The Ideas Market

An Alternative Take on Australia's Intellectual Life

David Carter (ed.)

This book brings together some of Australia's brightest, best-known and controversial writers in a fresh discussion about the nature of public debate in this country.

About this Title

Although Australia is often cast as an anti-intellectual nation, scholars, writers and columnists play an increasingly prominent role in the media and other forums. Public intellectual life is booming. Yet as David Carter notes in the introduction to this collection, 'the same names recur in the same places having much the same debates. There is a great deal of our public intellectual life not well-represented in the mainstream media and public forums.'

The Ideas Market attempts to address this deficiency, introducing an alternative collection of provocative voices to a broader audience. It also asks some fundamental questions about intellectual life in this country: 'What does it mean to be a public intellectual?' and 'Who gets to be an intellectual?'

Contributors include Guy Rundle, McKenzie Wark, Catharine Lumby, Fiona Nicoll, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Paul Gillen, Mark Davis and Alan McKee.

About the Author

David Carter is Director of the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Queensland. He is the author of the award-winning study A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary Career and co-editor of Culture in Australia: Policies, Public and Programs.