AustLit
4486209597583293408.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y
Indigenous Cultural Capital : Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children's Literature
multi chapter work
Indigenous Cultural Capital : Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children's Literature
multi chapter work
Issue Details:
First known date:
2018...
2018
Indigenous Cultural Capital : Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children's Literature
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Children's literature enables young readers to acculturate to socially desirable forms of knowledge, values and ideologies. An increasing number of children's books with Aboriginal themes and motifs, written by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers in the post-Mabo era, seek to rewrite Aboriginal history through realistic or imaginative modes of expression and, as a counter-discursive agency, they open a path to inculcate young minds with Aboriginal culture and knowledge in a postcolonial context. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Post-Mabo Australian Children's Literature explores how Aboriginal people's histories and cultures are deployed, represented, and transmitted as " Indigenous cultural capital " for young readers, with the purpose of illuminating the complex relations between Aboriginal agency and dominant forces in the postcolonial contact zone and identifying possible tactics of resistance within the domination. The notion of Indigenous cultural capital provides a fresh perspective in the postcolonial readings of Australian children's books.' (Publication summary)
Notes
-
Table of Contents:
- Introduction.
- Indigenous cultural capital
- Chapter 1. Decolonised Landscape: Aboriginal Connections to Country
- Chapter 2. Living Memory: Testimonial and Autobiographical Narratives of Indigenous Child Separation
- Chapter 3. Book Reviews, Prizes, and the Paratextual Space in Children's Books
- Chapter 4. School Texts: from " Silent Apartheid " to " Cross-Curriculum Priority "
- Chapter 5. The Gift and the Ethics of Representing Aboriginality
- Conclusion. A Project of Hope: Resistance and Transformation
-
Won the Biennial Australian Studies in China Book Prize in 2018.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Daozhi Xu, Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children’s Literature
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , December vol. 22 no. 2 2022;
— Review of Indigenous Cultural Capital : Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children's Literature 2018 multi chapter work criticism 'Part history, part theory, and part examination of children’s literature focused on Indigenous experience, Indigenous Cultural Capital explores efforts to bring First Nations life and culture into the mainstream through books aimed at young readers. Xu Daozhi begins her work with this assertion: “The representations of Aboriginal life and cultures in Australian children’s books, throughout much of Australia’s post-contact history, have been plagued by racial stereotypes and prejudice” (1). (The author includes Torres Strait Islanders under the term “Aboriginal.”) To develop her ideas, she employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital”: “Cultural capital, in such forms as knowledge, skills, and educational qualifications, refers to cognitive acquisition and competence in deciphering cultural codes” (13). Family, to Bourdieu, is the foundational point for such capital; children from middle- or upper-class families enter the educational system with resources that ready them to acquire cultural capital successfully and thus achieve “scholastic success” (13) and an adult life of power and privilege. She identifies the longstanding absence of Indigenous knowledge and cultures from Australian education as a key factor in enduring racial discrimination in schools and society at large and “the widening gap between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal students in academic performance” (17). Introducing the concept of “Indigenous cultural capital” and applying it to children’s literature, the author contends that the dissemination of narratives to young readers centred on the Aboriginal experience and the corresponding apparatus of curricular changes, prizes, reviews, and appropriate paratextual matter has the potential to transform Australian society. Indigenous cultural capital can shape young readers’ “worldview, opinions, and behaviour” (18) and guide them toward a more racially inclusive social structure.'(Introduction)
-
Daozhi Xu, Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children’s Literature
2022
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , December vol. 22 no. 2 2022;
— Review of Indigenous Cultural Capital : Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children's Literature 2018 multi chapter work criticism 'Part history, part theory, and part examination of children’s literature focused on Indigenous experience, Indigenous Cultural Capital explores efforts to bring First Nations life and culture into the mainstream through books aimed at young readers. Xu Daozhi begins her work with this assertion: “The representations of Aboriginal life and cultures in Australian children’s books, throughout much of Australia’s post-contact history, have been plagued by racial stereotypes and prejudice” (1). (The author includes Torres Strait Islanders under the term “Aboriginal.”) To develop her ideas, she employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital”: “Cultural capital, in such forms as knowledge, skills, and educational qualifications, refers to cognitive acquisition and competence in deciphering cultural codes” (13). Family, to Bourdieu, is the foundational point for such capital; children from middle- or upper-class families enter the educational system with resources that ready them to acquire cultural capital successfully and thus achieve “scholastic success” (13) and an adult life of power and privilege. She identifies the longstanding absence of Indigenous knowledge and cultures from Australian education as a key factor in enduring racial discrimination in schools and society at large and “the widening gap between Aboriginal and nonAboriginal students in academic performance” (17). Introducing the concept of “Indigenous cultural capital” and applying it to children’s literature, the author contends that the dissemination of narratives to young readers centred on the Aboriginal experience and the corresponding apparatus of curricular changes, prizes, reviews, and appropriate paratextual matter has the potential to transform Australian society. Indigenous cultural capital can shape young readers’ “worldview, opinions, and behaviour” (18) and guide them toward a more racially inclusive social structure.'(Introduction)
Awards
- 2019 shortlisted ASAL Awards — Alvie Egan Award
Last amended 15 May 2020 08:59:24
Export this record
