The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism

Politics, History, and Culture

by Elizabeth A. Povinelli

The Cunning of Recognition is an exploration of liberal multiculturalism from the perspective of Australian indigenous social life. Elizabeth A. Povinelli argues that the multicultural legacy of colonialism perpetuates unequal systems of power, not by demanding that colonized subjects identify with their colonizers but by demanding that they identify with an impossible standard of authentic traditional culture.
Povinelli draws on seventeen years of ethnographic research among northwest coast indigenous people and her own experience participating in land claims, as well as on public records, legal debates, and anthropological archives to examine how multicultural forms of recognition work to reinforce liberal regimes rather than to open them up to a true cultural democracy. The Cunning of Recognition argues that the inequity of liberal forms of multiculturalism arises not from its weak ethical commitment to difference but from its strongest vision of a new national cohesion. In the end, Australia is revealed as an exemplary site for studying the social effects of the liberal multicultural much earlier than the United States and in response to very different geopolitical conditions, Australian nationalism renounced the ideal of a unitary European tradition and embraced cultural and social diversity.
While addressing larger theoretical debates in critical anthropology, political theory, cultural studies, and liberal theory, The Cunning of Recognition demonstrates that the impact of the globalization of liberal forms of government can only be truly understood by examining its concrete—and not just philosophical—effects on the world.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography, Race

Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University where she has also been the Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Law and Culture.

Reviews

[Naomi McCormick · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is book is so devastatingly smart it will make you want to drop out of your phd program - because the best thing ever has already been written. or, at the very least, shamlessly overcite it in your own dissertation

[Andrew Nolan · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are many things problematic about this book, but the only I can really be bothered typing about right now is Povinelli's gargantuan blind spot in how she is positioned in relation to her subjects.

It could also be my barely self-acknowledged dislike of anthropology and anthropologists coming to the fore.

I'll stick with Taiaiake Alfred, Glen Coulthard, Lorenzo Veracinini, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith in the realm of critiques of contemporary forms of colonial power.

[Marcel Tabuteau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and frustrating dive into liberal recognition and the reinstatement of these liberal laws by those seeking to support local claimants.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pessimism about liberal/neoliberal governance. Ethnography of the difference between political rhetoric and practice.