Setting

 Sail:    The  making  of  sociology  in  Australia,  1955-­‐1975  

 
Raewyn  Connell,  University  of  Sydney  

 
The  final,  definitive  version  of  this  paper  has  been  published  in  Journal  of  Sociology,  16  
May  2014,  by  SAGE  Publications  Ltd,  All  rights  reserved.  ©  [The  Author]  
http://jos.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/16/1440783314532174.abstract  

 
Abstract  

This  paper  examines  the  knowledge-­‐creation  project  called  Sociology  that  was  
launched  in  Australia  between  1955  and  1975.    An  energetic  founding  group  
created  a  network  of  departments,  assembled  a  workforce,  and  were  rewarded  
with  rapid  growth.    Their  intellectual  project  emphasised  data  collection,  
scientificity  and  social  reform,  closely  modelled  on  sociology  in  the  global  
metropole.    Underneath  was  a  mostly  functionalist  concept  of  ‘a  society’  and  a  
strong  conviction  that  Australian  Society  was  a  case  of  modernity.    They  
succeeded  in  creating  an  empiricist  science,  which  played  a  role  in  Australian  
reformism  in  the  1970s  and  80s,  and  reached  a  high  point  in  the  work  of  Jean  
Martin.  However  many  younger  sociologists  were  dissatisfied  with  the  founders’  
science,  and  launched  other  knowledge  projects  in  the  following  decades.    The  
founders’  strategy  for  making  sociology  in  Australia  led  to  a  deep  contradiction  
about  Australian  coloniality,  unresolved  in  contemporary  sociology.  
 

Introduction  
Robert  Gordon  Menzies  was  still  Prime  Minister  in  double-­‐breasted  suits.  The  
wood-­‐chopping  championship  and  the  regional  displays  of  vegetables  were  
popular  attractions  at  the  Royal  Easter  Show.  The  third  power  station  of  the  
Snowy  Mountains  scheme,  built  by  migrant  labour,  was  recently  completed.    
Qantas  Empire  Airways  was  switching  over  to  a  new  kind  of  aeroplane  called  a  
‘jet’  and  dressing  its  hostesses  in  style  instead  of  military  uniforms.    The  last  in  a  
series  of  British  atomic  bombs  exploded  at  Maralinga  in  South  Australia.  It  was  
1963,  and  something  new  was  emerging  from  the  shell  of  the  old.    Late  in  the  
year,  a  conference  to  discuss  the  new  discipline  of  sociology  was  held  at  the  fairly  
new  National  University,  with  about  25  academics  present.  
The  Sociological  Association  of  Australia  and  New  Zealand  formed  at  this  small  
meeting  grew  explosively.    In  1964  it  had  111  members;  by  1969  it  had  446.    In  
1972  it  ran  into  a  political  crisis,  about  the  nature  of  sociology  and  the  control  of  
the  Association  (discussed  below),  resulting  in  a  partial  changing  of  the  guard  in  
generational  and  gender  terms.    SAANZ  was  robust  enough  to  survive,  and  lasted  
until  1988,  at  which  point  a  majority  of  New  Zealand  members  opted  to  set  up  a  
national  association.    Accordingly  in  1989  SAANZ  was  replaced  by  two  

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organizations  sundered  by  the  Tasman  Sea,  the  Sociological  Association  of  
Aotearoa  New  Zealand  and  The  Australian  Sociological  Association.    In  this  dual  
state  we  have  lasted  another  quarter-­‐century.  

What  did  it  mean  to  launch  a  North-­‐American  style  social  science  in  the  far  South  
of  the  world?    What  was  its  institutional  shape  and  its  workforce?    What  was  the  
collective  project  of  the  founding  group?    What  intellectual  problematic  underlay  
their  work?    What  did  they  bring  into  being,  and  what  tensions  existed  in  their  
project?    Finally,  what  is  the  significance  of  that  founding  moment,  for  sociology  
in  Australia  since?    These  are  historical  questions  and  I  have  tried  to  answer  
them  from  the  available  evidence:  mainly,  the  rich  documentation  in  the  early  
issues  of  the  Journal,  bibliographies  from  the  time,  the  monographs  written  by  
the  founding  group,  the  surviving  presidential  addresses,  published  memoirs,  
and  earlier  attempts  to  characterize  the  discipline  and  its  history  (e.g.  Baldock  
and  Lally  1974,  Austin  1984,  Germov  and  McGee  2005).  
 
Launching  the  ship  

SAANZ  was  started  amidst  a  larger  burst  of  institution-­‐building.    Higher  

education  was  booming  in  the  1960s,  as  the  Menzies  government  pumped  in  
nation-­‐building  money.    The  first  autonomous  Chair  in  sociology  was  created  in  
1959  at  the  University  of  New  South  Wales,  a  former  technological  institute  then  
acquiring  a  Faculty  of  Arts.    (Creating  a  sociology  Chair  was  a  crucial  step,  as  the  
God-­‐Professor  still  reigned  in  Australian  universities  and  departments  were  
normally  built  around  one  Professor.)    A  Canberra  Sociological  Society  had  been  
set  up  in  1958  and  ran  for  a  number  of  years,  eventually  merging  into  SAANZ.    
Monash  established  a  joint  Anthropology-­‐Sociology  chair  in  1961,  as  ANU  had  
done  in  the  1950s.    In  1963  the  first  Masters  programme  in  sociology  was  
planned,  at  ANU,  and  it  was  operating  in  1964-­‐65.    The  first  locally-­‐made  
textbook,  Australian  Society,  was  workshopped  in  a  seminar  in  1963  and  
published  in  1965.    In  1964  a  best-­‐selling  pop  sociology  book,  Donald  Horne’s  
lively  and  cynical  The  Lucky  Country,  appeared.    The  next  year  saw  the  first  issue  
of  SAANZ’s  sober  academic  journal,  The  Australian  and  New  Zealand  Journal  of  
Sociology.  
A  cascade  of  sociology  chairs,  departments  and  courses  around  the  country  
followed  these  moves.    By  1976-­‐77  there  were  eleven  named  sociology  
departments  (or  joint  departments)  in  Australian  universities,  and  many  
sociology  or  part-­‐sociology  courses  in  departments  of  education,  social  work,  
anthropology,  politics  and  health  sciences.    This  institutional  growth  was  
meticulously  documented  in  the  pages  of  the  Journal  and  in  Bill  Scott’s  
documentary  monograph  Australian  and  New  Zealand  Sociology  1971-­‐78.    The  
news  was  always  good.    This  was  a  chronicle  of  progress,  a  Whig  view  of  
sociological  history.  
The  flaw,  from  the  founders’  point  of  view,  was  not  the  pace  or  direction  but  the  
lateness  of  growth.    ‘Sociology  as  an  academic  discipline  makes  a  late  start  in  
Australia  and  New  Zealand’  declared  the  Editorial  Board  in  1965,  on  the  first  
page  of  the  first  issue  of  the  Journal.    The  statement  was  frequently  repeated  (e.g.  

