AustLit

Abstract: 'marketplace. It traces the function of 'literary fiction' as industry category and locus of symbolic value and national cultural capital, mapping its structures and dynamics in Australia, including the impact of digital technologies. In policy terms, literature and publishing remain significant sites of national and state government investment. Following Bourdieu's model of the field of cultural production, the literary/publishing field is presented as exemplary rather than as a high-cultural exception in the cultural economy. Taking Thompson's use of field theory to examine US and UK trade publishing into account, it analyses the industry structures governing literary and genre fiction in Australia, demonstrating the field's logic as determined by the unequal distribution of large, medium-sized and small publishers. This analysis reveals distinctive features of the Australian situation within a transnational context.' (Publication abstract)

'Academic interest in Australia’s heritage field has developed primarily around the ways its subject has been used to support dominant national interests. Understandings of heritage, however, are increasingly shaped by developments occurring in other nation-states, as well as those occurring at the international level. This article considers the changing nature of Australian notions of heritage within the context of the ‘transnational turn’. It does so in two ways. First, the article traces talk of transnationalism at a general level, considering especially theorisations around a materialist understanding of memory. Second, it considers what new representations of the past such a theorisation might call forth in the Australian context. As a point of illustration, the article focuses on the specific case of Australian war memories and their articulation within the heritage field.'

Source: Sage Publications.