Politics as Scholarly Practice

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

In addition to his very considerable and influential body of scholarship, and his roles as a pathfinder and senior leader of cultural studies in Australia and beyond, Graeme Turner has made a profound if less well-known contribution as an advocate and adviser at the national level, for cultural studies and the wider humanities. Turner's election in 2004 as President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities was greeted by elements of the conservative commentariat as the final proof of the complete annihilation of sense and meaning in Australian universities. Within four years, Turner had garnered sufficient respect to be appointed personally to the nation's preeminent science and research advisory body, the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, a distinction confirmed by his reappointment in 2012. This article offers an intimate account of Turner's advocacy and policy activities, detailing many of the achievements, along with some of the frustrating near-misses, of his work during and after his Presidency. It traces his development from a seasoned institutional player and accomplished scholar, encountering the dual challenges of slippery politics and leaden bureaucracy, to his rapid emergence as an expert political operator quite at home (if a little cold) in Canberra. The article proposes a theory of Turner's approach, beyond his well-known work ethic, intellectual acuity and force of personality, conceiving of his advocacy and policy work as a species of cultural studies itself – an enactment of a politically engaged cultural practice – as much as an initiative on its behalf. This account looks back to Turner's own cultural scholarship for insights into his deployment of a highly sophisticated intellectual toolkit in a theoretically informed practice, to gain the attention, respect and support of politicians, public servants, industry leaders and the powerful science lobby.