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Ordinary academics standing behind ordinary people: Boris Frankel responds to Rob Watts.

Article Excerpt
Rob Watts describes Judith Brett and Anthony Moran's Ordinary People's Politics (Pluto Press, 2006) as a marvelous book (see Arena Magazine, no.86). He waxes lyrical about how politics is much more than constitutions, parties, parliaments and other topics featured in most university political science textbooks. Indeed. Echoing Brett and Moran, Watts points to the messy character of politics based on private needs, emotions and personal experiences. These are more influential than impersonal institutions and the supposedly rational political behaviour beloved by political analysts. Hence, the politics of everyday private emotions and attitudes are best understood via psychoanalytic in-depth interviews with ordinary people. Not only is the book hailed as a 'deeply humane enterprise' but, very importantly, in contrast to most academics who cannot communicate, Brett and Moran's work is lauded by Watts as a model of clarity that could be read by ordinary people.

How, you may ask, can anyone quarrel with Brett, Moran and Watts? Of course politics is about ordinary people, their hopes, desires, fears and prejudices. This elementary point is hardly new, even if continually ignored by many political analysts. As for clarity and insight, however, these are not always what they appear to be. As leading Australian sage Blind Freddie was saying in the pub the other day: "Listen mate, at a distance it's easy to confuse possum poo with those new Aussie olives falling from trees all over the place. But on closer inspection, olives are olives and crap is crap, regardless of whether it's dressed up in academic jargon or flows from the mouths of ordinary people." Yes, but telling the difference between possum poo and olives is far easier than sorting out the truth-value of ideas and comments made by ordinary people or professional analysts.

My concern is whether the people interviewed by Brett and Moran present new and rich insights that give us a better understanding of contemporary Australia or whether they merely confirm our own hopes, disillusionment or varied images of life. Brett, Moran and Watts defend ordinary people against so-called 'political elites'. Instead, it is striking that the so-called 'ordinary' views could just as easily have been expressed by 'political elites'.

Brett and Moran are correct in observing that much is vested in any notion of ordinary people. This is particularly true of their own far-from-innocent 'let the people speak' approach, based on constructed images and methodology. While the authors display a sympathetic attentiveness to their subjects, they frame their stories with a mixture of fair comment and dubious ideological interpretation. One can, of course, simply value the stories told by the people in the book and try to ignore Brett and Moran's interpretation of the interviews as well as the way they slot their interviewees into contrived boxes such as 'entrepreneur', 'mums', 'old middle class' and so forth.

I agree with Watts that the accounts of what some ordinary people think are a valuable resource for current readers and future historians. Yet, much more is revealed in Ordinary People's Politics. Despite interviewing 75 people (of which 22 stories were published), Brett and Moran admit that there are many segments of Australian society missing. Whether intentional or not, the 22 stories reflect Judith Brett's long-held preoccupation with the changing character of Menzies' middle-class 'forgotten people' and the negative impact of decades of neo-liberal restructuring on public services, job security, families and communal solidarity. Other central themes repeated in this book include the fading loyalty to the major parties, hostility to politicians and the threat posed by market individualism and multiculturalism to shared notions of...

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