Back Jennifer Craik

 Jennifer Craik

‘Cultural Studies and History: A Story of Flirtation and Poaching’

How has history been adapted to developments in the field of cultural studies? What criticisms have been directed at the past practices of historians, and how valid are these criticisms?

I. INTRODUCTION

The program for this conference posed the relationship between cultural studies and history in the following way: How has history been adapted to developments in the field of cultural studies? This was quite refreshing since it seemed to assume, first, that cultural studies had something positive to give to historical research; and, second, that history as a discipline has been responsive. It was also a far cry from the sentiments expressed by historian, Carolyn Steedman, at a cultural studies conference held ten years ago when she asked:

Why does cultural studies want history? What does wanting it mean? What new acts of transference will items from the past help cultural studies ­ or make it ­ perform? How will it be done? How taught? Will there be any room for detailed historical work; or are students of cultural studies bound to rely on great schematic and secondary sweeps through time? Will there be any room for the historical case-study in its pedagogy? What good is it to you, anyway? Perhaps no good at all …

(Steedman 1992: 621)

She was answered by Meaghan Morris who said that she wanted history in her work because ‘history is the name of the space where we define what matters’ (Morris in Steedman 1996: 622). By this she meant that the parameters of contemporary culture and everyday life could only be appreciated by their relationship with the forces that shaped how they developed including economic, political and rhetorical factors. In other words, an historical contextualisation of phenomena and events is necessary to understand the nuances of culture.

Rather than recite the tussle between history and cultural studies, I want to draw some parallels between their recent fortunes as well as highlight some differences. While cultural studies has felt under siege as the brash newcomer and intellectual flibbertygibbet, the discipline of history has faced remarkably similar allegations over its much longer history. To contrast these briefly, whereas cultural studies has been accused of being shallow, methodologically sloppy and interested in ephemera, history has been accused of being ‘positivist’, un-theorised and shapeless (Burke 1997: 22; Macintyre 1998): the butterfly versus the blob! Of course, this is an unfair and crass characterisation but it is fair to say that such views have circulated and contributed to something of a stand-off between representatives of the fields. While cultural studies has been debating whether it really is ­ or should be - a discipline (Bennett 1998) and whether it should shift into ‘realpolitik’ and administrative engagement via cultural policy studies (Craik 1995; Miller 1994), historians have been debating whether the discipline has reached its use by date and should reinvent itself in other manifestations (Macintyre 1998). Indicatively, addressing the gulf between cultural history and ‘positivist’ history, Peter Burke has argued that:

Despite the changes that have taken place in the last generation, among them the rise to academic respectability of "cultural studies", it may still be too soon to assert that this gap has been bridged. (Burke 1997: 22).

The argument of this paper is that these fields must recognise their contiguity in more constructive ways than is sometimes the case and capitalise not so much on prospects for convergence but in establishing links between their parallel orbits. In the case of Australian cultural studies, this means shifting from a rhetoric of defensive justification to one of celebration about its high standing and distinctiveness in national and international intellectual life (Bennett 1998; Grossberg 1994; Frow and Morris 1994). In the case of Australian history, this means addressing the consequences of its diversification and fragmentation into specialist histories and liaisons and poaching from adjunct fields (Macintyre 1998). In short, we are witnessing the intellectual spin-offs from an emerging field being aligned with and taken up by established fields in ways that are asking new questions, borrowing and adapting new theories and frameworks of analysis, using a range of methodological approaches and tackling a much greater diversity of topics than traditionally was the case.

To give an example of what I am saying, I would like to use the example of the apron - that modest garment usually confined to homes and places for menial labour. How would an historian approach the study of the apron? And how would this compare with a cultural studies approach? Would they have the same starting point? Ask similar questions? Use similar methodologies? Apply similar analytical and interpretive frameworks? Arrive at similar conclusions? And how would their respective studies compare with the study of a visual artist, for example, in a travelling exhibition entitled ‘Aprons’ currently showing at the Canberra Museum and Gallery?