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Baldock  and  Lally  1974:  3).    Actually,  in  world  terms,  Australia  and  New  Zealand  
were  not  particularly  late:  an  academic  discipline  of  sociology  was  being  
established  in  many  parts  of  the  world  about  this  time  or  later  (Patel  2010).    But  
the  belief  was  significant.  
The  main  business  of  sociologists  in  the  new  departments  was  teaching.    Full  
bachelor’s  degree  programmes  were  rapidly  constructed  and  reported  in  the  
pages  of  the  Journal.  (For  instance  vol.  5  no.  1,  pp.  82-­‐84,  gave  a  detailed  
description  and  full-­‐page  diagram  of  the  1969  degree  structure  at  UNSW.)  How  
sociology  should  be  taught  became  one  of  the  main  areas  of  debate.    It  was  the  
subject  of  anxious  conferences  in  1968  and  1970,  a  book  of  the  conference,  a  
‘Sociology  Manifesto’  at  La  Trobe  in  1969,  a  decision  to  set  up  a  Sociology  
Teachers’  Section  of  SAANZ  in  1970,  and  long  articles  in  the  Journal  by  Timms  
and  Zubrzycki  (1971)  and  Witton  (1972).    The  reason  for  this  urgency  was  
explosive  growth  in  student  numbers.  In  1960  the  UNSW  programme  reported  
15  students,  in  1964  it  had  275.  By  1970,  Monash  had  hit  700  and  was  expecting  
900  students  the  following  year.  
There  was  a  sudden,  large  demand  for  teaching  staff,  and  few  were  available  
with  qualifications  in  sociology.    So  people  were  whisked  in  from  other  
disciplines  and  other  countries,  few  with  already-­‐established  careers.    Sociology  
in  Australia  did  not  recruit  from  the  existing  academic  elite.    Much  of  the  bread-­‐
and-­‐butter  teaching  was  done  by  part-­‐time  or  temporary  staff,  young  people  still  
getting  their  qualifications.  

In  one  major  respect,  however,  sociology  conformed  to  academic  custom.  With  
the  exception  of  Jean  Martin,  all  the  prominent  figures  in  the  new  discipline  were  
men.    At  the  launch  of  the  Journal  in  1965,  there  was  not  one  woman  office-­‐
holder  of  the  Association,  member  of  the  executive,  nor  member  of  the  editorial  
board.    In  the  first  edition  of  Davies  and  Encel’s  pioneering  textbook,  every  one  of  
the  seventeen  authors  was  a  man.  
Gender  apart,  the  discipline’s  spectacular  success  meant  a  diversity  of  
background  and  training  among  its  first-­‐generation  practitioners.    This  diversity  
might  be  an  asset;  but  what  would  give  the  enterprise  coherence?  
 

The  project  
When  Alan  Davies  and  Sol  Encel  opened  the  batting  for  the  new  team,  on  the  first  
page  of  the  first  textbook,  they  defined  sociology  as:  
an  academic  discipline  seeking  to  illuminate  the  results  of  social  surveys  
(including  the  census)  by  systematic  thinking  about  social  groups  and  
institutions  (Davies  and  Encel  1965:  1).  
This  was  hardly  a  clarion  call,  but  it  was  accurate  enough  as  a  description  of  
what  the  sponsors  wanted,  and  what  the  practitioners  set  about  providing.    They  
were  filling  a  significant  gap  in  the  spectrum  of  knowledge.    University  
administrators  were  the  vital  audience,  and  they  became  persuaded  that  
Sociology  programmes  filled  a  gap  that  a  modern  university  had  to  fill.    The  ‘late  

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start’  rhetoric  helped  here:  Australia  had  to  catch  up  with  America  and  Europe.    
The  newer  universities,  self-­‐conscious  modernizers,  were  first  to  do  so.    
Two  phrases  in  Davies  and  Encel’s  definition  need  attention.    ‘Systematic  
thinking’  drew  the  line  against  unsystematic  talk  about  Australian  society.    J.  J.  
Mol,  one  of  the  original  three  staff  in  the  ANU  research  department  of  sociology,  
wrote  a  review  praising  Davies  and  Encel’s  textbook  as  a  decided  advance  over  
the  ‘impressionistic  writings  about  Australian  society’  that  prevailed  before  (Mol  
1966:  63).  
Many  contributors  to  the  new  discipline  used  a  particular  language  to  draw  this  
line.    They  spoke  of  prevailing  ‘myths’  about  Australia,  and  saw  sociology  as  
demolishing  these  myths  by  confronting  them  with  the  facts  produced  by  
research.  
The  most  important  of  these  myths  was  ‘the  egalitarian  picture  of  Australia’  
(Encel  1970b:  3).    This  was  the  main  target  of  criticism  in  Encel’s  magnum  opus  
Equality  and  Authority,  and  of  the  ANU  group’s  presentation  of  their  flagship  
survey  of  stratification:  ‘However,  social  reality  presents  a  rather  more  
complicated  picture  than  such  idealized  accounts  suggest’  (Broom,  Jones  and  
Zubrzycki  1968).  The  myth-­‐busting  rhetoric  probably  helped  sociology’s  
popularity  with  students,  promising  insight  into  hidden  truths  and  challenging  
tired  conventions.    This  mood  had  been  caught  in  Alan  Seymour’s  play  The  One  
Day  of  the  Year,  a  challenge  to  Anzac  Day,  first  performed  in  1960.  

