User login
Tracking the Jack: A retracing of the antipodes
Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2000
ISBN: 0868406996
Tracking the Jack now available from:
This is a terrific book, with a load of original ideas to recommend it, and the capacity to generate a lot of further work in its wake …This is not a safe, sober study of Australia-New Zealand relations, but an iconoclastic, streetwise, freewheeling assembly of reflections on the logics of culture and history which bind Australia and New Zealand (infuriatingly, inescapably) to the Union Jack.
—Professor Graeme Turner, Department of English, University of Queensland
Tracking the Jack: A retracing of the Antipodes investigates the social, economic, political and cultural relationship between Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. This book is not only historically relevant, but also resonant within present discussions of republicanism, monarchism, multiculturalism, biculturalism and cultural studies. The Jack in the title refers to the Union Jack, the symbolic tie between 'home' and the outer reaches of the Empire. The book traces the movements of The Jack, incorporating the passage of people, ideas and popular culture.
This book opens a new intellectual terrain that has lacked systematic exploration. New Zealand and Australia are often presumed to possess remarkable historical and social similarities. However, this assumed shared history has resulted in few coherent analyses of both the confluences and remarkable differences between the two nations. British colonisation has left a shared language and iconographic database. Yet the differences are stark. The social systems of multiculturalism and biculturalism have resulted in profoundly different responses to questions of social justice. While much rhetoric emerges of Australia's placement in Asia, and New Zealand's role in the Pacific, this book investigates the far more complex histories that encircle this region.
The book is not only an investigation of social systems or policy concerns. Instead, it is a coherent, well-written cultural studies and cultural history text. Popular cultures, including popular music, fashion, film and television, offer a reminder of how The Jack has punctuated Antipodean history. The breadth and range of discussion is a significant addition to Australian Studies, New Zealand Studies and Cultural Studies.
Tracking the Jack was nominated for the following awards:
- Western Australian Premier's Book Award
- New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards (Gleebooks Section for an outstanding book of cultural criticism)
- Nita B Kibble Award for Women Writers