Australian Cultural Fields: a symposium

The ACF symposium will discuss the research and the findings of the project ‘Australian Cultural Fields: National and Transnational Dynamics’ (ARC DP140101970) which, following the methods of Pierre Bourdieu, investigated the shaping of Australian art, literary, media, sport, and heritage fields, individually and collectively. The project’s primary focus was on the relation between these fields and the nation, but also paid particular attention to the distinctive forms of cultural capital associated within and across these fields, especially ethnic cultural divisions and the distinctive presence of Indigenous culture. Numerous publications have resulted from the research including: David Rowe, Graeme Turner, and Emma Waterton. Making Culture: Commercialisation, Transnationalism, and the State of ‘Nationing’ in Contemporary Australia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018; Tony Bennett, Deborah Stevenson, Fred Myers, and Tamara Winikoff, eds. The Australian Art Field: Practices, Policies, Institutions, 2020, and recently the summative book of the project Tony Bennett, David Carter, Modesto Gayo, Michelle Kelley, and Greg Noble. Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Inequalities and Social Divisions. London Routledge, 2021. (The books are available for online reading from the UQ Library.) The Symposium will hear presentations from four of the Chief Investigators, with ample time for discussion. The ACF project, and the publications it has generated to date, do not include Architecture as a cultural field. This symposium considers why this is so, and how future research can draw on the ACF methodology to investigate the critical role of Architecture in formations of cultural capital in contemporary Australia.

Speakers:

Emeritus Professor Tony Bennett, WSU

Emeritus Professor David Carter, UQ

Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner, UQ

Professor Emma Waterton, WSU

Professor John Macarthur with Dr Susan Holden and Dr Timothy O’Rourke and Carroll Go-Sam, UQ

Chairs, Emeritus Prof Gillian Whitlock, Assoc Prof Anna Johnston, UQ

Schedule:

Attendance in person is free but requires registration by Eventbrite. 

For anyone wishing to attend via Zoom, please join online from 10:30am via this link.