Academic literature on the topic 'Australia. Australian Army. Australian Division, 7th'

Wandering the aisles of my local Woolworths in April this year, I noticed a large number of chocolate bilbies replacing chocolate rabbits. In these harsh economic times it seems that even the Easter bunny is in danger of losing his Easter job. While the changing shape of Easter chocolate may seem to be a harmless affair, the expulsion of the rabbit from Easter celebrations has a darker side. In this paper I look at the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, and the implications this mediated conservation move has for living rabbits in the Australian ecosystem. Essential to this discussion is the premise that studies of ecology must take into account the impact of media and culture on environmental issues. Of particular interest is the role of narrative, and the way the stories we tell about rabbits determine how they are treated in real life. While I recognise that the Australian bilby’s struggle for survival is a tale which should be told, I also argue that the vilification of the European-Australian rabbit is part of the native/invasive dualism which has ceased to be helpful, and has instead become a motivator of unproductive violence. In place of this simplified dichotomous narrative, I propose an ethic of "ecological remembrance" to combat the totalising eradication of the European rabbit from the Australian environment and culture. The Bilby vs the Bunny: A Case Study in "Media Selection" Easter Bunny says, ‘Bilby, I want you to have my job.You know about sharing and taking care.I think Australia should have an Easter Bilby.We rabbits have become too greedy and careless.Rabbits must learn from bilbies and other bush creatures’. The lines above are taken from Ali Garnett and Kaye Kessing’s children’s story, Easter Bilby, co-published by the Australian Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation as part of the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the eco-politically correct Easter bilby. The first chocolate bilbies were made in 1982, but the concept really took off when major chocolate retailer Darrell Lea became involved in 2002. Since this time Haigh’s chocolate, Cadbury, and Pink Lady have also released delicious cocoa natives for consumption, and both Darrell Lea and Haigh’s use their profits to support bilby assistance programs, creating the “pleasant Easter sensation” that “eating a chocolate bilby is helping save the real thing” (Phillips). The Easter bilby campaign is a highly mediated approach to conservation which demonstrates the new biological principle Phil Bagust has recognised as “media selection.” Bagust observes that in our “hybridised global society” it is impossible to separate “the world of genetic selection from the world of human symbolic and material diversity as if they exist in different universes” (8). The Australian rabbit thrives in “natural selection,” having adapted to the Australian environment so successfully it threatens native species and the economic productivity of farmers. But the rabbit loses out in “cultural selection” where it is vilified in the media for its role in environmental degradation. The campaign to conserve the bilby depends, in a large part, on the rabbit’s failures in “media selection”. On Good Friday 2012 Sky News Australia quoted Mike Drinkwater of Wild Life Sydney’s support of the Easter bilby campaign: Look, the reason that we want to highlight the bilby as an iconic Easter animal is, number one, rabbits are a pest in Australia. Secondly, the bilby has these lovely endearing rabbit-like qualities. And thirdly, the bilby is a beautiful, iconic, native animal that is struggling. It is endangered so it’s important that we do all we can to support that. Drinkwater’s appeal to the bilby’s “endearing rabbit-like qualities” demonstrates that it is not the Australian rabbit’s individual embodiment which detracts from its charisma in Australian society. In this paper I will argue that the stories we tell about the European-Australian rabbit’s alienation from Indigenous country diminish the species cultural appeal. These stories are told with passionate conviction to save and protect native flora and fauna, but, too often, this promotion of the native relies on the devaluation of non-native life, to the point where individual rabbits are no longer morally considerable. Such a hierarchical approach to conservation is not only ethically problematic, but can also be ineffective because the native/invasive approach to ecology is overly simplistic. A History of Rabbit Stories In the Easter Bilby children’s book the illustrated rabbit offers to make itself disappear from the “Easter job.” The reason for this act of self-destruction is a despairing recognition of its “greedy and careless” nature, and at the same time, its selfless offer to be replaced by the ecologically conscious Bilby. In this sacrificial gesture is the implicit offering of all rabbit life