Scholarly and popular discourses in Australia often connect the agency of elites with the marginalisation of less privileged and powerful members of the community. This themed issue of the Journal of Australian Studies focuses on conflicts and collaborations that determine social and political power and its effects. We seek to open up closer discussion of the role of elites in Australian society through case studies since colonisation, and by the exploration of new research methods for investigating elite activity.
The trope of winners and losers is very familiar: military against convict, pastoralist and miner against Aboriginal landowner, squatter against small landholder, capital against labour, Protestant against Catholic, rentier against renter, established immigrant against newer arrival, elite male against female and non-elite male. Such definite oppositions have been formative in interpreting and understanding our national experience. Yet on closer investigation the binaries often prove friable.
Moving from generalisation to case study, the boundaries between elite and non-elite individuals are often less rigid, more porous than the popular understanding of elites would lead us to expect. If we do not acknowledge this, we miss fully understanding the types of collaboration seen in the political phenomenon of the Teals, community leadership on climate change, and in elite universities’ commitments to the Yes campaign in the ‘Voice’ referendum. That is not to suggest that such collaborations are always successful or without tensions and conflict. We are interested, firstly, in the nature of such relationships and whether they create ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ for both elite and non-elite collaborators.
Then there are the relationships between different types of elites. Contemporary scholarship often differentiates political, social, educational, technical and financial elites, but this differentiation generally remains blurred in public discourse. While relationships between elite cohorts can be collaborative and productive, they can also be based on competing agendas and/or philosophies that cannot be reconciled; once again, creating winners and losers.
Thirdly, there are internal frictions that flourish within elite formations, between members of the inner and outer sanctum, and of higher and lower status. Until this tension erupts into the public domain, as in the recent revelation that the Labor prime minister’s son had been granted access to Qantas’s exclusive Chairman’s Lounge, the general public hears little or nothing of it. When such cases come into view, they threaten to shatter the myth that elite culture and activity are somehow monolithic. As case studies, elite-on-elite conflict can provide granular accounts of the dynamics and effects of elite power which, by definition, tend to play out in exclusive spaces beyond public view (e.g. in exclusive clubs, parliamentary offices, self-governing institutions such as the military and the churches; on yachts, pastoral stations and private estates) (Higley and Best, 2009; Milne-Smith, 2011).
Seen through these three sets of lenses, the ‘elite’ condition is revealed as relational, relative and situated. This comparative framing informs this themed issue’s approach. The editors, Sybil Nolan and Chris Wallace, invite case studies, current or historical, that illuminate one of more of the three aspects above. Possible examples include:
- Elite and non-elite collaborations on wicked problems such as climate change
- Elite and non-elite aspects of the Yes campaign in the ‘Voice’ referendum or in socio-political referenda of the past
- Internal elite conflicts in the established political parties or other institutions of civil society
- Conflicts and collaborations related to work and work role status
- Conflicts and collaborations between rural and metropolitan elites
- The declining status of traditional media elites versus the rising platform capitalists
- Clubs’ and other elite socialities’ discrimination on the grounds of race, gender or sexual orientation
- The relationship between celebrity and elite status
- Elite and non-elite conflicts/collaborations in Australian literature and/or cinema.
We also encourage contributions that discuss elite theory or advance methodological approaches to critical elite studies drawn from gender studies, feminist history, queer history, settler colonial studies, critical race theory, imperial history, labour history, politics and political history, the history of emotions, art history, archival studies, literary studies, media history, screen studies, sociology and geography.
As a field, critical elite studies originates in theoretical debates in sociology but its application extends to many other disciplines (Denord, Palme and Réau, 2020). These include disciplines within the usual scope of the Journal of Australian Studies. While the editors of this special issue work within the field of twentieth-century political history and media history, we employ methods, theories and perspectives from gender studies, literary studies, the history of emotions and cultural history.
Send abstracts (no longer than 400 words plus brief bio) to sybil.nolan@unimelb.edu.au or chris.wallace@canberra.edu.au
Deadline: 30 October 2023.
Acceptances will be advised by 17 November. Papers of up to 8,000 words including footnotes and endnotes will be due on 24 February 2024. All will be double blind peer reviewed by independent anonymous reviewers.
The special issue will appear in March 2025.
References:
Denord, F., Palme, M., Réau, B., 2020. Researching Elites and Power: Theory, Methods, Analyses. Cham: Springer.
Higley, J., Best, H., 2009. ‘Democratic Elitism Reappraised’. Comparative Sociology, 8, 323-344.
Milne-Smith, A., 2011. London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in late Victorian Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Critical Elites 