| Review of: | Australian Social Attitudes. The First Report edited by Shaun Wilson, Gabrielle Meagher, David Denemark, Mark Western |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Peter Saunders |
| Reviewed in: | Australian Journal of Public Administration |
| Date accepted online: | 25/09/2006 |
| Published in print: | Volume 65, Issue 2, Pages 110-124 |
Book Reviews
This book joins a growing literature on the nature, determination, analysis and impact of public attitudes to social issues, an area where Australian research 'has lagged behind other advanced societies' as Ian McAllister notes in the Foreword. It contains a wealth of information about Australia's social world and the social attitudes that both reflect and help determine its contours. Based on a national survey of social attitudes (AuSSA) conducted in late 2003, it will serve as a valuable source of what Australians were thinking about some of its key social and economic issues at a point in its history when both were undergoing radical change - the former primarily being driven by the latter.
As the editors make clear in the Introduction, the main focus of the book is not so much on establishing whether and how social attitudes have influenced public policy, but rather on pointing out 'connections, tensions and feedbacks between the two'. It is, however, clear that several of the contributing authors take a strong normative position on public policy developments under the Howard Government, and are keen to provide evidence that supports their views, so that what emerges is not just descriptive but also contains strong prescriptive elements. This is not to criticise the contributors, although it alerts the reader to a gap between 'what the public thinks' about social issues and 'what the public does' when it comes to exercising its ability to affect it at the ballot box.
There is abroad coverage of contemporary social issues that should satisfy the intellectual appetites of most social scientists. Issues addressed in the book's 13 specific chapters include the nature and role of the family, paid and unpaid (volunteer) work, trust, the welfare state, crime and justice, attitudes to economic reform, the use of genetic information, immigration and national identity. Not surprisingly, there is considerable overlap between the issues raised in each chapter, although these tend to be under-developed (often not even commented on), in part because each chapter is separately authored.
The first two chapters deal with aspects of the family, highlighting some important trends and illustrating some of the interpretational ambiguities in the analysis and the conclusions derived from it. Thus in Chapter 2, Ann Evans and Edith Gray show that families are defined more by the presence of children than by the nature of the relationship between adults, yet in Chapter 3 Deborah Mitchell explores attitudes to working life between sole parent and couple families without distinguishing whether or not the latter have children. This chapter also concludes that there is stronger support for delivering child care by government or the private sector than by families or relatives, yet the evidence alluded to support this claim (in Table 3.4) refers specifically to childcare
In the limited space available it is hard to do justice to the scope and complexity of the contributions to this book. One strength lies in the use of constructed variables that capture multiple dimensions, which is employed to powerful effect in exploring the nature and role of post-materialist values (Chapter 6), on national identity (Chapter 11) and on attitudes to globalisation (Chapter 14). Overall, however, the book suffers from a lack of consistency of style and analytical technique that detract from its overall coherence and message. Close readers will uncover several examples where figures quoted in separate chapters differ slightly (not by enough to affect broad trends, but sufficient to raise concerns about why), while others will be frustrated by differences in whether observed differences are statistically significant, and how much supporting evidence is provided in an Appendix. It may have been necessary to share out the workload in order for a timely completion of the manuscript, or perhaps it was a tactic designed to encourage wide use of the data by other social scientists. There is certainly much to admire in what has been achieved, and there is clearly much to be gained from further analysis of this (and hopefully further waves of the) AuSSA data. Finally, it is to the credit of all involved that great effort has been made to make the data and survey instrument available to other researchers, although it is a great pity that the price has been set so high as to potentially offset these valiant attempts at dissemination.