for the salvation of native ecosystems and animal life. This plot line slots into a much larger series of stories we have been telling about the Australian environment. Libby Robin has observed that settler Australians have always had a love-hate relationship with the native flora and fauna of the continent (6), either devaluing native plants, animals, and ecosystems, or launching into an “overcompensating patriotic strut about the Australian biota” (Robin 9). The colonising dynamic of early Australian society was built on the devaluation of animals such as the bilby. This was reflected in the introduction of feral animals by “acclimatisation societies” and the privileging of “pets” such as cats and dogs over native animals (Plumwood). Alfred Crosby has made the persuasive argument that the invasion of Australia, and other “neo-European” countries, was, necessarily, more-than-human. In his work, Ecological Imperialism, Crosby charts the historical partnership between human European colonisers in Indigenous lands and the “grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche” (194) of introduced life that they brought with them. In response to this “guilt by association” Australians have reversed the values in the dichotomous colonial dynamic to devalue the introduced and so “empower” the colonised native. In this new “anti-colonial” story, rabbits signify a wound of colonisation which has spread across and infected indigenous country. J. M. Arthur’s (130) analysis of language in relation to colonisation highlights some of the important lexical characteristics in the rabbit stories we now tell. He observes that the rabbits’ impact on the county is described using a vocabulary of contamination: “It is a ‘menace’, a ‘problem’, an ‘infestation’, a ‘nuisance’, a ‘plague’” (170). This narrative of disease encourages a redemptive violence against living rabbits to “cure” the rabbit problem in order to atone for human mistakes in a colonial past. Redemptive Violence in Action Rabbits in Australia have been subject to a wide range of eradication measures over the past century including shooting, the destruction of burrows, poisoning, ferreting, trapping, and the well-known rabbit proof fence in Western Australia. Particularly noteworthy in this slaughter has been the introduction of biological control measures with the release of the savage and painful disease Myxomatosis in late December 1950, followed by the release of the Calicivirus (Rabbit Haemorrhage Disease, or RHD) in 1996. As recently as March 2012 the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries announced a 1.5 million dollar program called “RHD Boost” which is attempting to develop a more effective biological control agent for rabbits who have become immune to the Calicivirus. In this perverse narrative, disease becomes a cure for the rabbit’s contamination of Australian environments. Calicivirus is highly infectious, spreads rapidly, and kills rabbits en masse. Following the release of Calicivirus in 1995 it killed 10 million rabbits in eight weeks (Ponsonby Veterinary Centre). While Calicivirus appears to be more humane than the earlier biological control, Myxomatosis, there are indications that it causes rabbits pain and stress. Victims are described as becoming very quiet, refusing to eat, straining for breath, losing coordination, becoming feverish, and excreting bloody nasal discharge (Heishman, 2011). Post-mortem dissection generally reveals a “pale and mottled liver, many small streaks or blotches on the lungs and an enlarged spleen... small thrombi or blood clots” (Coman 173). Public criticism of the cruel methods involved in killing rabbits is often assuaged with appeals to the greater good of the ecosystem. The Anti-Rabbit research foundation state on their Website, Rabbit-Free Australia, that: though killing rabbits may sound inhumane, wild rabbits are affecting the survival of native Australian plants and animals. It is our responsibility to control them. We brought the European rabbit here in the first place — they are an invasive pest. This assumption of personal and communal responsibility for the rabbit “problem” has a fundamental blind-spot. Arthur (130) observes that the progress of rabbits across the continent is often described as though they form a coordinated army: The rabbit extends its ‘dominion’, ‘dispossesses’ the indigenous bilby, causes sheep runs to be ‘abandoned’ and country ‘forfeited’, leaving the land in ‘ecological tatters’. While this language of battle pervades rabbit stories, humans rarely refer to themselves as invaders into Aboriginal lands. Arthur notes that, by taking responsibility for the rabbit’s introduction and eradication, the coloniser assumes an indigenous status as they defend the country against the exotic invader (134). The apprehension of moral responsibility can, in this sense, be understood as the assumption of settler indigeneity. This does not negate the fact that assuming human responsibility for the native