Gangland: The Revised Edition: Cultural Elites And The New Generationalism

Description

Panics over the culture wars, political correctness and victim feminism, rap music, ecstasy and body piercings . . . our cultural landscape is currently peppered with examples of a desperately backward-looking stasis and a fearful hanging-on.In Gangland Mark Davis analyses the dated ideals and assumptions of Australia's cultural establishment, and their near monopoly on cultural debate. Who are these people? What do they do? How is their influence affecting public forums and the media? Where does that leave the young people of today? Davis's irreverent prose cuts across the moral panics and anxieties that characterise Australian culture to detect a deep-seated fear of change - a fear that is often expressed as hostility towards youth. Gangland names names and maps networks, laying bare the discrepancies between reality and the images peddled by some of Australia's most popular thinkers, questioning the ideas that have characterised Australia in the nineties.'Deserves to become a manifesto for a disenfranchised generation' Australian Financial Review'Finally somebody on the side of late teens and twentysomethings in Australia . . . [a] brilliant argument of a book' Adrian Smart, Cream'Gangland has sparked a valuable debate, one which I've been looking forward to for years' Kathy Bail, Australian Book Review

Author description

Mark Davis teaches in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is the co-editor (with Miriam Lyons) of More Than Luck: Ideas Australia Needs Now, and the author of The Land of Plenty: Australia in the 2000s.

Table of contents

1 Playing the generation game: insiders, outsiders and the new generationalism2 The new establishment: on now at a media outlet near you.3 Running scared: 'political correctness', boomer-whinge and the big panic.4 Stoned again: the 'victim feminism' scare.5 Locked-out: 'legalised nostaligia' and 'dumbing-down'.6 The culture racket: making a literature7 Growing old gracefully: publishing the 'generation of '68'.8 An illiberal education: liberals versus the 'postmodern'.9 Canned goods and culture wars: the Metropolis comes to town.10 All hands on deck in the 'Year of the Helens'.11 Dark underbelly: youth, culture and policy.12 Theory, death and me: a Realpolitik of generationalism.