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However, recently there has appeared two theoretical innovations in

the literature on ethnic relations which breaks significantly from the

discourse as portrayed above. The first is Jean Martin's reanalysis of

what constitutes knowledge. This is then applied to the historical

development of ethnic relations in Australia as far as government policy

is concerned (Martin, 1978). The second is Frank Lewins' analysis of some

of the contradictions inherent in the conceptualisation of multi-

culturalism (Lewins, 1978b). I will consider each of these in turn and

conclude by presenting what I consider to be a further inherent

contradiction in the discourse of ethnic relations which adds to its non-

systematic nature.

Jean Martin, in the first chapter of her text The Migrant Presence

(1978) presents an epistemological position which is vastly different from

that which was the basis of all her previous works. It is in this work

that Martin expounds the position that knowledge is constructed and this

places her position in a non-empiricist category. Under the heading 'Webs

of Meaning' the author, quoting Weber's personalised notion of bureaucracy,

writes as follows on the question of social knowledge:

The parameters of any particular body of knowledge are thus embedded within large constructs which automatically negate or neutralise alternative definitions of what legitimately belongs to that body of knowledge. The predominance of assimilationist constructs in

Australia up to the mid-sixties, for example, meant that questions about how Australian institutions had responded to an influx of

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people of non-Anglo-Saxon origin simply did not come to the surface. There was no 'decision' to rule such question out of order. They did not arise; they were not confronted (Martin, 1978:21).

Martin is implying that social knowledge, rather than being the sum of

statements and propositions abstracted from migrant structures and

behaviours, is the way in which certain influential elements of the social

system construct a conceptual unity which then represents ethnic relations and also what these elements exclude from this unity. The knowledge effect

of this practice is to provide an appearance that the knowledge is an

unproblematic given devoid of power relationships. As the author says:

The content of social knowledge also consists largely of taken-for- granted elements which, most of the time, no one is aware of

constructing: they are simply there (Martin, 1978:22).

Martin (1978:21) draws on Foucault's concepts of 'truth' (process of

constructing knowledge), 'statements' (knowledge) and 'power' to provide

the framework for her analysis :

Of the way in which knowledge about migrants and their place in Australian society has been affirmed and constructed, denied and destroyed, over the past thirty years.

Truth is not seen as the property of internal components of a particular

scientific practice but in the words of Foucault as:

A system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution and circulation of statements.

'Truth' is linked by a circular relation to systems of power which produce it and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which redirect it (quoted in Martin, 1978:22).

What is implicit in Martin's framework is the recognition that the concepts

that have predominated in this literature are social constructs, not the

products of theoretical labour. What the writer identifies as the

important aspect of 'the social' is the structure of relations,

'particularly relations of dominance and subordination' (Martin, 1978:22,

emphasis added). The contribution of Martin's approach to an analysis of

ethnic relations now becomes clear. In the terms applied in Part I, she

construction. This is a position diametrically opposed to the

epistemological assumptions of her previous works which assumed that knowledge resided in the object. The systematic attempt by Martin to develop what this epistemological shift means for knowledge and the discourse of ethnic relations is so radical compared to the traditional analyses as exemplified above, that .it bears repeating. Martin postulates

'three important dimensions' along which the process of constructing

knowledge within a structure of group relations can be analysed. They are: The extent to which the process articulates, develops or legitimates

groupr>/scctional as compared with inter-group societal or universal

in teres La and identities; the extent to which the groupo/uecLione

which the knowledge is about contribute to the process; and the extent to which the knowledge produced has been validated or is valid in the terms that are claimed for it, or on the contrary is spurious, not validated as claimed, directly or by implication, or incapable of validation (Martin, 1978:22, emphasis added).

The critical implication for this essentially materialist conception of knowledge is that the units of analysis now become sectional and groups' interests and identities, not society as some coherent expression of values or interest, i.e., the focus is more on the parts and their interrelations than the mythical whole. This is clear in Martin's conclusion following from the above quote:

... the dominance of some parties implies their capacity to define interests and identities, to monopolise access to knowledge and its construction and to assert that certain knowledge is valid,

irrespective of whether it has been validated in the way claimed, or not. To the extent that certain parties dominate the construction of knowledge to the exclusion of others, the knowledge so produced is ideological. But it is important to remember that such ideological effects can be identified only where an object has been admitted as an object of knowledge (Martin, 1978:22-23).

What appears to be absent from Martin's framework is a representation of the social system in terms of the dynamic forces that produce, maintain and perpetuate these knowledge/power relationships. However, her work represents a significant break from the traditional discourse. The two concepts most apparent in the recent work of Martin, presented above, are firstly, the notion of power (domination and subordination) and secondly

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the focus on group -interests rather than the total society. These elements

also form the basis of the critique of the concept 'multiculturalism'

developed by Lewins. It is probably significant that Lewins was a student

of Martin for a period. He recognised that the apolitical nature of the

discourse is also a hallmark of the majority of conceptualisations of

multiciA.lturalism as it is presented in the literature, and this led him to

develop two apolitical representations of the concept.

1. Demographic Multiculturalism which simply acknowledges the

diversity of ethnic populations in Australia, often in numerical terms, by noticing but not valuing this diversity.

2. Holistic Multiculturalism regards mutual understanding and

tolerance ... within a context of unity and diversity as characterising the sort of relationships which can and should

exist between Australians and ethnics .... In reconciling the

needs of the host society and its ethnic constituents, holistic

multiculturalism stresses the wholeness and the welfare of the entire society (Lewins, 1978b:ll-12, emphasis added).

The hallmark of this representation of multiculturalism is that ethnic

relations are implicitly and ideologically regarded as apolitical and

insofar as it recognises ethnic pluralism as a permanent state, it is

only in the sense of ethnic diversity, i.e., as a one dimensional

horizontal structure which ignores the dominant-subordinate or hierarchical 9

structure of ethnic stratification. Not surprisingly, then, Lewins has

developed a third category incorporating those representations of

multiculturalism which recognise the political nature of ethnic relations -

political multiculturalism.

This perspective emphasises the role of political processes in Australian-ethnic relations and regards ethnic groups as legitimate interest groups and as having the responsibility for the

realization of ethnic goals. In this approach3 the focus is on the political nature of relations between the parts (usually Australians and various ethnic communities) rather than on the needs of the whole society (Lewins, 1978b:13, emphasis added).

Martin also has explicitly pointed out the political nature of ethnic

relations:

Ethnic pluralism in Australia, is not, then the safely cultural, apolitical phenomenon that some bland interpretations would lead us to think. Nor is there any reason to wish that this is what it

should be. When every other group in our society claims the right to be politicized - from women at the most inclusive end of the scale to convicts, perhaps at the most exclusive - it is hard to justify denying this right, or thinking it can be denied to ethnic groups (Martin, 1976:25).