Implicitly,  the  myth-­‐busters  were  acknowledging  that  the  knowledge  gap  was  
not  entirely  empty.    There  was  an  existing  discourse  about  social  life  in  Australia.    
When  a  group  of  left-­‐wing  students  went  looking  for  materials  on  class  in  
Australia,  they  found  nearly  a  thousand  publications  (Ancich  et  al.  1969).    But  
sociologists  in  the  university  departments  drew  the  line  in  a  way  that  excluded  
almost  all  of  this  work.  
If  we  are  to  be  serious  about  our  sociological  facts  then  they  must  derive  
not  from  one  person’s  observations,  no  matter  how  sensitive  they  may  be,  
but  from  techniques  which  are  replicable,  designed  to  produce  the  same  
results  for  different  data-­‐gatherers  in  the  same  situation  –  
intersubjectively  ascertainable  –  in  the  language  of  the  trade  (Western  
1969:  92).  

The  weapon  that  John  Western  was  wielding  here  –  against  a  right-­‐wing  
commentator  in  this  case  -­‐  was  a  criterion  of  scientificity.    Pure,  replicable  
description  was  the  task  of  sociology.    Introducing  their  paper  on  political  
participation  in  the  next  issue  of  the  Journal,  Wilson  and  Western  (1969:  98)  
disclaimed  all  concern  with  whether  participation  was  functional  for  democracy:  
Rather,  our  goal  is  to  describe  and  analyse  the  political  participation  of  a  
sample  of  voters  and  leave  the  normative  noise-­‐making  to  others.    
Scientificity  was  a  constant  concern.    John  Barnes  opened  his  1967  Presidential  
Address  with  the  questions  ‘What  meaning  can  we  give  to  the  claim  that  
sociology  is  a  social  science?    More  generally,  what  does  the  word  “science”  mean  

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when  we  modify  it  with  the  adjective  “social”?’  (1967:  78).    The  scientificity  of  
sociology  was  emphasised,  rather  than  queried,  by  Jerzy  Zubrzycki  in  the  1972  
Presidential  Address  -­‐  ‘the  scientific  task  of  explanation  of  the  society’  being  one  
side  of  the  sociologist’s  role,  the  task  of  policy-­‐maker  and  critic  being  the  other  
(1973:  6).  

The  need  to  establish  scientificity  helps  explain  why,  in  a  time  of  deep  social  
conflict  and  rapid  change,  the  main  debates  carried  on  in  the  pages  of  the  Journal  
were  about  fine  points  of  quantitative  methodology.    They  concerned  how  to  
measure  occupational  prestige,  how  to  measure  class  in  a  questionnaire,  how  to  
factor-­‐analyze  the  census  to  get  the  dimensions  of  a  city,  and  how  to  interpret  
the  correlation  between  church  school  education  and  church-­‐going.  
The  other  important  phrase  in  Davies  and  Encel’s  definition  named  the  method,  
‘social  surveys’,  which  became  the  main  research  activity  of  the  new  discipline.    
There  was  in  fact  a  social  demand  for  this  research  technology.    In  the  first  
reflective  article  in  the  Journal  about  the  context  of  research,  Lois  Bryson  and  
Faith  Thompson  noted  that:    

during  1966  and  1967  our  Department  of  Anthropology  and  Sociology  at  
Monash  University  was  approached  by  eight  bodies,  mainly  municipal  
councils,  who  seemed  to  have  a  hazy  idea  that  a  survey  would  assist  them.  
(Bryson  and  Thompson  1970:  62).  
They  agreed  to  do  one  of  the  eight,  and  that  became  the  influential  community  
study  An  Australian  Newtown  (1972).    Small  surveys  were  the  usual  method  in  
sociology  PhD  theses,  and  in  the  papers  published  in  the  Journal.  

The  effect  was  a  rapidly  growing  but  apparently  unorganized  heap  of  survey  
data.    Mills’  critique  of  ‘abstracted  empiricism’  in  the  USA  was  known,  but  did  not  
yet  bite.    The  local  problem  was  aimless  empiricism.    In  the  second  edition  of  
Australian  Society  the  editors  acknowledged  the  criticism  but  defended  the  genre  
because  of  ‘the  lack  of  really  detailed  information  about  Australian  social  affairs.    
To  remedy  the  latter  is  our  main  objective’  (see  Dowdy  1971).  
The  heap  was  more  organized  than  it  seemed;  but  the  principle  of  organization  
was  latent.    The  typical  article  in  the  Journal,  before  reporting  the  methods  and  
results  of  the  local  survey,  offered  a  literature  review  describing  American  and  
British  research  on  the  same  subject.    ‘The  business  of  sociology  is  largely  
comparative  assessment’  (Broom  and  Jones  1976:  5),  but  when  explicit  
comparisons  were  made,  it  was  almost  always  with  American  and  British  
material,  occasionally  with  non-­‐English-­‐speaking  parts  of  western  Europe.  
For  instance,  when  Jean  Martin  reported  her  excellent  Adelaide  survey  of  
suburban  kinship,  she  set  up  her  argument  by  citing  the  Chicago  school,  Warner,  
Burgess,  Parsons,  Litwak,  Bott,  and  others  from  the  US  and  UK.    Her  explanation  
of  the  role  that  her  own  research  was  to  play  in  this  field  of  knowledge  is  
exceptionally  clear:  

Australian  research  reported  since  the  second  World  War  and  a  recent  
study  of  my  own  in  Adelaide  can  make  some  contribution  towards  

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 illuminating  the  central  question  which  remains  at  issue:  what  factors  are  
associated  with  variations  in  the  structure  and  functioning  of  kin  groups,  
and  how  are  these  various  kin  structures  articulated  with  the  larger  
society?  (Martin  1967:  45)  
This  passage  connects  with  the  idea  of  the  ‘late  arrival’  of  Australian  sociology.  
The  central  concepts  and  problems  have  already  been  defined,  by  sociologists  in  
the  metropole.    The  local  research  will  ‘make  some  contribution’  to  it  –  usually  
by  adding  a  new  bit  of  data  for  comparison,  sometimes  (as  in  Martin’s  case)  also  
debating  the  theory.  
If  this  was  the  way  that  Australia’s  best  sociologist  thought  about  her  own  work,  
it  is  not  surprising  that  much  of  the  work  done  by  others  consisted  of  copying,  
with  slight  variations,  studies  already  done  in  the  United  States  and  Britain.    The  
commonest  title  for  a  report  of  sociological  research  at  the  time  was  ‘X  in  
Australia’,  where  ‘X’  could  be  religion,  social  stratification,  divorce,  prostitution,  
political  leadership,  urbanization,  or  any  other  phenomenon  already  researched  
in  the  metropole.  

For  the  most  part,  then,  the  ‘systematic  thinking’  part  of  Australian  sociology  
occurred  offshore.    The  scientificity  of  the  Australian  discipline  was  guaranteed  
not  by  local  epistemological  struggle,  but  by  matching  it  up  with  the  known  
scientific  practice  of  sociology  in  the  global  metropole.  A  flow  of  academic  
visitors  –  the  most  influential  being  Leonard  Broom,  who  linked  the  University  of  
Texas  with  ANU  in  the  1960s  –  and  professorial  appointments  from  Britain  and  
the  United  States,  brought  more  extensive  knowledge  of  the  metropole’s  
research  agendas  and  methods,  and  helped  make  metropolitan  science  the  
taken-­‐for-­‐granted  meaning  of  ‘sociology’.  
There  was  a  certain  grandeur  in  the  conception  of  knowledge  in  this  founding  
moment.    Sociology  was  understood  as  a  universal  science,  a  genuinely  
important  enterprise,  a  necessary  part  of  modernity’s  system  of  knowledge.    
Australians  and  New  Zealanders  might  be  late  in  joining  the  forward  march,  but  
the  contingent  from  the  South  Seas  had  arrived  at  last.    And  while  Australian  
researchers  were  feeding  their  modest  offerings  into  the  international  body  of  
knowledge,  they  would  use  the  international  science  to  illuminate  Australia’s  
share  of  –  as  Zubrzycki  put  it  –  ‘the  problems  which  men  and  women  experience  
in  modern  industrial  society’  (1973:  6).  
Zubrzycki’s  1972  Presidential  Address  was  titled  ‘The  Relevance  of  Sociology’.    
Radical  students  were  calling  for  relevance  and  the  founding  academics  were  
keen  for  it  too.  Accordingly,  Zubrzycki  argued  for  more  sustained  research  in  the  
three  fields  of  poverty,  equal  opportunity,  and  community  development.      
Zubrzycki  and  Martin  were  significant  figures  in  the  national  policy  shift  from  
migrant  assimilation  to  multiculturalism,  though  they  had  somewhat  different  
views  of  it  -­‐  Martin,  more  radical,  argued  that  cultural  pluralism  had  to  be  based  
on  ‘structural  pluralism’  and  include  robust  public  critique  (Martin  1981:  152-­‐3).    
Encel  served  as  an  advisor  to  ALP  policymakers.    Western  did  a  long  series  of  
policy  studies  for  state  and  federal  governments.    Bryson  and  Thompson’s  
Australian  Newtown  study  was  sponsored  by  would-­‐be  community  leaders  in  the  

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suburb,  and  their  paper  mentioned  above  was  a  discussion  of  the  difficulties  of  
doing  policy  sociology.  In  short,  the  founding  project  had  a  practical  dimension.    
As  well  as  building  universal  science,  sociology  was  to  contribute  accurate  
knowledge  and  informed  advice  to  the  reform  and  modernization  of  Australian  
society.  

 
The  underlying  problematic  
Embedded  in  this  project  was  a  certain  problematic:  a  way  of  understanding  the  
object  of  knowledge  and  defining  the  fundamental  problems  about  it.    The  
founding  group  made  few  ontological  statements,  but  we  can  identify  an  implicit  
perspective  on  social  reality  that  was  repeatedly  called  into  play  when  they  
designed  their  research  and  spoke  of  their  findings.  
This  perspective  was  decidedly  anti-­‐reductionist.    The  most  original  researchers,  
Alan  Davies  and  Jean  Martin,  did  include  issues  about  emotion;  but  for  
sociologists  in  general,  psychology  was  left  to  another  department.    So  was  
economics;  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  founding  group’s  dislike  of  marxism  was  
their  discomfort  with  the  idea  of  economic  determinism.    The  sociologists  
generally  believed  they  were  working  on  realities  beyond  the  reach  of  
psychology  and  economics.    The  staid  pages  of  the  Journal  gave  off  a  scent  of  
suppressed  excitement,  as  more  and  more  facets  of  this  previously  ignored  or  
misunderstood  reality  were  brought  into  view  by  the  new  research  methods.  
We  might  now  call  this  object  of  knowledge  ‘the  social’,  but  at  the  time  a  more  
concrete  language  was  used:  sociologists  spoke  of  ‘a  society’,  especially  
‘Australian  society’,  and  sometimes  sub-­‐units  called  ‘a  community’.  
The  object  of  sociological  knowledge  was  a  coherent,  bounded  entity;  internally  
structured  and  stratified  but  able  to  be  understood  and  measured  as  a  unit;  built  
of  interactions,  institutions,  cultural  traits  and  practices;  into  which  youth  and  
migrants  were  socialized;  capable  of  surviving  over  time.    A  beautiful  statement  
of  this  concept  was  provided  in  the  introduction  to  the  first  edition  of  the  book  
tellingly  named  Australian  Society  (Davies  and  Encel  1965).  
The  theoretical  framework  available  in  the  1960s  that  made  best  sense  of  this  
perception  of  social  reality  was,  unquestionably,  Parsonian  functionalism.    
Exactly  that  model  was  urged  by  Harold  Fallding  in  a  1962  paper  ‘The  scope  and  
purpose  of  sociology’  published  just  before  the  foundation  of  SAANZ.    To  
Fallding,  sociology  was  the  study  of  systems  of  social  action,  to  be  analyzed  by  
functionalist  logic,  and  there  was  no  other  path  for  sociology.    This  was  strong  
meat,  and  was  followed  by  further  emphatic  writing  to  expound  the  functionalist  
approach,  especially  a  book  published  soon  after  Fallding  left  Australia,  The  
Sociological  Task  (1968).  
Others  too  were  reading  functionalist  texts,  so  there  were  many  undertones  of  
conservative  American  functionalism  in  Australian  sociological  writing  at  this  
time.    They  can  be  found  in  the  prevalence  of  ‘social  system’  language,  in  the  
preoccupation  with  assimilation  of  migrants,  in  studies  of  socialization  of  