environment can be an act of genuine care. In a country scarred by a history of ecocide, movements like the Easter Bilby campaign seek to rectify the negligent mistakes of the past. The problem is that reactive responses to the colonial devaluation of native life can be unproductive because they preserve the basic structure of the native/invasive dichotomy by simplistically reversing its values, and fail to respond to more complex ecological contexts and requirements (Plumwood). This is also socially problematic because the native/invasive divide of nonhuman life overlays more complex human politics of colonisation in Australia. The Native/Invasive Dualism The bilby is currently listed as an “endangered” species in Queensland and as “vulnerable” nationally. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of the Australian landscape, but now inhabit less than 15% of the country (Save the Bilby Fund). This dramatic reduction in bilby numbers has multiple causes, but the European rabbit has played a significant role in threatening the bilby species by competing for burrows and food. Other threats come from the predation of introduced species, such as feral cats and foxes, and the impact of farmed introduced species, such as sheep and cattle, which also destroy bilby habitats. Because the rabbit directly competes with the bilby for food and shelter in the Australian environment, the bilby can be classed as the underdog native, appealing to that larger Australian story about “the fair go”. It seems that the Easter bilby campaign is intended to level out the threat posed by the highly successful and adaptive rabbit through promoting the bilby in the “cultural selection” stakes. This involves encouraging bilby-love, while actively discouraging love and care for the introduced rabbits which threaten the bilby’s survival. On the Rabbit Free Australia Website, the campaign rationale to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby claims that: Very young children are indoctrinated with the concept that bunnies are nice soft fluffy creatures whereas in reality they are Australia’s greatest environmental feral pest and cause enormous damage to the arid zone. In this statement the lived corporeal presence of individual rabbits is denied as the “soft, fluffy” body disappears behind the environmentally problematic species’ behaviour. The assertion that children are “indoctrinated” to find rabbits love-able, and that this conflicts with the “reality” of the rabbit as environmentally destructive, denies the complexity of the living animal and the multiple possible responses to it. That children find rabbits “fluffy” is not the result of pro-rabbit propaganda, but because rabbits are fluffy! That Rabbit Free Australia could construe this to be some kind of elaborate falsehood demonstrates the disappearance of the individual rabbit in the native/invasive tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Free Australia seeks to eradicate the animal not only from Australian ecosystems, but from the hearts and minds of children who are told to replace the rabbit with the more fitting native bilby. There is no acceptance here of the rabbit as a complex animal that evokes ambivalent responses, being both worthy of moral consideration, care and love, and also an introduced and environmentally destructive species. The native/invasive dualism is a subject of sustained critique in environmental philosophy because it depends on a disjunctive temporal division drawn at the point of European settlement—1788. Environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren points out that the divide between animals who belong and animals who should be eradicated is “fundamentally premised on the reification of a specific historical moment that ignores the changing and dynamic nature of ecologies” (11). Mark Davis et al. explain that the practical value of the native/invasive dichotomy in conservation programs is seriously diminished and in some cases is becoming counterproductive (153). They note that “classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (153). Instead, they promote a more inclusive approach to conservation which accepts non-native species as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low). Recent research into wildlife conservation indicates a striking lack of evidence for the case that pest control protects native diversity (see Bergstromn et al., Davis et al., Ewel & Putz, Reddiex & Forsyth). The problematic justification of “killing for conservation” becomes untenable when conservation outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. The mass slaughter which rabbits have been subjected to in Australia has been enacted with the goal of fostering life. This pursuit of creation through destruction, of re-birth through violent death, enacts a disturbing twist where death comes to signal the presence of life. This means, perversely, that a rabbit’s dead body becomes a valuable sign of environmental health. Conservation