In her catalogue, Morley Grainger (1999) describes the process of developing this exhibition as one of using ‘women’s material culture’ to construct a ‘composite history’ of women’s lives in the ‘house and garden ­ areas traditionally defined as a women’s sphere of influence’ to explore the ‘inside/outside aspects of a woman’s world’. The fact that the apron is traditionally regarded as of ‘little consequence or individual value’ is challenged by the social history she develops surrounding the design, construction and use of aprons. Aprons are revealed as symbolic of women’s lives ­ not just individually but through socially and culturally reinforced rules of design, comportment, decoration and use. The apron mimics the twists and turns of women’s lives through rites of passage, class position, occupation and race. Thus, although the apron is associated with domesticity which in turn is associated with nurturing and mothering, Grainger explores more disturbing resonances of domesticity ­ ‘constraint of choice, docility, even victim status’ and the complicity of women in occupying this ‘voiceless’ and debased role (McCracken in Grainger 2000).

One of her examples is a washing apron made from a recycled hessian bag ­ a common practice in colonial Australia. On the apron, Grainger has embroidered the words ‘BE SUBMISSIVE COVER UP AND SERVE’. By reproducing a typical working apron, characterising the mode of the wearer and positioning it on a pale pink dress against a backdrop of corrugated iron (that quintessential Australian material found commonly in lean-to laundries and kitchens), Grainger effectively confronts the viewer with stark questions about the status of the woman as domestic worker. She relates the washing apron not only to white women settlers but specifically Aboriginal women who were used to do such work and dressed to assume the role.

Here we have an example of using a cultural object in a historical context to elucidate the social life of the object and the cultural life of the wearer. The approach of Grainger in her art is not very different from a typical cultural studies or new history approach. It is also remarkably similar to that of a South Australian woman, Avis Smith, who has just been awarded a Masters of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia for a thesis entitled: ‘The Language of Aprons: Signifiers of Femininity’. This thesis began life as a collection of aprons from colonial South Australia especially from rural areas. At first interested in technical issues like the choice of fabrics, designs, uses and decoration, the author became increasingly interested in what we might call the social and cultural life of these aprons: who wore them, when, to perform what tasks ­ and wider questions about the circumstances in which they were designed and constructed, repaired, laundered, chosen to be worn, the treatment of Aboriginal women as domestic labour, etc.

In a nutshell, the apron revealed itself to Avis Smith as a cultural technology in which and by which women were trained into certain roles of femininity, domesticity, sociality and passivity. This shift of interest was resisted by her supervisors on the ground that the thesis was about visual art not sociology or cultural studies or feminism! She has also said that the orientation she then adopted in writing up the thesis also had to anticipate the outcome of a university restructuring which could have placed her in a social science, art history or literary context that would influence the choice and expectations of examiners. This institutional juggling act is now a very real problem for many students, supervisors and inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary projects.

The author persisted and has been rewarded by glowing examiners’ reports including one by an historian who declared that it was an ‘original, valuable, highly interesting and pioneering’ research project that contained ‘a rich source of information’ that would be ‘important to researchers in the area for many years’. This example illustrates how disciplinary boundaries have become blurred and frameworks of analysis, methodologies and interpretive strategies have converged.

The example of the apron suggests that there is already a working consensus and parallel approaches ­ technically a convergence - to researching cultural histories such as this ­ a new kind of orthodoxy. The example also reflects ongoing debates about the changing nature of disciplines, the relation between older versus newer fields, the future of the humanities, and the constantly restructured roles of intellectuals (c/f Ruthven 1998; Morris and McCalman 1998).

Steedman’s sentiments reflected a time when cultural studies was searching for a disciplinary pedigree and intellectual respectability by turning to ­ and borrowing from ­ other established disciplines such as history. Perhaps in retrospect, the Illinois conference at which she spoke was the ‘coming out’ rite of passage for cultural studies with its nine hundred luminaries participating in the celebration of its growth and institutionalisation as a legitimate field of study.

Since then, debate has waxed and waned as to whether cultural studies constitutes an academic discipline and whether it should seek to establish itself as such (Bennett 1998). Some argue that its institutionalisation within the academy confirms its disciplinary status; others argue that its core characteristic of challenging other modes of knowledge means that it should remain ‘mobile and adaptive’ and resist classification as a discipline (Bennett 1998).

Meanwhile, Australian cultural studies in Australia has shown signs of becoming influential on other forms of intellectual inquiry. In 1996, the Australian Humanities Academy established a separate section of Cultural Studies thus acknowledging ‘the importance of these developments’ (White 1998) and the same year the field acquired a separate classification code under ARC grant schemes (Bennett 1998). These developments reflected the steady growth of courses, appointments and enrolments in cultural studies in higher education, especially at the graduate level, and the strong publishing record and international profile of Australian cultural studies. To me, it seems that cultural studies has been pivotal in 1990s interdisciplinary restructuring, as confirmed by the frequent references to cultural studies in every one of the disciplinary surveys of the humanities conducted for the ARC (ARC 1998b).

Even so, the shift has been accompanied by a suspicion by some established disciplines that the new approaches are ‘soft options’. As Ruthven has put it:

Anxieties about seeming to institutionalise mere pleasure are discernible in more recent hostilities to cultural studies exhibited by people who know nothing about it, but who cannot imagine how what they themselves regard as leisure activities (such as watching television or resorting to tourism) could possibly be studied as seriously as seventeenth-century theatre prompt-books or early colonial newspapers. (Ruthven 1998)

While the sceptics remain, the reality is that interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches now dominate and set the benchmark for research and teaching in the humanities. What is less clear are the consequences of this convergence of approaches or blended family approach to understanding culture and why we are the way we are. What changes have brought different fields into parallel orbits? How has the study of history changed over the past decade and how has cultural studies acquired its pivotal status? How have these developments shaped recent understandings of Australia as a nation and culture? Finally, I would like to speculate on the emergence of cultural history and cultural policy as the flirts and poachers that have definitively linked the fortunes of history and cultural studies.

  1. RECENT USES OF HISTORY IN CULTURAL RESEARCH
  2. Others at this conference are better placed to speculate on the contemporary status of history as a discipline and its reinvention as historical studies. History has been denounced as being in decline and in crisis, characterised in ‘alarmist’ tones with ‘gloomy prognostications for its future’ (Macintyre 1998). Even so, many current historians have challenged the orthodoxy and attempted something different, perhaps driven by narrative or theology, by a feminist perspective, by a concern for the invisible undersides of history or by a desire to acknowledge indigenous presence and contribution. These historians ­ the radical, new or revisionist historians ­ are well represented at this conference. As Davison (1991) has argued, elements of public history, people’s history and ­ to a lesser extent ­ applied history have radically altered how history is taught and practised in Australia. So perhaps we are speaking to the converted ­ those who have adapted historical method to pose different questions, examine different material, combine different methodologies and offer different kinds of explanations (Macintyre 1998).

    Nonetheless, there is no disputing that there has been a steady decline in the teaching of history at school (McCalman 1998), as students have been encouraged to teach themselves by doing project work driven by personal interest and creative approaches to researching and writing. As a result, students entering university possess little systematic knowledge of facts, events or institutions and are perceived to have poor skills at reading, comprehending and writing. History, in particular, is no longer a ‘must’ but a poor cousin to social science options. Declining enrolments in history departments has been the result. Graduates in history have found job opportunities poor. The majority of those who are employed as historians find themselves writing the history of a local council, the works department, the CWA or celebratory ‘vanity’ histories.

    Historians have responded by offering less historical method and more historiography, and by putting ‘new wine in old bottles … [in] a variety of disparate offerings’ (Macintyre 1998) such as environmental history, convict history, citizenship, ethnic studies, women’s history, gender studies, indigenous history, sport history and cultural history (Macintyre 1998). These courses are often very similar to courses in cultural studies, Australian studies (Walter 1998) and allied disciplines ­ media and communication studies (Turner 1998), literary studies (White 1998), gender and women’s studies (Threadgold 1998), and postcolonial studies (Sharrad and Griffiths 1998). This has helped stabilise numbers but:

    Has eroded any systematic attention to historical skills, made it more difficult to identify common historiographical concerns and weakened the students’ sense of the discipline’ (Macintyre 1998)

    The consequences of this fragmentation and specialisation has been decried as a ‘creolisation of the world’ (Burke 1997: 211) producing, in Bakhtin’s words, a ‘heteroglossia’ of new forms of language, cultural products, cultural theories, methodologies and explanations. The perceived risk of these tendencies is that scholarship as we traditionally think of it will degenerate into a grab-bag of half-baked observations and prejudices.

    While the discipline of history has been shoring up its walls to survive in the new environment, cultural studies ‘has been a beneficiary of the changing social and cultural dynamics of higher education’ (Bennett 1998) building up its institutional presence in universities, in funded research opportunities, in practical and policy applications, and in the changing role of the public intellectual. So, why these different fortunes and what has made cultural studies better able to meet current challenges?

    Cultural studies explores forms of culture (human development, ways of life, intellectual and creative activity) as key components of the social fabric ­ not just additional extras ­ that can elucidate the flavour and dynamics of social life. Culture is privileged here as the cement of social organisation and the kernel of identity. While other social science and humanities disciplines may share that interest, cultural studies was distinctive in the way it ‘read’ and interpreted cultural ‘texts’ as revealing their conditions of production and consumption and not simply as repositories or artefacts of knowledge and values. It proposed the now accepted idea that cultural production could be understood as systems of representation which structure the relations between everyday life, broader cultural practices and systems of cultural organisations and institutions.

    Cultural studies was distinctive in unashamedly adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporated diverse aspects and points of view of other disciplines. But it was not just a bower bird. Cultural studies was informed by contemporary developments in cultural theory ­ in particular, critical theory, structuralism, semiotics and marxism ­ that framed the topics of analysis and the modes of explanation. This theoretical engagement not only distinguished it from other fields but grounded cultural studies in a form of critique, confrontation and engaged analysis. In this framework, culture was never innocent but the embodiment of status and power: the politics of culture were thus central to the cultural studies project. This included everyday mundane contemporary culture that had often been ignored as ephemeral and trivial. In this respect, cultural studies drew on the mass observation work developed in 1930s and 40s Britain.

    The focus especially in the early days of cultural studies was on understanding contemporary culture and everyday life ­ in contrast (or reaction) to looking back on the past and the emphasis on studying ‘official’ or institutionalised hierarchies of culture. From the outset, cultural studies had links with the radical history movement, and poached and adapted elements of each in devising an eclectic and lateral approach to how questions were posed, culture was conceived, interrogated and explained. In sum, cultural studies concerns culture-in-action, culture and power relations, and the politics of culture.

    Necessarily, cultural studies draws on adjacent disciplines ‘to describe and account for the modes of interaction between cultural forms, processes and institutions and particular social and political conditions’ (Bennett 1998). Much of the early English cultural studies was concerned with questions of hegemony and class; other loci of power relations have included gender, race, colonialism and post-colonialism, transgressive bodies, consumerism and space. For example, the body has become a common theme because it has been theorised as ‘a site of multiple discursive constructions’ (Ruthven 1998). As you will be aware, studies of the body and of the concept of the person more generally have become a hallmark of 1990s humanities research and cultural studies in particular (Bennett 1998).

    Critics of cultural studies decried its interdisciplinarity as a weakness not a strength resulting in sloppy methodology and a ‘butterfly’ approach to topics and analysis ­ criticisms also traditionally and regularly levelled at historical studies. Others questioned whether its political engagement was necessary or presumptive ­ or whether it had been abandoned as the field grew. As cultural studies developed, it has shifted away from the early focus on textual analysis derived from semiotics and structuralism and adopted and adapted other methodological approaches including some of those characteristic of historical studies. In short, cultural studies needed history and history needed cultural studies.

  3. DEVELOPMENTS IN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY AND CULTURAL STUDIES
  4. One of the interesting features of Australian intellectual life is that borders have commonly been crossed and influential commentators come from a range of places and points of view. Some of the most influential writers on Australian culture include Richard White (Inventing Tradition); Donald Horne (The Lucky Country); Robin Boyd (The Australian Ugliness); Hugh Stretton (Political Essays); Bernard Smith (European Vision and the South Pacific); and Tim Rowse (Arguing the Arts), and in Australian cultural studies, Graeme Turner (National Fictions); John Fiske, Bob Hodge and Graeme Turner (Myths of Oz); Stuart Cunningham (Framing Culture); and Susan Dermody and Liz Jacka (Screening Australia). For historians, cultural critics and cultural studies writers alike, the focus has unremittingly been questions of national identity and rethinking the idea of Australian-ness. This concern with defining culture may account for why Australia has developed what is internationally recognised as a distinctive, cutting edge and provocative form of cultural studies.

    While the English developments in the field were formative, local ­ and transplanted - intellectuals were also decisively influenced by Australia’s critical and nationalist traditions and it was this conjunction that have cultural studies the buzz. They made cultural studies instantly relevant. It could seem that cultural studies took the icing from the cake of history. This distinctiveness was recognised internationally as noted in a introductory text to cultural studies: ‘Australian cultural studies has sought to interrogate the whole nation of "the national character" in film, history and literary theory by focusing on local texts, institutions and discourses’ (Sardor & Van Loon 1998: 65; c/f Bennett 1998; Frow and Morris 1994; Walter 1998). Frow and Morris (1994: 255) also identify the role in Australia played by debates about multiculturalism and ‘the turn to Asia’ had on shaping a distinctive kind of cultural studies as a field that engaged with and confronted both ‘a "national" culture and a "national" politics’. They cite the influence of critical journalism, film and media policy debates, the emergence of cultural policy and feminist challenges to accounts of Australian history. These continued the Australian tradition of pragmatism and irreverence.

    While the emergence of a distinctively Australian form of cultural studies has been crucial to its intellectual and institutional ‘blooding’, the development of distinct national variants of cultural studies has been characteristic of the discipline internationally in ways that make this field very different from other new fields. There are now many variants of cultural studies including European, Asian, Latin American, Central European and African versions each of which is recognised as distinct and legitimate in its own right. Grossberg accounts for this migration and mutation of cultural studies in terms of its engagement with the politics of culture and its ‘aggressive anti-disciplinary’ and passionate ‘anti-reductionist’ stance. These features prod cultural studies to renounce ‘the power of the institutional boundaries of disciplines in favour of doing the work necessary - whatever it is ­ to begin to provide better answers’ (Grossberg 1994: vii). Cultural studies has been more akin to a sewing kit providing the tools and materials to fashion purpose-made garments. As Grossberg puts it:

    Theories and problems may travel, but they travel as resources rather than answers and, in the end, the trajectory itself may be a more powerful force than either the departure or arrival… and what travels is always remade by the complexities of the journey. (Grossberg 1994: vii-viii)

    This proliferation of forms of cultural studies has been welcomed by Grossberg for four reasons. First, in moving out of the comfort zone of Euro-American politics, cultural studies has tackled more complex and multidimensional forms of culture that have very different relations with politics and the state. Second, the Euro-American assumption that the politics of culture are actualised in the functioning of democracy is called into question. Third, different ideas about the relation of culture to space and mobility challenge the idea of national culture and raise the diplomatic and strategic consequences of cultural exchange. Fourth, the idea of identity itself is challenged as less a factor of place than a ‘geography of becoming’, ‘a political category to be mobilised and laid claim to, a matter of belonging, of the claim to be somewhere and hence, with someone’ (Grossberg 1994: ix). This complex interchange between the geographic, political and disciplinary reach of cultural studies gives the field a dynamic and tangible strategy that defies the unitary and levelling implications of ‘global’ culture.

    In contrast to most other countries, Australian cultural studies had an easier and quicker passage into the reaches of academia as was testified when the journal, The Australian Journal of Cultural Studies was headhunted by Routledge to become then first international journal of Cultural Studies. Mind you, the journal was quickly Americanised and the Australian contribution eclipsed. All the same, Australian cultural studies has continued to play a major role in publishing and conferences internationally. As Bennett puts it:

    The international standing of Australian work is high in [feminism, gender studies, multiculturalism, indigenous studies, policy analysis, and cultural and literary studies]. That standing, however, is probably most distinctive for work done where the concerns of Cultural Studies and feminist scholarship meet and in cultural policy studies. (Bennett 1998)

    Why is this so? I think this is because questions of nation and national culture have dominated Australia’s public life while the ambivalent relationship with Britain and later America have produced an intelligensia which is both aware of debates and trends elsewhere and wary of them. This shows itself in a cynical, forthright and sometimes strident head-on approach to identifying and deliberating on aspects of Australian culture. Bennett cites the relationship between the intelligensia and policy and administration in Australia as more permeable than in most countries, so opening opportunities for involvement and intervention. As Walter (1998) has observed about Australian Studies, these have ‘been more about creating networks than about creating paradigms’.

    Mobility of thought and permeability with adjacent fields have characterised the development of Australian cultural studies over the last two decades. As the tenor of study moved beyond the early focus on interpreting texts and meanings, it turned to examining the ‘ways in which such texts and meanings form a part of the organisation and functioning of particular institutions’ via diverse ‘cultural technologies’ and ‘cultural apparatuses’ (Bennett 1998). At this turn historical analysis proved invaluable, providing a means to explore the conditions under which certain cultural forms did or did not develop. While the study of contemporary phenomena persists, many cultural studies projects have focused on past events or the relevance of the past for the present. Historical contexts explain the parameters of contemporary life and arrangements. So cultural studies wants history to put the meat on the bones of its distinctive approach. Equally, historians have been borrowing from cultural studies to reinvigorate or enrich historical methods and inquiries (c/f Burke 1997).

  5. CULTURAL HISTORY AND CULTURAL POLICY AS FLIRTS AND POACHERS

One of the consequences of this mutual pilfering and interchange is that conventional disciplinary boundaries are being supplanted by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theories, methodologies and approaches in ways that undermine the separateness and distinctiveness of any particular field. Reflecting this tussle between definitiveness and an inculcated, taken-for-granted point-of-view, contributors to the ARC’s report on the state of the humanities (ARC 1998a, b, c) stressed the unrecognised importance of humanities not only to Australia’s research culture but to its administrative and political life and culture and even to ‘training domestic consumers through the general education system’ (Morris and McCalman 1999: 329). Part of this is a much greater consciousness of how cultural ideas underpin the rhetorical formation of the nation as witnessed by the development of sub-fields in cultural studies, namely of cultural history and cultural studies. The role of historical method in these areas is crucial but as Macintyre has noted:

The younger historians within these fields are likely to be as conversant with related disciplines as with history. Such work will borrow from literary and cultural theory more easily than from political or economic history. It will be textual rather than quantitative, discursive rather than descriptive or narrative. The new humanities use the past as something fictive rather than something binding, exotic rather than instructive. (Macintyre 1998)

In the case of cultural policy, this has become a way both to round out and give a new slant to cultural studies as well as a way to engage intelligensia with public life and political agendas. It has applied approaches to the study of culture to policy analysis and assisted in redefining culture from a narrow concern with arts and high culture to the cultural industries more generally (c/f Bennett 1998; Turner 1998; Ruthven 1998; Morris & McCalman 1999). Cultural policy ‘seeks to unpack the politics of culture in more precise ways [than mere intellectual critique] that enable more effective critiques, engagements, and interventions’ (Craik 1995: 201; c/f Miller 1994). To this end, cultural policy ‘examines how governments and other agencies deal with cultural issues in terms of strategies of facilitation, regulation and shaping’ (Craik 1995: 202). Cultural history and cultural policy are indispensable developments to the study of culture and interpretation of history.