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children  (Musgrave  1971),  and  in  the  idea  of  social  differentiation  behind  the  
occupational  status  studies  and  the  social  stratification  surveys.    So  the  world-­‐
wide  prestige  of  Parsons  at  Harvard  and  Merton  at  Columbia  could  reinforce  the  
new  Australian  science.    
However  we  can  not  say  that  Australian  sociology  in  its  founding  years  was  
systematically  functionalist.    C.  Wright  Mills  was  almost  as  well  known  as  Talcott  
Parsons.    Jean  Martin  (1972:  3)  opened  her  Presidential  Address  by  citing  The  
Sociological  Imagination  and  listing  work  by  Mills’  American  friends.    Encel  was  
dismissive  of  Parsons,  influenced  by  Mills’  The  Power  Elite,  and  presented  his  
work  as  loosely  Weberian  rather  than  loosely  functionalist.  

There  was  a  touch  of  national  pride  in  some  discussions  of  ‘Australian  society’;  
but  this  was  more  than  counter-­‐balanced  by  the  new  discipline’s  powerful  
identification  with  the  global  metropole.    This  identification  becomes  very  clear  
in  declarations  about  what  kind  of  a  society  Australian  sociologists  were  
studying.    Here,  for  instance,  is  the  specification  in  the  ANU  group’s  final  report  
of  their  1965  stratification  survey:  

Despite  a  tendency  for  commentators  to  dwell  on  rural  images,  Australia  
in  the  1960s  was  a  highly  urbanised  society  in  the  mass  consumption  
phase  of  industrial  growth...  By  way  of  international  comparison,  in  1966  
only  the  United  States,  Sweden,  Switzerland,  and  Canada  had  higher  per  
capita  incomes...  (Broom  &  Jones  1976:  3)  

The  point  being  emphasised  was  Australian  society’s  modernity;  and  this  was  a  
theme  of  great  importance  in  the  launching  of  the  discipline  in  Australia.    For  the  
concept  of  ‘a  society’  as  a  coherent,  bounded  entity  was  ultimately  derived  from  
anthropological  functionalism,  and  in  Australian  universities  in  the  1950s  and  
1960s,  Anthropology  was  an  established  discipline.    For  Sociology  to  gain  its  own  
academic  space  it  needed  a  point  of  distinction,  and  this  was  found  in  a  very  
traditional  contrast  between  the  modern  and  the  pre-­‐modern.  

The  theme  of  modernity  was  duly  emphasised  by  many  writers  in  the  Journal:  
‘contemporary  industrialized  democratic  societies’  (vol.  1  no.  1:  12);  ‘carried  
further,  perhaps,  than  in  any  other  advanced  society’  (vol.  1  no.  2:  89);  ‘modern,  
urbanized,  large-­‐scale  society’  (vol.  3  no.  1:  44);  ‘western  democracies’  (vol.  5  no.  
2:  98);  ‘Australia  and  New  Zealand  are  amongst  the  most  modern  of  societies’  
(vol.  6  no.  2:  145);  and  so  on.  
The  boundary  was  a  little  fragile  when  closely  examined  –  the  third  of  these  
quotations  comes  from  a  paper  in  which  Martin  concluded  that  the  folk/urban  
contrast  was  misconceived.    But  the  distinction  usually  wasn’t  examined.    
Common  sense  identified  Australian  society  as  modern,  and  in  sociological  
theory  at  the  time  there  was  only  one  modernity.  

The  idea  not  only  justified  the  existence  of  the  discipline,  it  automatically  
justified  its  key  procedures.    Frequent  comparisons  with  America,  Britain,  and  
occasionally  Canada  and  western  European  countries,  were  appropriate,  even  
necessary:  these  were  the  other  modern  industrial  democratic  societies.    
Australian  modernity  made  it  appropriate  to  cite  American  and  European  

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sociological  writings,  whether  theoretical  or  empirical,  as  the  basis  for  Australian  
research.    It  was  appropriate,  even  necessary,  to  seek  higher  degrees  and  take  
sabbaticals  in  America  or  Britain,  the  destinations  constantly  mentioned  in  the  
Journal’s  ‘Notes  and  Announcements’.    Selection  committees  would  appoint  
American  and  British  academics  to  Antipodean  chairs  without  qualms  about  
their  appropriateness.  
Modernity  was  not  the  concern  of  sociologists  alone.    The  years  when  academic  
sociology  was  being  created  in  Australia  were  also  the  years  of  Dunstan’s  and  
Whitlam’s  rise  to  political  power;  and  their  rhetoric  was  precisely  about  
modernization.    Whitlam’s  refrain,  in  the  ‘It’s  Time’  election  campaign  of  1972,  
was  that  Australia  lagged  behind  ‘any  comparable  country’  in  urban  
infrastructure,  education,  etc.,  and  only  an  activist  national  government  could  
bring  Australia  up  to  scratch.    The  countries  that  Whitlam  thought  ‘comparable’  
were  the  same  ones  with  which  the  sociologists  compared  their  data.  
 
The  achievement  

Not  much  of  Australian  sociological  writing  from  the  1950s  or  60s  is  read  today,  
and  a  great  deal  is,  in  charity,  best  forgotten.    But  the  founders’  collective  project  
of  research  and  publication  did  work,  and  through  a  couple  of  decades  built  up  
the  body  of  knowledge  it  was  intended  to  build.  

An  ‘Australian  society’  did  come  into  view  that  had  no  corks  hanging  on  its  hat.    
This  society  was  modern,  mainly  urban,  intractably  unequal,  ethnically  diverse,  
and  increasingly  professionalized.    Sociology  strongly  encouraged  a  more  
inclusive  vision  of  Australian  experience.    The  struggles  of  migrants  could  
become  part  of  the  national  narrative.    Suburban  ways  of  living  could  be  viewed  
with  respect  and  not  just  satirized.    The  humble  social  survey  could  be  a  
democratic  cultural  influence.  

