answer that question through the discussion of some aspects of a specific research project within Australian cultural studies.