researchers Ben Reddiex and David M. Forsyth observe that this leads to a situation where environmental managers are “more interested in estimating how many pests they killed rather than the status of biodiversity they claimed to be able to protect” (715). What Other Stories Can We Tell about the Rabbit? With an ecological narrative that is failing, producing damage and death instead of fostering love and life, we are left with the question—what other stories can we tell about the place of the European rabbit in the Australian environment? How can the meaning ecologies of media and culture work in harmony with an ecological consciousness that promotes compassion for nonhuman life? Ignoring the native/invasive distinction entirely is deeply problematic because it registers the ecological history of Australia as continuity, and fails to acknowledge the colonising impact of European settlement on the environment. At the same time, continually reinforcing that divide through pro-invasive or pro-native stories drastically simplifies complex and interconnected ecological systems. Instead of the unproductive native/invasive dualism, ecologists and philosophers alike are suggesting “reconciliatory” approaches to the inhabitants of our shared environments which emphasise ecology as relational rather than classificatory. Evolutionary ecologist Scott P. Carroll uses the term “conciliation biology” as an alternative to invasion biology which focuses on the eradication of invasive species. “Conciliation biology recognises that many non-native species are permanent, that outcomes of native-nonnative interactions will vary depending on the scale of assessment and the values assigned to the biotic system, and that many non-native species will perform positive functions in one or more contexts” (186). This hospitable approach aligns with what Michael Rosensweig has termed “reconciliation ecology”—the modification and diversification of anthropogenic habitats to harbour a wider variety of species (201). Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Mark Bekoff encourages a “compassionate conservation” which avoids the “numbers game” of species thinking where certain taxonomies are valued above others and promotes approaches which “respect all life; treat individuals with respect and dignity; and tread lightly when stepping into the lives of animals”(24). In a similar vein environmental philosopher Deborah Bird Rose offers the term “Eco-reconciliation”, to describe a mode of “living generously with others, singing up relationships so that we all flourish” (Wild Dog 59). It may be that the rabbit cannot live in harmony with the bilby, and in this situation I am unsure of what a conciliation approach to ecology might look like in terms of managing both of these competing species. But I am sure what it should not look like if we are to promote approaches to ecology and conservation which avoid the simplistic dualism of native/invasive. The devaluation of rabbit life to the point of moral inconsiderability is fundamentally unethical. By classifying certain lives as “inappropriate,” and therefore expendable, the process of rabbit slaughter is simply too easy. The idea that the rabbit should disappear is disturbing in its abstract approach to these living, sentient creatures who share with us both place and history. A dynamic understanding of ecology dissipates the notion of a whole or static “nature.” This means that there can be no simple or comprehensive directives for how humans should interact with their environments. One of the most insidious aspects of the native/invasive divide is the way it makes violent death appear inevitable, as though rabbits must be culled. This obscures the many complex and contingent choices which determine the fate of nonhuman life. Understanding the dynamism of ecology requires an acceptance that nature does not provide simple prescriptive responses to problems, and instead “people are forced to choose the kind of environment they want” (189) and then take actions to engender it. This involves difficult decisions, one of which is culling to maintain rabbit numbers and facilitate environmental resilience. Living within a world of “discordant harmonies”, as Daniel Botkin evocatively describes it, environmental decisions are necessarily complex. The entanglement of ecological systems demands that we reject simplistic dualisms which offer illusory absolution from the consequences of the difficult choices humans make about life, ecologies, and how to manage them. Ecological Remembrance The vision of a rabbit-free Australia is unrealistic. As organisation like the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation pursue this future ideal, they eradicate rabbits from the present, and seek to remove them from the past by replacing them culturally with the more suitable bilby. Culled rabbits lie rotting en masse in fields, food for no one, and even their cultural impact in human society is sought to be