Author: Diane Baird

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Keywords: United States, St. Joseph's University (Philadelphia), RMIT University, national identity, global culture, technology, teaching, socialisation, sociology, mass media.

Article style and source: Interview. Original ultiBASE publication.

You have never been to Australia before this trip. Was it a surprise?

Yes. I would say that the thing that has most surprised me over time has been the extent of what I see as the 'Americanization' of Australian culture. Initially, certain things stand out: driving on the left side of the road instead of the right, those kinds of things. That lasted for about a week. I would say that after then, I really began to notice the similarities more than the differences. Now, increasingly, that's really my impression of Australia. As a culture and as a society, it has become so much a part of American mass culture.

A lot of people would be very disappointed to hear you say that. What are some of the things that contribute to that impression? I think it is reflected in my teaching and what I see in my students...First of all, the fact that American TV has been beaming in here for thirty to forty years, when there wasn't much Australian TV per se. Hollywood sets the standards, it seems like. Fashion is largely an export of America, sporting things, cars, fast food, beer, music - you name it. It seems to be a reflection of American culture.

Now don't get me wrong; it's not that I don't think there's something unique and very positive about Australian culture. But what I've learned while I've been here, is that in a lot of ways when we talk about a national psyche, we're talking about something which is rather amorphous and not well-formed. I think perhaps if you take someone who is fifty, sixty years old, they're going to remember an Australia that may be more myth than reality in terms of the mateship idea, fair go...I'm not being critical of Australian culture because we mythologise American history as well, in much the same way.

Here's an example of the mythology. The other night I saw on TV a program about the 'White Australia' policy. Now, America, the United States, is the land of shame when it comes to how we have treated African-Americans, Native Indians, and so on...In spite of the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1963-64 eliminated legal segregation and discrimination, obviously it still goes on. But I was shocked at the way Australian policy, even the fact that...it was still on the books in 1972 as legal, a discriminatory immigration policy based on race. When I hear John Howard talk today about how proud he is of Australia's history and its multicultural emphasis, I just wonder which books he's been reading. It's not that there's not a lot to be proud of, but there's a tendency, I think, to whitewash history, which is common in all societies. You don't have to be all that insightful to know that the dominant culture is the culture of the ruling class. History becomes what historians make it, in many ways.

When I'm in the classroom with normal, traditional aged [Australian] students, who I see as the product of global mass culture, generated by America, I can make references to almost anything in American society and they would know what I was talking about. They've got computers, they've got mobile phones, they've got...videos, music, the Hollywood scene and so on. I'm not sure what their vision of Australian history is, because I think they are more similar in many ways to students in the U.S. in that there's no sense of history. I would agree that there is something uniquely Australian, and I've been trying to put my finger on it all semester. I've raised the issue in class...we talk about what is culture, where it comes from...I get students who are very bright, very thoughtful and articulate on this issue...there's a real searching for some kind of national identity. There's the myth of the mateship, the fair go, and so on; they think that's what the Australian culture is supposed to be about...Sociologists will say that human beings in a culture are like fish in water: you don't know you are in it until you poke your head above the surface.

There are really two issues in here: one is the personal developmental identity that these students are still going through, and the other is the process of national identity. Both these are more complicated and diverse in a multicultural society.

We've seen over and over again where people try to hang on to a culture and find it difficult to keep their kids in when tempted with the mass culture which is all around them, the consumer culture being sold to them. My impression overall is that there are fewer differences between most students that I've taught in the United States...and the Australian students I've taught.

Is that because of this 'shared' American culture?

That's what I've been thinking. If I had come out here thirty years ago, I think I would have seen a marked difference in cultural reference points. I think increasingly today we are existing, for better or for worse, in a consumer culture which is global. The United States doesn't have a monopoly on it, but clearly, it is dispersed generally from that. One of my colleagues here teaches a class called 'Australia: Myth and Reality'. He tells the story that he mentioned the class to his older teenaged daughter...and she said 'Australia is the myth; America is the reality.'

You see the U.S. reference point among your students, what about among your colleagues here? There again, I think to a certain degree, we are talking about products of socialisation during very important periods in life. I see my colleagues here as being, in many ways, much better educated in a general sense than my colleagues in the United States who have gone through a very specialised training, but lack the capacity to address things outside the particular discipline that they happen to be involved in. I don't know whether I have seen enough to make a generalisation, but I think education now is becoming very focussed, very narrow...There are probably as many differences between various schools within the context of the United States as there would be between most schools in the U.S. and most schools here.

What I sense here at RMIT is that it has a reputation as being technically focussed; it has this kind of history. There is the vocational emphasis which people are rightfully concerned about now. This is not like the Sixties in the United States, in California where education was free, the economy was booming and you had the luxury to go and major in philosophy for four years. People can't do that now. In the United States it's the same thing. Students are scared...education is so expensive, you just don't have the luxury of going into something where there's no return. One thing I do see in the students that I've encountered here is a vocational emphasis, a conservative vocation. They don't have time to be into education for the sake of education, so they go into fields where they're going to get the best return on their money. I understand why that happens, but I think it's unfortunate.

An article in yesterday's Age [newspaper] was about the changing nature of the workforce and the workplace, the nature of work itself. The old view of a lifetime job is gone, as it is in the United States. Well over a quarter of the people are casual employees, but working two or three jobs and working well over forty hours a week. The skills have to be portable, the expertise has to be portable, and it's long been my view that you don't get that by giving people narrowly focussed vocational kinds of training.

