The negative Commonwealth: Australia as ‘laboratory’, then and now

IF 1 Q3 SOCIOLOGY

Thesis Eleven Pub Date : 2023-10-27 DOI:10.1177/07255136231206181

Lorenzo Veracini, Dan Tout

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Federated Australia was seen for a long time as a significant social ‘laboratory’. The Commonwealth itself was seen as an ‘experiment’. This widespread metaphor relied on a particular pattern of perception: the country was ‘new’ (it was not), and the country was allegedly isolated (it was not, at least not completely). Many believed that its social environment could be controlled, like that of a scientific laboratory. A laboratory is designed to shut all disturbances out – the value of the data and experiments depends on it. This article outlines this metaphor in the context of Australian history during the 20th century, its rhetorical power and what made it discursively possible.

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消极的联邦:澳大利亚过去和现在都是“实验室”

长期以来，澳大利亚联邦一直被视为一个重要的社会“实验室”。英联邦本身被视为一个“实验”。这个普遍的比喻依赖于一种特殊的感知模式:这个国家是“新”的(它不是)，这个国家据称是孤立的(它不是，至少不是完全孤立的)。许多人认为它的社会环境是可以控制的，就像一个科学实验室一样。实验室的设计是为了排除一切干扰——数据和实验的价值就取决于此。本文在20世纪的澳大利亚历史背景下概述了这个隐喻，它的修辞力量以及它在话语上的可能性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Thesis Eleven SOCIOLOGY-

CiteScore

1.40

自引率

12.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： Established in 1996 Thesis Eleven is a truly international and interdisciplinary peer reviewed journal. Innovative and authorative the journal encourages the development of social theory in the broadest sense by consistently producing articles, reviews and debate with a central focus on theories of society, culture, and politics and the understanding of modernity. The purpose of this journal is to encourage the development of social theory in the broadest sense. We view social theory as both multidisciplinary and plural, reaching across social sciences and liberal arts and cultivating a diversity of critical theories of modernity across both the German and French senses of critical theory.