annihilated and replaced with more appropriate native creatures. The rabbits’ deaths do not turn back to life in transformative and regenerative processes that are ecological and cultural, but rather that death becomes “an event with no future” (Rose, Wild Dog 25). This is true oblivion, as the rabbit is entirely removed from the world. In this paper I have made a case for the importance of stories in ecology. I have argued that the kinds of stories we tell about rabbits determines how we treat them, and so have positioned stories as an essential part of an ecological system which takes “cultural selection” seriously. In keeping with this emphasis on story I offer to the conciliation push in ecological thinking the term “ecological remembrance” to capture an ethic of sharing time while sharing space. This spatio-temporal hospitality is focused on maintaining heterogeneous memories and histories of all beings who have impacted on the environment. In Deborah Bird Rose’s terms this is a “recuperative work” which commits to direct dialogical engagement with the past that is embedded in the present (Wild Country 23). In this sense it is a form of recuperation that promotes temporal and ecological continuity. Eco-remembrance aligns with dynamic understandings of ecology because it is counter-linear. Instead of approaching the past as a static idyll, preserved and archived, ecological remembrance celebrates the past as an ongoing, affective presence which is lived and performed. Ecological remembrance, applied to the European rabbit in Australia, would involve rejecting attempts to extricate the rabbit from Australian environments and cultures. It would seek acceptance of the rabbit as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low), and aim for recognition of the rabbit’s impact on human society as part of dynamic multi-species ecologies. In this sense ecological remembrance of the rabbit directly opposes the goal of the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia to eradicate the European rabbit from Australian environment and culture. On the Rabbit Free Australia website, the section on biological controls states that “the point is not how many rabbits are killed, but how many are left behind”. The implication is that the millions upon millions of rabbit lives extinguished have vanished from the earth, and need not be remembered or considered. However, as Deborah Rose argues, “all deaths matter” (Wild Dog 21) and “no death is a mere death” (Wild Dog 22). Every single rabbit is an individual being with its own unique life. To deny this is tantamount to claiming that each rabbit that dies from shooting or poisoning is the same rabbit dying again and again. Rose has written that “death makes claims upon all of us” (Wild Dog 19). These are claims of ethics and compassion, a claim that “we look into the eyes of the dying and not flinch, that we reach out to hold and to help” (Wild Dog 20). This claim is a duty of remembrance, a duty to “bear witness” (Wiesel 160) to life and death. The Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, argued that memory is a reconciliatory force that creates bonds as mass annihilation seeks to destroy them. Memory ensures that no life becomes truly life-less as it wrests the victims of mass slaughter from “oblivion” and allows the dead to “vanquish death” (21). In a continent inhabited by dead rabbits—a community of the dead—remembering these lost individuals and their lost lives is an important task for making sure that no death is a mere death. An ethic of ecological remembrance follows this recuperative aim. References Arthur, Jay M. The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Bagust, Phil. “Cuddly Koalas, Beautiful Brumbies, Exotic Olives: Fighting for Media Selection in the Attention Economy.” “Imaging Natures”: University of Tasmania Conference Proceedings (2004). 25 April 2012 ‹www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/bagust.pdf› Bekoff, Marc. “First Do No Harm.” New Scientist (28 August 2010): 24 – 25. Bergstrom, Dana M., Arko Lucieer, Kate Kiefer, Jane Wasley, Lee Belbin, Tore K. Pederson, and Steven L. Chown. “Indirect Effects of Invasive Species Removal Devastate World Heritage Island.” Journal of Applied Ecology 46 (2009): 73– 81. Botkin, Daniel. B. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Carroll, Scott. P. “Conciliation Biology: The Eco-Evolutionary Management of Permanently Invaded Biotic Systems.” Evolutionary Applications 4.2 (2011): 184 – 99. Coman, Brian. Tooth and Nail: The Story of the Rabbit in Australia. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1999. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 – 1900. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Davis, Mark., Matthew Chew, Richard Hobbs, Ariel Lugo, John Ewel, Geerat Vermeij, James Brown, Michael Rosenzweig, Mark Gardener, Scott Carroll, Ken Thompson, Steward Pickett, Juliet Stromberg, Peter Del Tredici, Katharine Suding, Joan Ehrenfield, J. Philip Grime, Joseph Mascaro and John Briggs. “Don’t Judge Species on their Origins.” Nature 474 (2011): 152 – 54. Ewel, John J. and Francis E. Putz. “A Place for Alien Species in Ecosystem Restoration.