Paper short abstract:

In this paper I look at the debate over the recent (2009-2011) publication of Peter Sutton's The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the End of the Liberal Consensus. I suggest that Sutton's writing, while for a general audience, is having a profound effect in the academy, making us rethink the question of the addressees of anthropological work.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologists are always free to write for a general audience, although relatively few take the plunge. But, when they do place their writing in some general, non-academic public domain, how might they be judged by their colleagues? Here I look at the recent (2009-2011) publication of Peter Sutton's 'The Politics of Suffering: Indigenous Australia and the End of the Liberal Consensus', a book which has not only appealed to a wide audience and sold extremely well, but also provoked a good deal of spirited, even sometimes frenzied, debate, both in and out of the academy. While giving a general account of the debate, including my own participation in it, I particularly examine one of its key aspects - reactions by the academic left to Sutton's announcement of the end of 'their' era. I argue that these reactions show how the intended readers over the anthropologist's shoulder may not necessarily be other academics, even when the writing appears in an academic arena. I further suggest that this has been a critical problem in the making of anthropological reputations in recent decades, although not always explicitly, and that the Sutton example ironically illustrates how work intended for a general audience has implications for our understanding of the addressees of anthropological work in the academy.