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Book Release of “Urban Indigenous People in Multicultural Australia: Negotiation and Resistance to Identity Domination” By Ritsuko Kurita

A new book, Urban Indigenous People in Multicultural Australia: Negotiation and Resistance to Identity Domination, written by Ritsuko Kurita, Assistant Professor of the Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima University, was published in March, 2018. This publication was supported by a grant from the Australia Japan Foundation (Publication Awards 2017).

This book introduces Japanese readers to the current status of urban Indigenous people and their identity in multicultural Australia on the basis of Assistant Professor Kurita’s fieldwork in Adelaide, Australia, since 2007. Indigenous culture is celebrated in Australia as national heritage under a policy of multiculturalism. Australian Indigenous people have themselves taken advantage of the opportunity to present their culture both nationally and globally. Meanwhile, multiculturalism also requires Indigenous people to possess ‘traditional’ or ‘authentic’ culture and identity.

The book examines the mechanism through which multiculturalism mobilises Indigenous people to take having an ‘identity’ for granted and the response of urban Indigenous people to it. Urban Indigenous people manoeuvred their plural identities depending on situations and intentions in their daily lives while asserting their homogeneous collective identity in identity politics. Associate Kurita argues that living in a dilemma between these forms of identity politics could potentially allow Indigenous people to free themselves from the ‘identity’ imposed on them by ‘Western modernity’. The book’s theoretical analysis reveals a new perspective to view conventional manners of identity negotiations by ethnic minorities, and provide suggested areas for discussion about multiculturalism in both Australia and Japan.

Kurita, R. (2018). Urban Indigenous People in Multicultural Australia: Negotiation and Resistance to Identity Domination: Akashishoten. ISBN 9784750346618.
This book is available in Japanese only.
4,200 JPY (tax excluded)

[Inquiries]

Ritsuko Kurita
Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences
Hiroshima University

E-mail: ritsuko*hiroshima-u.ac.jp (Please replace * with @)


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