Though  Whitlam  did  not  appoint  sociologists  to  top  positions,  the  reform  agenda  
pursued  in  his  three  turbulent  years  as  Prime  Minister,  and  by  the  state  of  South  
Australia  in  the  Dunstan  Decade,  overlapped  considerably  with  the  research  
agenda  of  the  sociologists.    It  included  urban  development,  ethnic  communities,  
educational  inequality,  family  relations,  and  poverty.  
In  the  longer  run,  the  social  vision  and  research  technology  introduced  by  the  
founding  group  of  sociologists  was  quite  important  for  the  next  wave  of  social  
reform.    For  instance,  sociological  ideas  fed  into  the  Disadvantaged  Schools  
Programme,  which  ran  from  1975  to  about  1990  and  produced  some  of  the  most  
innovative  work  ever  seen  in  Australian  schools.    Research  techniques  and  
concepts  from  sociology  were  taken  up  by  the  new  feminism  and  played  an  
important  role  in  equal-­‐opportunity  reforms  from  about  1980  onwards.  
These  were  effects  of  the  sociologists’  collective  project.    Their  individual  
projects  rarely  had  that  kind  of  impact.    No  Australian  sociological  writing  of  the  
1950s  and  60s  had  a  reception  remotely  comparable  with  that  of  The  Lonely  
Crowd,  The  Power  Elite,  Outsiders,  or  The  Affluent  Worker.  

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Unique  individual  projects  there  could  be.    The  very  first  issue  of  the  Journal  
carried  one  of  Alan  Davies’  distinctive  and  witty  studies  of  children’s  social  and  
political  consciousness  (Davies  1965).    But  the  Australian  researcher  who  
showed  the  power  of  a  sociological  approach  was  Jean  Martin,  one  of  the  best  
social  scientists  Australia  has  produced.    When  appointed  to  a  chair  at  La  Trobe  
in  1966  Martin  joined  a  very  small  group  of  women  at  that  level  in  Australian  
universities.    Professors  had  wives,  they  weren’t  expected  to  be  wives.  Her  story  
is  increasingly  known,  including  the  remarkable  growth  of  her  department,  and  
we  look  forward  to  the  forthcoming  biography.  
As  early  as  her  Masters  research  in  the  1940s,  Martin  (then  Jean  Craig)  was  using  
ethnographic  method  to  explore  a  problem  that  still  had  no  name  –  gender  
relations  and  the  social  subordination  of  women.    She  carried  this  theme,  among  
others,  through  her  work  with  refugees  in  the  1950s  and  her  study  of  suburban  
kinship  in  the  1960s.    In  1968,  on  the  eve  of  the  Women’s  Liberation  movement,  
she  and  Katy  Richmond  published  an  analysis  of  the  status  of  working  women  in  
Australia  (unfortunately  in  a  boring  semi-­‐official  publication  called  Anatomy  of  
Australia).    
As  well  as  revealing  new  facets  of  social  structure,  Martin  was  able  to  use  
conventional  research  techniques  to  get  a  depth  of  understanding  of  social  
process  unique  in  her  generation  in  Australia,  and  rarely  matched  overseas.    This  
power  is  best  shown  in  her  book  Refugee  Settlers  (1965),  reporting  research  in  
1953  in  a  large  country  town,  with  data  from  follow-­‐up  interviews  in  1962-­‐63.    It  
was  based  on  her  PhD,  one  of  the  first  sociology  doctorates  in  the  country,  but  
was  in  no  sense  a  student  exercise;  the  author  was  already  a  practised  
researcher  when  she  started  the  project.    
The  starting-­‐point  of  Refugee  Settlers  is,  conventionally  for  the  time,  the  problem  
of  ‘assimilation’  to  Australian  society.    Exploring  the  process  through  multiple  
interviews  with  about  seventy  refugees,  Martin  went  far  beyond  the  
conventional  discussion  of  social  conformity,  into  tough  issues  about  exclusion  
and  suspicion,  paranoia  and  depression.    She  also  explored  the  economics  of  
refugee  life,  the  poverty,  the  struggle  for  livelihood,  the  constricted  lives  of  the  
migrant  women,  and  the  migrant  men’s  contempt  for  Australian  women.    Then  
she  traced  the  compromises  and  mellowing  through  which,  over  time,  some  
came  to  terms  with  the  new  environment  and  did  well  for  themselves  by  the  
1960s.  
There  is  a  passionate  realism  in  Refugee  Settlers  that  makes  it  still,  emotionally,  
hard  sledding.    More  than  any  other  writing  of  the  period,  it  shows  the  depth,  
complexity  and  compassion  that  were  possible  in  Australian  empirical  sociology.    
Martin  conveys  the  profound  loss  that  the  Displaced  Persons  had  gone  through  
at  the  war’s  end  in  Europe,  the  tension  and  tragedy  in  individual  lives.    With  
consummate  skill  she  keeps  a  sense  of  multiple  trajectories  running  through  the  
text.    And  she  shows  us,  concisely  but  bluntly,  Anglo-­‐Australian  society  in  the  
early  1950s  through  the  eyes  of  a  group  forced  to  deal  with  it  from  a  position  of  
weakness:    a  society  closed,  racist,  hierarchical,  uncultured,  and  self-­‐satisfied.  