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2.7 (2004): 354-60. Forsyth, David M. and Ben Reddiex. “Control of Pest Mammals for Biodiversity Protection in Australia.” Wildlife Research 33 (2006): 711–17. Garnett, Ali, and Kaye Kessing. Easter Bilby. Department of Environment and Heritage: Kaye Kessing Productions, 2006. Heishman, Darice. “VHD Factsheet.” House Rabbit Network (2011). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/vhd.shtml› Low, Tim. New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. Melbourne: Penguin, 2002. Phillips, Sara. “How Eating Easter Chocolate Can Save Endangered Animals.” ABC Environment (1 April 2010). 15 June 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/04/01/2862039.htm› Plumwood, Val. “Decolonising Australian Gardens: Gardening and the Ethics of Place.” Australian Humanities Review 36 (2005). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-July-2005/09Plumwood.html› Ponsonby Veterinary Centre. “Rabbit Viral Hemorrhagic Disease (VHD).” Small Pets. 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.petvet.co.nz/small_pets.cfm?content_id=85› Robin, Libby. How a Continent Created a Nation. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007. Rose, Deborah Bird. Reports From a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004. ——-. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Rosenzweig, Michael. L. “Reconciliation Ecology and the Future of Species Diversity.” Oryx 37.2 (2003): 194 – 205. Save the Bilby Fund. “Bilby Fact Sheet.” Easterbilby.com.au (2003). 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.easterbilby.com.au/Project_material/factsheet.asp› Van Dooren, Thom. “Invasive Species in Penguin Worlds: An Ethical Taxonomy of Killing for Conservation.” Conservation and Society 9.4 (2011): 286 – 98. Wiesel, Elie. From the Kingdom of Memory. New York: Summit Books, 1990.

Introduction: Our current obsession with the lives of others “Biography—that is to say, our creative and non-fictional output devoted to recording and interpreting real lives—has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance in recent years,” writes Nigel Hamilton in Biography: A Brief History (1). Ian Donaldson agrees that biography is back in fashion: “Once neglected within the academy and relegated to the dustier recesses of public bookstores, biography has made a notable return over recent years, emerging, somewhat surprisingly, as a new cultural phenomenon, and a new academic adventure” (23). For over a decade now, commentators having been making similar observations about our obsession with the intimacies of individual people’s lives. In a lecture in 1994, Justin Kaplan asserted the West was “a culture of biography” (qtd. in Salwak 1) and more recent research findings by John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge affirm that “the undiminished human curiosity about other peoples lives is clearly reflected in the popularity of autobiographies and biographies” (218). At least in relation to television, this assertion seems valid. In Australia, as in the USA and the UK, reality and other biographically based television shows have taken over from drama in both the numbers of shows produced and the viewers these shows attract, and these forms are also popular in Canada (see, for instance, Morreale on The Osbournes). In 2007, the program Biography celebrated its twentieth anniversary season to become one of the longest running documentary series on American television; so successful that in 1999 it was spun off into its own eponymous channel (Rak; Dempsey). Premiered in May 1996, Australian Story—which aims to utilise a “personal approach” to biographical storytelling—has won a significant viewership, critical acclaim and professional recognition (ABC). It can also be posited that the real home movies viewers submit to such programs as Australia’s Favourite Home Videos, and “chat” or “confessional” television are further reflections of a general mania for biographical detail (see Douglas), no matter how fragmented, sensationalized, or even inane and cruel. A recent example of the latter, the USA-produced The Moment of Truth, has contestants answering personal questions under polygraph examination and then again in front of an audience including close relatives and friends—the more “truthful” their answers (and often, the more humiliated and/or distressed contestants are willing to be), the more money they can win. Away from television, but offering further evidence of this interest are the growing readerships for personally oriented weblogs and networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook (Grossman), individual profiles and interviews in periodical publications, and the recently widely revived newspaper obituary column (Starck). Adult and community