Tony Bennett

About:

Tony Bennett joined the University of Western Sydney as Research Professor in Social  and Cultural Theory at the Centre for Cultural Research in 2009. His previous positions included a period as Professor of Sociology at the Open University where he was also a Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change, and as Professor of Cultural Studies at Griffith University where he was also Dean of Humanities and Director of the ARC Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Professor Bennett’s interests span a number of areas across the social sciences and humanities, with significant contributions to the fields of literary theory, cultural studies, cultural sociology, and museum studies. His work in literary studies includes influential assessments of the relations between formalist and Marxist criticism, and critical appraisals of Marxist aesthetic theory. In cultural studies his work has had a formative influence on the study of popular culture and he has played a leading role in the development of cultural policy studies. His work in cultural sociology includes major surveys of the social patterns of cultural practice and consumption in both Australia and Britain, and critical engagements with the sociology of literature and audience and reception theory. His work in museum studies has contributed to the development of the ‘new museology’ particularly in the light it has thrown on the role of museums as instruments of social governance.

The common thread running through his interests across these areas concerns the ways in which culture is tangled up in the exercise of power. This continues to inform his current research focused on the ways in which the knowledge practices of aesthetics and anthropology have informed modern processes of cultural governance from the 19th century through to the present. This work includes a significant focus on the part played by the early fieldwork phase in Australian, British, French and American anthropology in the development of new practices of colonial governance. It also includes a concern with the varying social uses of aesthetic discourses, and the role of aesthetics in the history of social theory. He is also engaged in an inquiry into the role of habit as a key concept in social, political and cultural theory, and with the role it has played in the practices of both liberal and colonial governance.

Professor Bennett’s work has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and he has lectured at universities, art galleries and museums in Europe, Asia, Africa, Asia and North America. He has worked in a consulting or advisory capacity for a range of governmental organisations, including UNESCO and the Council of Europe, and has conducted research collaborations with a wide range of cultural sector and government organisations in Australia and Britain.

He is currently co-editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy and of the Culture, Economy and the Social book series published by Routledge.