ICS Seminar Series – Charlotte Lloyd

Date: Thursday 14 April 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EB.2.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Charlotte Lloyd

(Harvard University)

State-sanctioned Social Change: Narrative, Meaning and Practice in the 'Reconciliation Action Plan' Program

Abstract

The "Reconciliation Action Plan" (RAP) program constitutes one of the most far-ranging and visible initiatives through which the project of reconciliation is enacted in Australia, one of only two industrialised countries to pursue formal reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples. Since its inception in 2006, the RAP program has stimulated the development of customised plans for symbolic and practical reconciliation in 655 public, private, and third sector organisations covering over 25% of the Australian workforce. Qantas Airlines, for example, pledged to provide internships for Indigenous students and feature Indigenous culture through in-flight publications, while the Adelaide City Council promised to fly the Aboriginal flag and to finance certain Indigenous cultural events. This talk explores the RAP program as a state-sanctioned intervention into the socio-cultural dimensions of minority inequality—one that organises and narrates Australian history, culture, and national identity within a framework of reconciliation while promoting certain modes of thought and action to achieve its envisaged future for Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations. In particular, I will discuss the implications of three globally unique aspects of the RAP program's reconciliation narrative: its conceptualisation of reconciliation as an ongoing and virtually endless process, its interpellation of organisations as primary actors in reconciliation, and its "close the gap" focus on socio-economic and health inequalities.

Biography 

Charlotte Lloyd is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University during the 2016 academic year while she conducts fieldwork. Her dissertation on the "Reconciliation Action Plan" program in Australia is co-advised by Professor Tim Rowse (Western Sydney University) and Associate Professor Jocelyn Viterna (Harvard University). She graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011 with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Political Science.