Social Change and Cultural Transformation in Australia

The face of Australian society has been transformed since World War II with the arrival of more than one hundred different ethnic groups. During the 1980s 'multicultural' became the term used to describe this new society. While hundreds of reports, surveys and books have been devoted to analysing multiculturalism, few studies have looked systematically at the impact of ethnic diversity on Australian culture and institutions. This book looks beyond the rhetoric of multiculturalism. It examines social and cultural change since the 1940s, arguing that while the population has become ethnically and culturally diverse, Australia's power structures have remained monocultural, drawing mainly from the British inheritance. An intelligently written polemic, this book gives a picture of Australia in the 1990s quite different to that presented by many other writers and commentators. Much of its theoretical argument, as well as its empirical findings, will be relevant to readers interested in other societies of cultural diversity.