education organisations run short courses on researching and writing auto/biographical forms and, across Western countries, the family history/genealogy sections of many local, state, and national libraries have been upgraded to meet the increasing demand for these services. Academically, journals and e-mail discussion lists have been established on the topics of biography and autobiography, and North American, British, and Australian universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in life writing. The commonly aired wisdom is that published life writing in its many text-based forms (biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, and collections of personal letters) is enjoying unprecedented popularity. It is our purpose to examine this proposition. Methodological problems There are a number of problems involved in investigating genre popularity, growth, and decline in publishing. Firstly, it is not easy to gain access to detailed statistics, which are usually only available within the industry. Secondly, it is difficult to ascertain how publishing statistics are gathered and what they report (Eliot). There is the question of whether bestselling booklists reflect actual book sales or are manipulated marketing tools (Miller), although the move from surveys of booksellers to electronic reporting at point of sale in new publishing lists such as BookScan will hopefully obviate this problem. Thirdly, some publishing lists categorise by subject and form, some by subject only, and some do not categorise at all. This means that in any analysis of these statistics, a decision has to be made whether to use the publishing list’s system or impose a different mode. If the publishing list is taken at face value, the question arises of whether to use categorisation by form or by subject. Fourthly, there is the bedeviling issue of terminology. Traditionally, there reigned a simple dualism in the terminology applied to forms of telling the true story of an actual life: biography and autobiography. Publishing lists that categorise their books, such as BookScan, have retained it. But with postmodern recognition of the presence of the biographer in a biography and of the presence of other subjects in an autobiography, the dichotomy proves false. There is the further problem of how to categorise memoirs, diaries, and letters. In the academic arena, the term “life writing” has emerged to describe the field as a whole. Within the genre of life writing, there are, however, still recognised sub-genres. Academic definitions vary, but generally a biography is understood to be a scholarly study of a subject who is not the writer; an autobiography is the story of a entire life written by its subject; while a memoir is a segment or particular focus of that life told, again, by its own subject. These terms are, however, often used interchangeably even by significant institutions such the USA Library of Congress, which utilises the term “biography” for all. Different commentators also use differing definitions. Hamilton uses the term “biography” to include all forms of life writing. Donaldson discusses how the term has been co-opted to include biographies of place such as Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography (2000) and of things such as Lizzie Collingham’s Curry: A Biography (2005). This reflects, of course, a writing/publishing world in which non-fiction stories of places, creatures, and even foodstuffs are called biographies, presumably in the belief that this will make them more saleable. The situation is further complicated by the emergence of hybrid publishing forms such as, for instance, the “memoir-with-recipes” or “food memoir” (Brien, Rutherford and Williamson). Are such books to be classified as autobiography or put in the “cookery/food & drink” category? We mention in passing the further confusion caused by novels with a subtitle of The Biography such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The fifth methodological problem that needs to be mentioned is the increasing globalisation of the publishing industry, which raises questions about the validity of the majority of studies available (including those cited herein) which are nationally based. Whether book sales reflect what is actually read (and by whom), raises of course another set of questions altogether. Methodology In our exploration, we were fundamentally concerned with two questions. Is life writing as popular as claimed? And, if it is, is this a new phenomenon? To answer these questions, we examined a range of available sources. We began with the non-fiction bestseller lists in Publishers Weekly (a respected American trade magazine aimed at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents that claims to be international in scope) from their inception in 1912 to the present time. We hoped that this data could provide a longitudinal perspective. The term bestseller was coined by Publishers Weekly when it began publishing its lists