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3 - The Rhetoric of Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2024

James Cotton
Affiliation:
University of Tasmania
John Ravenhill
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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Summary

During the early 1990s Australians reviewed their relationship to Asia not only in economic and strategic terms, but also in a broad cultural context. In a sense, Australian identity had always been defined in relation to Asia. The European settlers were aware of their remoteness from the old world and their proximity to people who seemed different to them in exotic and sometimes threatening ways. The ideal of ’White Australia’ had announced a determination to develop an Australian society independently of the new national societies being formed elsewhere in the region. The so-called ’multicultural’ Australia, promoted in the 1970s and 1980s, made claims to be inclusive of non-Western cultures – yet the underpinning ideology was derived from elements of Western liberalism. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some Australians began to think of their country in different terms again, asking whether it might be possible to consider Australia as in some sense ’Asian’. By 1996, a consensus appeared to emerge to the effect that, although Australians ought to engage vigorously with Asian societies, Australia itself could not convincingly be described as an ’Asian’ country.

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Chapter
Information
Australia in World Affairs 1991–1995
Seeking Asian Engagement
, pp. 23 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
First published in: 2024

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