New Zealand Advisory Sessions and Public Lectures

The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences will be visiting New Zealand in July to hold advisory sessions for prospective graduate, undergraduate and honours students. These advisory sessions will be held in conjunction with public lectures in Christchurch, Dunedin, Auckland and Wellington. An alumni cocktail reception will follow the lecture in Auckland.

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ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

PUBLIC LECTURE: CELEBRITY POLITICS

Presenter:
Professor David Marsh
Director, Research School of Social Sciences

This talk looks at one of the most interesting areas in contemporary debates about the relationship between politics and society. To what extent have changes in contemporary society, often characterized as a move towards ‘late modernity’, involving globalisation, increased risk, more fluid identities etc, led to changes in: patterns of political participation; policy making processes; and political parties? Much of this debate revolves around the increasing and changing role of the media and arguments about the celebritisation of politics.

I begin by developing a four category classification of the different types of relationship between politics and celebrity, distinguishing between: celebrities becoming politicians (Reagan, Garrett etc); celebrities using their fame to further political aims/causes (Bono, Geldoff, Jolie); politicians using connections with celebrities for political/electoral ends (Obama/Winfrey, Blair/Cool Britannia, Rudd/20/20); politicians courting celebrity (Cameron/web-Cameron).

However, I am mainly interested in how these developments relate to the broader operation of political systems/democracy. Crudely, you could say I want to address the question: is the growth of celebrity politics good or bad for democracy? One line of argument would suggest that late modernity has led to the development of a different dominant mode of governance; usually conceptualized as a move from hierarchy to network governance. In addition, some have argued that it leads to different forms of political participation (less participation in formal institutions and more in less formal, spontaneous, forms) and to different types of political parties (termed by one observer expert celebrity parties). However, even when authors develop this line, they don’t all agree that these developments have deepened democracy. Some suggest that they undermine democracy by ‘dumbing down’ the political sphere and dissolving the differences between the public and the private sphere. I look at these arguments suggesting that, in systems like the UK and Australia at least, this analysis underestimates the continued importance of hierarchy. So, taking Australia as an example, I argue that 20/20 was more about the centre trying to retain control, using consultation to legitimate their position(s), than about a genuine move towards a more participatory governance.

PROFESSOR DAVID MARSH

David Marsh is Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU and was previously Professor of Politics at the University of Birmingham. He is a Political Sociologist who is the author or editor of 12 books including Theory and Methods in Political Science, Marxism and Social Science and Apathy or Alienation: Young People and Political Participation in the UK. He has successfully supervised more than 40 PhD students and taught in many areas of Politics and Sociology.