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No chick non-fic lit
Dear Editor,
Aviva Tuffield’s review of my book, Beyond the Ladies Lounge (ABR, December 2003/January 2004), sends disturbing mixed messages that. I believe, require further dialogue. Tuffield acknowledges that the book is ‘a fine scholarly work’ and an ‘important contribution to Australian history’ by a writer with ‘evident skills’. She grants that the work ‘adds complexity’ to both the historical record and certain theoretical paradigms. Yet Tuffield is evidently perplexed that this ‘thesis-turned-book’ should be ‘brilliantly promoted’ and ‘engulfed in a haze of marketing’.
My apologies if Tuffield expected to snuggle up with a ripping good yarn on a sexy topic only to find herself trawling through an argument-driven work of scholarship, complete with notes and manifest historiography. No one is more aware than I that BLL is not a page-turner. Given Tuffield’s concern that BLL ‘feels like a missed opportunity’, she might be interested to know that I did in fact have ample interest from commercial publishers to produce a ‘narrative history’ in keeping with the ‘current vogue’ that Tuffield identifies. Though tempted. I decided to reject these advances (and, no doubt, far flashier marketing campaigns than a university press can offer) in favour of publishing a ‘harder’, more analytical book. My instinct was that the iconic status of the subject matter (pubs) and the ground-breaking nature of the research (women mostly ran them) required the legitimacy of scholarship in order to be taken seriously by academic and popular audiences alike. The sort of anecdotal, biographical, interview-based book about women and pubs that Tuffield would have preferred could too easily have been dismissed as ‘chick non-fic lit’. My aim was to produce a book that had crossover appeal; a detailed laying out of the historical evidence, written in a direct and accessible style.
Perhaps Tuffield’s judgement is that I failed this purpose. But the nub of her disappointment seems to be that she was sold a pup: the cover blurb promised narrative history, but the pages dripped with discourse alter all. Rather than copping the insinuation that BLL is merely a promotional ploy for the hearts (and wallets) of ordinary Australians. I think MUP should be congratulated for backing a complicated book that could easily have been relegated to the niche-market, too-hard bin, and for trying to sell it to a wide audience.
What is Tuffield getting at? Do works of scholarly nonfiction not deserve publicity campaigns? Should publishers only try to sell books of scholarly origin back to their own kind? I’m concerned that Tuffield’s suspicion of the fact that BLL has ‘excited media attention’ sends a dangerous message: that going public with the fruits of academic research is but a vacuous, self-serving marketing exercise. The university sector certainly needs no encouragement to be conservative and insular about its natural constituency. The publishing industry, on the other hand. demands a great deal of proof that serious books might sell.
Yes, my book has attracted an extraordinary amount of media attention. with feature stories in daily newspapers and glossy magazines as well as a host of local and national television and radio interviews on commercial and public stations. But MUP did not buy airtime or print space. The attention has come because the ideas contained in a well-crafted press release clearly resonated. Talking about my book on 3AW or Good Morning Australia may or may not translate into sales, but such media appearances certainly afford an important cultural space in which to communicate the remarkable results of ten years of(largely taxpayer funded) research.
Ultimately, I would have thought that it was a good thing that a work of non-fiction about Australian women’s history written by a first-time author could attract mainstream media interest. I also would have thought it a good thing that a young woman, fresh from her PhD, could enter the media’s radar for her intelligence rather than her arse. Sorry, but the bourgeois guardians of culture cannot decry the media for being anti-intellectual and then disparage an intellectual for capturing the popular imagination. Give readers some credit, and we might all be pleasantly surprised.
Clare Wright, Preston, Vic.
Riaz Hassan responds to Allan Patience
Dear Editor.
I have read Allan Patience’s review of The Cambridge Handbook of Social Sciences in Australia (ABR, November 2003), which I co-edited with Ian McAllister and Steve Dowrick. The reviewer focused most of his criticism on the ‘structure’ of the Handbook. and not on the 705 pages of its contents. Your readers would have been interested in reading an informed critical assessment of thirty-seven chapters of the Handbook.
Last year. as part of its ‘launch’ at Flinders University, the Handbook was ‘reviewed’ by a panel of academics. I thought your readers might be interested in reading the following summary comments by two panel members:
Professor Keith Hancock, former President of The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia: ‘The contents of the twelve economics chapters span the great majority of the applied economic inquiry now being undertaken in Australia. Inevitably, some will disagree with the standpoints of specific authors: but few will deny that they have created the bases of fruitful debate.’
Professor Andrew Parkin, School of Political and International Studies, Flinders University: ‘Any Australian research student in economics, political science or sociology should be firmly pointed in the direction of this Handbook. It also provides a valuable survey of the state of knowledge for established scholars across the social sciences.•
Riaz Hassan, Adelaide, SA
Leftist limitations
Dear Editor,
Robert Manne’s generous and elegant essay on George Orwell (ABR, December 2003/January 2004) underlined Orwell’s greatest shortcoming – namely ignorance of economics – a weakness that rendered him incapable of offering any positive message for the future. This is a general failing of the left, and it is one that they share with conservatives such as B.A. Santamaria, Malcolm Fraser and Manne himself. Socialists are sometimes called ‘conservative’ because they hold onto prejudices about the function of markets, such as the myth that the Great Depression was caused by ‘untrammelled markets’. In fact, free markets were very hard to find during the late 1920s and the 1930s, and it is fairly clear that injudicious constraints on the market, especially in labour, precipitated the mass unemployment of the 1930s.
It will be a great day when the intellectuals of the left engage seriously with the ideas of economic rationalism and non-socialist liberalism, as expounded by John Hyde in his recent book Dry: A Defence of Economic Freedom (2002). John Wright’s book The Ethics of Economic Rationalism (2002) is a welcome step in that direction. It was warmly endorsed by a fellow philosopher (ABR, November 2003 ), but it does not actually address the arguments that are used by people such as Hyde to make the case for non-socialist liberalism. Instead, Wright simplified his task by creating a kind of idealised ‘straw dummy’ economic rationalist. Perhaps John Wright should be invited to review Hyde’s book.
Rafe Champion, Neutral Bay, NSW
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