Overview
How are ideas of failure and success used in Australian Indigenous policy? This question came to me in 2007 when I heard a philanthropist, newly involved in Indigenous affairs, tell a simple success story. The ideas of moral dynamics and rhetorical registers helped me think about what was going on. In this seminar I will recount in more detail these events of 2007, and explore other instances of failure and success analysis in Australian Indigenous policy over the last four decades.
Policy is by nature a future-oriented, aspirational activity, trying to make our social world better. So the presence of moral dynamics and rhetorical registers in policy debates, using ideas of failure and success, is to be expected. But analytic understanding of how these dynamics and registers play out over time needs to be developed, identifying both strengths and weaknesses of different moral and rhetorical positions.
This seminar is based on a chapter for a book being published in 2023 entitled Public Policy and Indigenous Futures.
|
Speaker
Will Sanders is an Honorary Associate Professor at CAEPR. He was a member of CAEPR’s paid academic staff from 1993 to 2020, and a CAEPR Associate from 1990 to 1993. Before working at CAEPR, Will was on the staff of three other ANU academic units, the North Australia Research Unit in Darwin, plus the Urban Research Unit and Department of Political Science. Will’s PhD, completed in 1986, was on the inclusion of Aboriginal people in the social security system from the 1960s to the 1980s. His postdoctoral research was on Indigenous housing policy. While at CAEPR, Will also worked on Torres Strait issues, and Indigenous involvement in elections and local government, particularly in remote areas.
Location
Speakers
- Will Sanders