This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Tyler, W. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Postmodernity and the Aboriginal Condition: the Cultural Dilemmas of Contemporary Policy

Sociology, Faculty of Arts Northern Territory University

Recent attempts to deal with Australian Aboriginality in non-descentist and non-essentialising language exemplify the postmodern dilemmas of developing a sociology of Fourth World peoples. Aboriginality as a social category is riven by tensions between the homogenising forces of modernity which have produced the 'normalised' self- identifying Aboriginal subject and the pluralising forces established around an aesthetic of community. Welfare colonialism, as a discursive formation, institutionalises and proliferates these contradictions, generating a dynamic which produces tendencies towards both the 'hyper rationalisation' and the 'hyper-differentiation' of the Aboriginal condition. This process is manifested in the fragmentation or 'decentring' of the sites and discourses, global and local, through which a contemporary Aboriginal identity may be grounded. Several dilemmas are explored, including the medical (AIDS) administrative (housing, employment) and politico-legal (self-government) instances of discursive fragmentation.

Journal of Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 3, 322-342 (1993)
DOI: 10.1177/144078339302900303


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?