The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today?

by Bronwyn Carlson

This award-winning work explores the complexities surrounding contemporary Aboriginal identity. Drawing on a range of historical and research literature, interviews and surveys, The Politics of Identity explores Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal understandings of Aboriginality and the way these concepts are produced and reproduced across a range of sites and contexts. Carlson discusses the multiple, yet narrow definitions of Aboriginal identity that have existed throughout Australia’s colonial history and its continuing impact upon contemporary Aboriginal identities. Emphasizing Indigenous debates and claims about Aboriginality, the work explores both the community and external tensions around appropriate measures of identity and the pressures and effects of identification.

Genres: Australia, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2016

About the author

Bronwyn Carlson is a professor and Head of the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University. She is the author of The Politics of Identity: Who Counts as Aboriginal Today? (2016), which includes a chapter on identity and community on social media.

Reviews

[Emory Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was really helpful for me in clarifying the history of identification parameters and criterion used on Aboriginal people in Australia to deny Aboriginal people rights. Dr Carlson talks about how Aboriginal people themselves now police the boundaries of Aboriginal identity to ensure political solidarity, and 'appropriate' distribution of Government resources. The ideas of binary identity (either Aboriginal or not, no room for multiple identities), community recognition online, the criteria for Aboriginality, varied histories and ways of being and expressing Aboriginal identities and more were explored in depth. While Dr Carlson does not seek to create definite answers, I feel that this book is the continuation of an important dialogue.

[Ray Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sound discussion of the historical and contemporary issues around Identity and Idetification. Derived from the authors doctoral research, it does read as though targeted more for an academic audience than the general public, which is a shame because it's the general public that would benefit most from reading it. From the author's own admission it does not set out to resolve problems, merely to add to the discussion, and that it does do.