Abstract

M. Augoustinos & S. L. Penny (2001).
Reconciliation: The Genesis of a New Social Representation
Papers on Social Representations, 10, 4.1-4.18.
[http://www.psr.jku.at/]

 

In this paper we examine the various ways in which the recently introduced
concept of ‘reconciliation’ into Australian public discourse was represented
and constructed by political and community leaders during the 1997
Australian Reconciliation Convention. This Convention became an important
site from which contested representations of reconciliation emerged and
subsequently proliferated into the wider Australian polity. A discursive
analysis of a subset of 12 speeches delivered at the Convention
demonstrated that the concept of reconciliation was represented as a
process moving towards peaceful co-existence of different cultural groups
within Australian society. A common and pervasive metaphor that was used
by speakers to anchor this process to the already familiar was that of a
journey in which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people walked
together. This journey of walking together was constructed explicitly as
natural, necessary, moral, and based on common-sense. Furthermore,
reconciliation was represented as an essential process in the development
of a unified nation. Reconciliation was constructed as simultaneously a topdown
process involving government and institutional policies and practices,
and a bottom-up or ‘grass-roots’ process involving the wider Australian
community. Both practical and symbolic actions were represented as
necessary for reconciliation to become a reality, requiring both changes at
a collective and political level, and changes at the individual psychological
level. Our discussion focuses on how these representations of reconciliation
and the public debates they have generated in the wider Australian
community are inextricably related to struggles over competing versions of
Australia’s history and national identity.