Culture is significant to the government policy context in Australia, for an abstract economic analysis alone will fail to lead to viable social security measures. Understanding the unique socio-historical and cultural contexts in the country is essential for arriving at successful policies, and to this extent the thoughts of other influential Frankfurt Schoolers need be considered. For Australian policymakers, the nation’s chequered relation with aborigines will be the paramount issue. Having long been reduced to a minority group living on the fringe of mainstream society, the aborigines are slowly seeing reparative justice. And land-ownership schemes and other special welfare schemes for them have gradually been implemented in recent decades. (McClelland & Smyth, 2010) While no amount of reparative justice will suitably compensate for grave losses already incurred by the community, understanding the cultural emphasis of Critical Theorists and incorporating it’s suggestions in the policy framework is the right way to go forward.
References
Alway, J. (1995). Critical Theory and Political Possibilities: Conceptions of Emancipatory Politics in the Works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Arato, A. and Gebhardt, E., eds (1978) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Arato, A. (1993). From Neo-Marxism to Democratic Theory: Essays on the Critical Theory of Soviet-Type Societies. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Cook, D. (2004). Adorno, Habermas, and the Search for a Rational Society. New York: Routledge.
Craib, I. (1997). Classical Social Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 11-22 and 64-85
Farrands, C., & Worth, O. (2005). Critical Theory in Global Political Economy: Critique? Knowledge? Emancipation?1. Capital & Class, (85), 43+.
Harrington, A., ed (2005) Modern Social Theory: An Introduction, edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Habermas, J., & Michnik, A. (1994). Overcoming the Past. New Left Review, a(203), 3-16.
McClelland, A. and Smyth, P. (2010) Social Policy in Australia: Understanding for Action, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Dillon, M. (2010) Introduction to Sociological Theory: Theorists, Concepts and their Applicability to the Twenty-First Century, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, Chapter 1, pp: 181-214. (THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL / CRITIAL THEORY)
Chapter 1, pp: 77-114. (THE ANALYSIS OF EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917) AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY)