Over the last four decades, publicity stunts, demonstrations, and audacious displays of moral commitment have become an increasingly familiar part of political life. Within Australia, these have ranged from the pioneering efforts of Student Action for Aborigines, to the campaign against the Vietnam War, and to a cluster of social movements organized around gender, race, and sexuality. Crucial to these developments has been a persistent interplay between protest action and the media.
This book offers a contemporary history of collective action in Australia over the last four decades, from the halting experiments of the early 1960s, to more recent actions involving Pauline Hansonís One Nation Party, the quest for reconciliation, and the anti-corporate campaigners of the S11 Alliance. It tells the story of these performances, develops a set of concepts to illuminate their changing form, and considers the larger story of social and political change in recent Australian life.