  10  
Contradictions  
The  collective  project  of  the  sociologists  articulated  in  the  early  1960s  could  only  
be  realized  by  creating  an  institutional  base.  The  creation  of  the  base  depended  
on  sociology’s  popularity  among  students.    It  was  rapidly  rising  undergraduate  
enrolments  that  most  strongly  persuaded  university  administrations  to  create  
chairs  and  fund  departments.  
But  what  the  students  were  looking  for,  and  what  the  founding  group  of  
sociologists  provided,  did  not  necessarily  match.  Australian  military  involvement  
in  the  war  in  Vietnam  was  the  dominating  fact  in  student  culture  and  politics  at  
that  time,  and  the  new  science  of  society  seemed  to  have  nothing  to  say  about  it,  
or  about  the  conditions  that  made  it  possible.    The  Journal  scarcely  mentioned  
the  war  in  the  years  of  extreme  violence  from  1967  to  1972.  
In  the  same  years  a  radicalization  of  both  theory  and  practice  was  happening,  
expressed  in  the  Moratorium  movement,  the  magazines  Outlook  and  Arena,  the  
Sydney  Free  U  (from  1967),  Women’s  Liberation  groups  (from  1969),  and  
increasingly  sophisticated  social  and  political  critique  (e.g.  Gordon  1970).  This  
radicalization  led  younger  sociologists  rapidly  towards  structural  analyses  of  
class  and  gender,  a  concern  with  entrenched  power  and  oppression.  
But  when  established  sociologists  addressed  the  student  left  and  radical  
intellectuals,  their  disapproval  was  clear.  The  SAANZ  Presidential  Addresses  for  
1968,  1969  and  1971  were  respectively  hostile,  patronizing  and  admonitory  
towards  the  radicals  (Robb  1968,  Encel  1970,  Martin  1972).    When  the  Journal  
ran  a  symposium  on  Playford  and  Kirsner’s  book  Australian  Capitalism,  
reviewers’  critical  comments  ranged  from  ‘intellectual  laxity’,  and  ‘patently  
ridiculous’  to  ‘dogmatic  claptrap’  (vol.  9  no.  1:  62-­‐68).  
In  this  way  the  founding  group  in  SAANZ  missed  an  opportunity  for  renewal.  To  
a  considerable  extent  the  radicals  shared  their  collective  project  and  wanted  to  
push  it  further:  criticizing  its  current  framing  (Osmond  1972),  expanding  its  
agenda  and  reforming  its  teaching  methods  (Witton  1972).    Conflict  came  to  a  
head  in  1972.  The  younger  sociologists  at  UNSW,  hosting  the  annual  conference,  
changed  its  style  dramatically  to  be  informal  and  participatory.  The  Association’s  
general  meeting  voted  to  make  editorship  of  the  Journal  elective.    Lois  Bryson,  
who  was  then  elected  as  the  Journal’s  new  editor,  considers  the  event  as  part  of  a  
longer  process  of  academic  democratisation  (Bryson  2005).    It  certainly  turned  
the  Association  away  from  a  professionalization  strategy,  under  discussion  at  the  
time  among  the  senior  sociologists,  that  was  intended  to  give  it  a  hierarchical  
membership  structure.  
In  the  aftermath,  a  considerably  more  divided,  multi-­‐stranded  knowledge  project  
emerged  in  the  institutional  space  that  the  founding  group  had  created.    The  
moment  is  caught  by  Bell  and  Encel’s  collection  Inside  the  Whale:  Ten  Personal  
Accounts  of  Social  Research  (1978).    This  book  makes  a  rather  startling  contrast  
with  Baldock  and  Lally’s  Sociology  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  which  reflected  
the  founding  project  and  was  published  only  four  years  earlier.  

  11  
Empiricist  research  continued,  though  empiricism  eventually  merged  with  
radical  perspectives  in  new  stratification  studies  led  by  John  Western  at  
Queensland  (Baxter  et  al.  1991).    A  feminist  presence  grew  from  the  late  1970s  
(Richmond  2005),  with  centres  at  La  Trobe  and  Macquarie  Universities.    
Feminist  sociology  soon  became  the  strongest  area  of  Australian  sociological  
research,  realizing  the  promise  of  Jean  Martin’s  work.    Industrial  sociology  
emerged,  class  analysis  matured  (Boreham  and  Dow  1980),  and  critical  
sociologies  of  education  and  of  health  (Collyer  2012)  emerged.    In  the  late  1970s  
Allen  &  Unwin  Australia  began  publishing  a  notable  sociology  list,  eventually  
about  sixty  books.    The  core  of  this  output  was  the  ‘Studies  in  Society’  series  
under  the  energetic  editorship  of  Ron  Wild,  himself  the  author  of  a  critical  
ethnography  of  status,  class  and  power  in  a  country  town  (Wild  1974).    The  
series  drew  on  the  graduate  theses  now  coming  in  volume  from  sociology  
departments.    Some  sociologists  moved  into  the  school  sector,  some  into  the  
welfare  sector  and  community  activism.    This  experience  yielded  Yoland  
Wadsworth’s  unique  and  best-­‐selling  Do  It  Yourself  Social  Research  (1984),  an  
apotheosis  of  the  little-­‐survey  tradition  and  a  witty  anti-­‐professional  manifesto.  

What  did  not  change  was  Australian  sociology’s  position  in  the  wider  world,  and  
here  a  deeper  contradiction  emerged.    Australian  Society  was  presumed  to  be  
part  of  modernity,  and  mainstream  sociology  made  a  foundational  distinction  
between  modern  societies  and  the  pre-­‐modern  or  underdeveloped  rest  of  the  
world.    The  radicals  were  horrified  at  the  way  the  modern  was  bombing,  
napalming  and  machine-­‐gunning  the  pre-­‐modern,  but  most  did  not  see  this  as  a  
structural  issue  about  their  own  object  of  knowledge.  
The  assumption  of  shared  modernity  gave  Australian  sociology  a  global  role:  
feeding  a  little  comparative  information  into  the  knowledge-­‐production  machine  
of  the  metropole.    Locally,  the  assumption  of  modernity  allowed  sociology  to  
focus  almost  entirely  on  the  white  settlers  while  forgetting  the  consequences  of  
their  being  settlers.    Opening  the  first  edition  of  Australian  Society  at  its  first  
substantive  chapter,  ‘The  Population’,  we  find  the  chilling  words  with  which,  
after  some  preliminaries,  R.  T.  Appleyard  begins  his  narrative:  ‘White  settlement  
in  Australia  began  with  the  arrival  of  the  first  fleet  in  1788...’  (1965:  4).    Not  a  
breath  about  the  fact  that  there  was  already  a  population  in  Australia.  
Sociologists  in  the  discipline’s  founding  years  did  not  entirely  ignore  Aboriginal  
people.    There  was  a  chapter  towards  the  end  of  Australian  Society  on  ‘Aborigines  
in  the  Australian  community’  written  by  an  anthropologist  who  did  recognize  the  
appalling  death  toll  of  conquest.    There  was  a  paper  by  Colin  Tatz,  ‘Sociology  and  
Gippsland  Aborigines’,  at  the  1968  SAANZ  conference.    The  bibliography  of  social  
stratification  had  a  substantial  list  of  publications  on  ‘Aborigines  and  Part-­‐
Aborigines’  (Ancich  et  al.  1969:  145-­‐149).    Most  notable  were  the  hard-­‐hitting  
articles  by  Leonard  Broom  based  on  the  1966  census,  showing  what  positivism  
could  really  do  by  detailing  the  educational  and  workforce  status  of  Aborigines.    
Broom  documented  the  ‘discontinuity’  between  the  situations  of  Aborigines  and  
non-­‐Aborigines,  and  the  extreme  vulnerability  created  by  ‘poor  education,  poor  
jobs,  low  income  and  poverty’.    There  is  no  mistaking  the  anger  here:  