What do you think is the role of information technology in terms of the work you do as an academic? That's a difficult question. I'm involved in an organisation in the States, American Association of University Professors, and we like to consider ourselves to be the voice of the profession, the voice of the professoriate. Our primary concern is in the areas of academic freedom, being able to pursue the truth in one's academic enquiries, whether it be research or teaching, without threat of dismissal. We feel that the best way to do that is to have universities develop their policies through a process of shared governance and through the protection that tenure can afford.

A lot of times this issue [technology] confronts us as an organisation as one of threat, personal and professional. At the most base level, a computer, in an interactive way, can provide access to information that we might call Sociology 101 in a way that is cheap, easy, fairly effective, so on and so forth, out of a job. So from a purely defence-oriented perspective, I'm hesitant about this [IT].

On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that in some cases that kind of pedagogy - programmed learning sort of stuff - is more effective for some people in some contexts than the traditional classroom kind of presentation. What's clear to me is that we are going to lose on the issue if we just try to say, 'No, keep the computers out, keep the video-taped lectures out, keep distance learning out'. We need to find ways to work with it rather than against it.

I feel I've learned some things here about information technology. When I get back to St. Joseph's I will be doing more interactive stuff over the computer with my students. I'll have papers submitted by email, I'll have discussion groups for students in the class on the computer network. All of those things can enhance rather than detract from education.

Do you have the technological support to do those things? We do. Really the problem at St. Joe's has been the reluctance of...more established academic staff members to take advantage of this. You're really dealing with two different pedagogies here. I'm still in favour of personal interaction [in the classroom]...At the same time, there's no reason at all why information technology can't enhance that.

My basic stance on technology is that technology or technological development is not inevitable; it is not inevitably going to go one way or another way. It is part of social decision-making. But, if the social context in which the decision-making is taking place is such that corporations have undue influence, then the technology is going to be directed in a certain way. It can become corporate dominated in a lot of different ways...I'm very worried about the time when content is going to be driven not as a product of intellectual curiosity, but as a product of trying to get people to be on a receiving end of their [corporate] correct line of reasoning.

What I see here in Australian society in general and in Australian higher education in particular, is a headlong rush following economic rationalism with all of its attendant theories that has put the economy in front of the society, in spite of what the Treasurer...or the Prime Minister might say. Everything is market driven. What I see down here is a phenomenally rapid rate of change.

The privatisation of everything in sight under the guise of economic rationalism...in higher education...If you cannot justify yourself economically, or if you cannot justify your programme economically, then obviously it's not worthwhile. Take classics or take women's studies programmes, where's the obvious cash value in that? There isn't any.

As a sociologist, how can you explain it? Well, I return to the globalisation of mass consumer culture, which has gone a long way towards blurring what used to be more obvious kinds of distinctions in terms of class, particularly...All the old kinds of reference points like social class, neighbourhood, church, so on. We're all kind of subscribing to this one world view.

Teaching an introductory sociology class is, I think, one of the toughest jobs you can get because...the group of barely eighteen-year-old young people in front of you, they have been socialised all their lives largely through the media, largely through family members who have taught them to make it on their own, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you're an individual, you're in charge of your own life, so on. Then here I am saying here's another view. As sociologists we consider that individuals are products of social forces larger than them, like social class, race, gender...They don't want to hear that at all. 'I made it here (especially the white students in the United States) I made it here through hard work, don't give me any of this race stuff'. Others will say, 'I made it here through hard work, don't give me any of that gender garbage.' They don't want to hear that. So, what you find you can do, at least in one semester, is at least put a dent in a relatively seamless world view which has been reinforced all the way through. Again, I attribute to the dominant mass culture, consumer-oriented media, the main victory.

How successful do you think you are in making changes in attitudes through your teaching?

[Every teacher has] stories they can tell of someone coming up to you two years later saying 'it was the best class I've ever had. I never thought about that stuff before' and I've had my fair share of those. I also understand that I'm really fighting a losing cause in terms of the big numbers. But, if they don't get that kind of perspective in my first year sociology class, they're not going to get it anywhere. The trick from my perspective is to present this vastly different world view in a way that is not offensive. That takes time and experience and a certain patience that is acquired...I suppose. So I set my sights low. If I can get to five percent of the average class, I consider myself pretty lucky.

When you go back to the U.S., do you think you will approach your classes differently, teach differently, as a result of your Australian experience?

That's a good question. I'm sure I will, but at this point I don't know that I could tell you how, specifically.

When you came to Australia, you said you didn't know anything about it. When you leave Australia, what images, impressions, are you going to take with you? It will be different levels. One is that I have had enjoyable trips. I just got back from central Australia. There are those images of Uluru and the red centre, red dust storms. I had a wonderful trip up to Sydney...those images in terms of buildings and so on and so forth, I'll take with me. As I indicated before, what I see here as a sociologist is a society in very rapid flux. Going ahead with initiatives and decisions at what I consider to be breath-taking speed...The large scale privatisation of everything under the sun; the unquestioned adherence to economic rationalism as almost a state religion; the gutting of the ABC; the complete re-structuring of higher education in a very rapid-fire way, without, as I see it, a lot of reasoned decision-making and certainly not about shared governance - they are top-down initiatives.

Higher education down here is going to look very much like higher education in the States before the process is done. It is going to be extremely expensive...attaching presumed values to various courses of study depending on what income you're supposed to get when you get out...The adherence to dictates of economic rationalism seems just to have achieved a level of unquestioned acceptance...In a nutshell, my impression is of an Australian society that is undergoing phenomenally rapid social change that is not being very carefully thought through. In fact, some of the best of what you had is in danger of being lost in this headlong rush to embrace this new orientation...I may be wrong, but [my impression] is that you are really at a turning point here and undergoing phenomenally rapid and substantial social change...I hope I'm wrong, I really do.

Interview recorded on 26 November 1996.

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