While some in cultural studies and the humanities were appalled by the ‘invention’ of cultural policy and the emergence of cultural history, the perceived crisis in the humanities in general has meant that these areas have become life rafts on which to hang the evidence for the national significance of humanities research. The establishment and work of the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy is now cited as a model for ‘astute’ strategic planning by an emergent field ‘in an innovative and financially rewarding manner’ (Ruthven 1998; c/f Bennett 1998; Turner 1998; Threadgold 1998; Morris and McCalman 1999).

Cultural policy has succeeded in engaging with a number of key debates and issues in recent Australian cultural policy. Areas where major inputs have been made include film policy (funding issues, commercialisation and national identity), broadcasting and media (trends in commercial media, the future of public broadcasting, community broadcasting, indigenous media), indigenous cultural policy (indigenous cultural industries, protocols for cultural policy, copyright, patenting), libraries and the information economy, citizenship education, women and the arts, local government cultural policy, arts policy (funding, youth arts, community development, audience development), and the impact of micro-economic reform on the cultural industries. These demonstrate the ability of the field to effectively and strategically join the administrative, policy and political fray. Nonetheless, we should not be complacent about the perceived impact of cultural policy studies. There is a way before we become more effective interventionists, analysts and lobbyists especially in gaining the support of the private sector, but considerable gains have been made.

V. CASE STUDIES: CULTURAL TOURISM AND DOMESTIC ARTS

In my own work on tourism, whether concerning tourism policy, cultural tourism, the culture of tourism or the cultural limits to tourism, boundaries are inevitably permeable and the research method resembles the activities of an aggressive bower bird! Disciplinary definitions have little meaning and the work is inevitably geared towards different and specific contexts of reception ­ cultural studies, environmental lobbyists, policy makers, historians, textualists, and cultural policy analysts. Reflecting this research approach, even those in the tourist industry are becoming eclectic in approach and, at least superficially, reflective.

An example of this is the Sovereign Hill gold town theme park near Ballarat where the serious business of historical research that goes into presenting events, places and people with ‘historical accuracy’ (Peter Hiscock cited in ABC 1997) vies with achieving visitor satisfaction so that the attraction can compete with other theme parks in terms of the quality of facilities ­ of which toilets are the most important! Historical accuracy must also be consistent with the ability of visitors to digest, enjoy and understand what is being conveyed. An example is the park’s approach to representing the prevalence of death in the heady early days. An early attempt featuring a widow by a coffin being consoled by a priest so disturbed visitors that it was discontinued (Evans 1991). A recent recreation of a funeral from the preparation of the body through the procession through the streets and the burial has been very successful (Dunstan 1997). Perhaps too successful! Visitors show a ghoulish interest in the details of embalming and queue to be photographed with the ‘undertaker’. A small side industry in the manufacture of customised coffins has also been established (Craik 1998b)! This, surely, epitomises contemporary approaches to history and culture!

But let me conclude by returning to the apron. While the study of the apron may occur in a number of fields of study, it is interesting that the two examples cited above occurred at least formally in the field of visual arts. This is significant since it suggests that this field is undergoing restructuring to take on topics once deemed irrelevant or trivial, in this case, concerning domestic labour, domestic cultural production and cultural training. With luck, it may spearhead an attack on the elitist mantra of creativity and individual genius that still frames the field of the creative arts.

The implications of this shift in the field include the probability that domestic arts in general may one day feature on the visual arts research agenda instead of being side lined as the realm of craft, women’s studies or hobbies (Craik 1998a). As the example of the apron illustrates, the cultural life and politics of this mundane garment are explosive. And let me add another dimension. When Avis Smith gives talks about her apron research, she concludes by showing an apron she bought in a so-called adult shop: an adaptation of the parlour apron (that locus of servility) but suitably decorated to titillate sexually. The effect on the audience is immediate: ranging from raucous laughter to embarrassed giggles to lots of shuffling in the seats! What is at stake when such a boring, invisible and domestic object is ­ at the same time - so redolent of a sex life that is ignored and denied although instantly recognised? I’ll not even attempt to answer this but suggest that this example demonstrates the radical consequences of the emerging flirtation and poaching between the diverse approaches to researching culture that we are currently witnessing.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to John Wanna and Mary Eagle for suggestions and detailed comments on earlier drafts.

 

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