  12  
 Thus  far  Australia  has  run  Aboriginal  ‘welfare’  on  the  cheap  and  has  
gotten  what  it  paid  for.    Aborigines  have  paid  a  higher  price.  (Broom  
1971:  32)  

Missing  were  Aboriginal  voices  in  the  sociological  discussion;  a  way  of  thinking  
about  Black/White  relations  as  a  continuing  colonial  situation  rather  than  as  
‘prejudice’  or  a  case  of  ‘stratification’;  and  a  way  of  thinking  about  Australia  as  a  
post-­‐colonial  country,  not  part  of  the  metropole.    In  this  respect  sociology  in  
Aotearoa  New  Zealand,  which  did  address  Maori/Pakeha  relations  as  a  major  
theme,  diverged  from  sociology  in  Australia.    The  split  of  1988-­‐89  cost  the  
Australian  discipline  dearly.  

The  founding  group  had  in  fact  created  Australian  sociology  as  an  extraverted  
knowledge  project,  to  use  Hountondji’s  term  (Connell  2011).    In  this  pattern,  
intellectual  workers  in  the  global  periphery  are  oriented  to  the  global  
metropole’s  authority;  adopt  its  concepts,  methods  and  pedagogy;  seek  training  
and  recognition  from  metropolitan  universities;  and  thus  re-­‐create  in  the  post-­‐
colonial  situation  the  dependence  installed  by  colonization.    Because  Australian  
sociology  was  focussed  on  the  settler  population  rather  than  the  colonized,  its  
extraversion  took  the  particular  form  of  presumed  identity  with  the  metropole,  
through  the  shared  status  of  ‘modern  society’.    In  this  framework  it  was  not  
possible  to  think  that  peasants  in  Quang  Ngai  province  or  Aborigines  in  
Brewarrina  were  just  as  modern  as  the  white  bourgeois  in  Toorak.  
The  extraversion  installed  by  the  founding  generation  has  persisted.  We  have  
managed  to  replace  deference  to  Parsons  and  Lazarsfeld  with  deference  to  
Foucault  and  Bourdieu.    Perhaps  that  is  progress,  though  there  never  was  a  
special  issue  of  the  Journal  on  ‘Working  with  Parsons’.    The  neoliberal  
mechanisms  of  surveillance  and  competitive  ranking  intensify  the  problem,  as  
they  increase  the  pressure  to  publish  in  high-­‐ranking  metropolitan  journals  and,  
therefore,  to  speak  the  conceptual  language  of  the  metropole.  
But  there  has  also  been  increasing  recognition  of  the  contradiction  between  
living  in  a  settler-­‐colonial  society  and  practising  a  sociology  that  denies  
coloniality.    Several  Australian  sociologists  in  the  1990s  wrote  about  post-­‐
colonial  and  non-­‐metropolitan  perspectives  on  knowledge.  Chilla  Bulbeck’s  Re-­‐
Orienting  Western  Feminisms  (1998)  and  Peter  Beilharz’s  Imagining  the  
Antipodes  (1997)  are  key  examples.    In  1996  John  Western  was  a  leader  in  
establishing  the  Asia  Pacific  Sociological  Association,  linking  Australian  
sociologists  with  colleagues  in  south-­‐east  Asia  rather  than  the  metropole.  With  
the  formation  of  the  thematic  group  on  Sociology  of  Indigenous  Issues  in  2006,  
TASA  acknowledged  an  institutional  responsibility,  and  this  has  been  followed  
by  plenaries  on  indigenous  issues  and  postcolonial  perspectives.    
As  the  post-­‐colonial  dynamics  of  knowledge  come  into  focus  in  Australian  
sociology,  we  can  acknowledge  that  the  underlying  issues  have  always  been  
there.    They  have  been  present  since  Jean  Martin’s  encounter  with  refugees  in  
the  early  1950s  and  the  glimpse  they  gave  her  of  Anglo-­‐Australian  society  from  
the  underneath.  One  of  the  most  moving  passages  written  in  the  foundation  
years  comes  from  Martin’s  colleague  in  the  struggles  over  multiculturalism.  Jerzy  
Zubrzycki,  a  most  correct  and  conservative  man,  had  himself  been  a  refugee  and  

  13  
had  gone  through  the  trauma  of  war.    At  the  end  of  his  Presidential  Address  in  
the  troubled  year  1972,  he  reflected  on  the  moral  role  of  sociology  in  Australia,  
helping  the  country  to  face:  

the  choice  between  public  policies  that  put  premium  on  material  
affluence  and  impoverish  man’s  spiritual  world  through  the  levelling,  
conformist  style  of  industrial  society,  and  those  measures  that  question  
the  present  social  system  with  such  of  its  assumptions  as,  for  example,  
that  Australia  must  be  preserved  for  the  white  man  in  a  world  in  which  
the  white  men  are  rich,  and  coloured  men  perpetually  poor.  
And  he  quoted  the  novelist  Ernestine  Hill:  ‘What  shall  it  profit  a  man...  if  
Australia,  getting  rich,  loses  its  soul?’  (Zubrzycki  1973:  13.)  It  is  a  question  of  
some  relevance  in  the  era  of  Xstrata  Coal,  the  Group  of  Eight  and  the  Pacific  
Solution.  
 
 

Acknowledgments  
This  paper  is  based  on  the  keynote  address  to  the  TASA  Conference,  Monash  
University,  November  2013.    Thanks  to  the  conference  organizers,  Sebastian  Job,  
Ron  Witton,  Sheila  Shaver,  Alphia  Possamai-­‐Inesedy,  and  many  others  who  have  
helped  build  this  understanding  over  the  years.  
 
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