Mediating Multiculturalism. Daniella Trimboli
mentioned the lack of intervention and care from onlookers or witnesses. This apathy was felt even though the attacks often took place in public areas, such as roads, transportation, shopping centres or at work (ibid.).
The lack of intervention by individuals and representatives of institutions (police officers, politicians) fulfil ‘the collective nature of mechanisms of conversion’ or the active process through which bodies are marked as human or otherwise (ibid.). Immediately after the Cronulla riots the prime minister of the time, John Howard, denied they were a result of racism – a denial Bowen reaffirms years later in his 2011 multiculturalism speech.
Conclusion
There has been a shifting ecology of liberal multiculturalism in the twenty-first century, including the eruption of the term ‘cultural diversity’ in multicultural discourses. A range of moving factors has culminated in multiculturalism entering a mode of crisis in the twenty-first century, leading to two main approaches to its study. The first approach has been to emphasise the positive aspects of multiculturalism, often with a focus on the richness that cultural diversity adds to society. The second approach is more critical, working to illustrate the complexities and issues of multiculturalism as a societal phenomenon. Often, this latter approach moves discussions of cultural difference beyond the framework of multiculturalism altogether, either in the form of a complete renunciation or as a subtle but evident departure.
There are clearly micro and macro/private and public levels to the normalisation of racism – on the ground in which the racist altercations or tensions take place, and within the broader systems of power and sociality that support (sometimes simply by overlooking) these incidences. Tabar et al. (2010, p. 159) emphasise the importance of this relationship, ‘crucial not just because of the ways in which it structures the fields of significant social power […] but because it also shapes the forms of conversion in everyday life’. Perhaps the most problematic aspect of arguments like that posited by O’Connor and Araeen is their failure to consider the productive work that occurs between the ‘on-the-ground’ cultural differences and the institutions that drive it.
The study of multiculturalism is not ready to be abandoned, but it does need to be reconceptualised in broader terms. A brief overview of governmental and theoretical forms of multiculturalism indicates that questions of white managerialism continue to plague both the conceptualisations and material implications of multicultural life. Materiality must be fore-fronted in analyses of cultural difference if they are to tackle the stubborn residue of biological racism within multiculturalism discourse. Multiculturalism studies should analyse the multitude of forces and relations that constitute the present moment of culturally diverse life, but always with the understanding that this analysis might look different from another angle.
A multiculturalism that is critical and attuned to the complicated cross-overs of private and public discourses must be utilised in order to adequately navigate the conjuncture of cultural difference in the twenty-first century. The following chapter turns its attention to digital storytelling, a genre in which the nation and the ordinary multicultural body overlap.
1.Richard Appignanesi, editor of this Diversity report, later edited Third Text for a decade, from 2004 to 2014.
2.Pauline Hanson began her political career as a councillor for local government in Queensland, Australia. In the mid-1990s she was elected into Federal parliament as an Independent. In 1997 she founded One Nation, a populist, right-wing political party with an anti-Indigenous rights and anti-multiculturalism platform. The party disbanded a few years later but Hanson’s political aspirations and involvement have continued into the present moment. Hanson reformed One Nation in November 2014. The Australian public has also welcomed Hanson as a pseudo-celebrity over the years, exemplified by her participation in the popular competition television series Dancing with the Stars (2004) and The Celebrity Apprentice Australia (2011).
3.The removal of the word ‘multicultural’ from Federal management suggested a lessening of its importance. It was also indicative of a relinking of ethnic difference to a managerial model of Australian citizenship, where citizenship is earned via active participation in white Australian activities and narratives (see Stratton 2011).
4.The threat to creativity is clear. If artists gain entry into the contemporary art circuit because of their ethnic/racial labels – seen as ‘culturally relevant’ in this present context of ‘culturally diverse arts’ – how do those artists detach from this category? This is an issue many contemporary Australian artists face, as illustrated by my interview with Paula do Prado following her feature in ‘Sensorial Loop: Tamworth’s Textile Triennial’ (2011) and her solo exhibition Mellorado (2012a). As do Prado emerges in contemporary art circuits and collectors become increasingly interested in her work, she becomes exponentially aware of (and anxious about) the expectations pertaining to the ‘culturally-diverse aesthetic’ of her work (2012b, interview, 22 March).
5.Australian diggers turned against Chinese workers on the Bendigo goldfields as early as 1854, even though at this point the Australians outnumbered the Chinese fifteen thousand to two thousand; similar incidents were experienced in New South Wales, for example, at Rocky River in 1856, where a group of white miners attacked a newly arrived group of Chinese (Price 1974, pp. 68–69). Anti-Chinese sentiment intensified as more Chinese migrants arrived, a reaction parallel to the growing fear of a mass takeover by the ‘vast numbers’ of the Chinese (Hansard 1881, in Huttenback 1972–73, p. 282). Supporting the miners during this period were circulating newspapers such as Empire, which warned of the threat posed by ‘that swarming hive of the human race’ (Price 1974, p. 79). In 1855, the Victorian governor and Legislative Council accepted the royal commissioners’ recommendation for an entry tax into the goldfields, designed to ‘check and diminish’ the Chinese influx (Report of Commissioners on the Gold Fields [1854–55], cited in Price 1974, p. 69).
6.There are a range of Indigenous place names for parts of Sydney, for example ‘central’ Sydney is located on the unceded land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. However, the greater city of Sydney occupies other areas, all of which fall within Eora territory; therefore, Eora is used henceforth.
7.More recent examples of everyday multiculturalism in other geographical locations include Pratsinakis et al.’s (2017) work in Greece, Back and Sinha’s (2016) work in the United Kingdom, Wong’s (2016) Singapore study and Shan and Walter’s (2015) Canada-based research.
8.A feeling indicative of the distrust that has been expressed towards globalisation and technological revolution, in particular towards rapid digitalisation, increased mobility and the fragmentation of networks.
9.SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) began with radio but has since extended to television and online formats.
10.See also Ang and Stratton (1998) regarding the lack of language to describe a racism based on ‘race’ in Australia.
11.It should be stressed that terms such as ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim Australians’, and other related terms used in this book, for example, ‘Lebanese Australian’, are slippery and used interchangeably at times. The identity politics and cultural embeddedness of these terms should not be overlooked.
12.There