in 1912; although the first list of popular American books actually appeared in The Bookman (New York) in 1895, based itself on lists appearing in London’s The Bookman since 1891 (Bassett and Walter 206). The Publishers Weekly lists are the best source of longitudinal information as the currently widely cited New York Times listings did not appear till 1942, with the Wall Street Journal a late entry into the field in 1994. We then examined a number of sources of more recent statistics. We looked at the bestseller lists from the USA-based Amazon.com online bookseller; recent research on bestsellers in Britain; and lists from Nielsen BookScan Australia, which claims to tally some 85% or more of books sold in Australia, wherever they are published. In addition to the reservations expressed above, caveats must be aired in relation to these sources. While Publishers Weekly claims to be an international publication, it largely reflects the North American publishing scene and especially that of the USA. Although available internationally, Amazon.com also has its own national sites—such as Amazon.co.uk—not considered here. It also caters to a “specific computer-literate, credit-able clientele” (Gutjahr: 219) and has an unashamedly commercial focus, within which all the information generated must be considered. In our analysis of the material studied, we will use “life writing” as a genre term. When it comes to analysis of the lists, we have broken down the genre of life writing into biography and autobiography, incorporating memoir, letters, and diaries under autobiography. This is consistent with the use of the terminology in BookScan. Although we have broken down the genre in this way, it is the overall picture with regard to life writing that is our concern. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a detailed analysis of whether, within life writing, further distinctions should be drawn. Publishers Weekly: 1912 to 2006 1912 saw the first list of the 10 bestselling non-fiction titles in Publishers Weekly. It featured two life writing texts, being headed by an autobiography, The Promised Land by Russian Jewish immigrant Mary Antin, and concluding with Albert Bigelow Paine’s six-volume biography, Mark Twain. The Publishers Weekly lists do not categorise non-fiction titles by either form or subject, so the classifications below are our own with memoir classified as autobiography. In a decade-by-decade tally of these listings, there were 3 biographies and 20 autobiographies in the lists between 1912 and 1919; 24 biographies and 21 autobiographies in the 1920s; 13 biographies and 40 autobiographies in the 1930s; 8 biographies and 46 biographies in the 1940s; 4 biographies and 14 autobiographies in the 1950s; 11 biographies and 13 autobiographies in the 1960s; 6 biographies and 11 autobiographies in the 1970s; 3 biographies and 19 autobiographies in the 1980s; 5 biographies and 17 autobiographies in the 1990s; and 2 biographies and 7 autobiographies from 2000 up until the end of 2006. See Appendix 1 for the relevant titles and authors. Breaking down the most recent figures for 1990–2006, we find a not radically different range of figures and trends across years in the contemporary environment. The validity of looking only at the top ten books sold in any year is, of course, questionable, as are all the issues regarding sources discussed above. But one thing is certain in terms of our inquiry. There is no upwards curve obvious here. If anything, the decade break-down suggests that sales are trending downwards. This is in keeping with the findings of Michael Korda, in his history of twentieth-century bestsellers. He suggests a consistent longitudinal picture across all genres: In every decade, from 1900 to the end of the twentieth century, people have been reliably attracted to the same kind of books […] Certain kinds of popular fiction always do well, as do diet books […] self-help books, celebrity memoirs, sensationalist scientific or religious speculation, stories about pets, medical advice (particularly on the subjects of sex, longevity, and child rearing), folksy wisdom and/or humour, and the American Civil War (xvii). Amazon.com since 2000 The USA-based Amazon.com online bookselling site provides listings of its own top 50 bestsellers since 2000, although only the top 14 bestsellers are recorded for 2001. As fiction and non-fiction are not separated out on these lists and no genre categories are specified, we have again made our own decisions about what books fall into the category of life writing. Generally, we erred on the side of inclusion. (See Appendix 2.) However, when it came to books dealing with political events, we excluded books dealing with specific aspects of political practice/policy. This meant excluding books on, for instance, George Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror,’ of which there were a number of bestsellers listed. In summary, these listings reveal that of the top 364 books sold by Amazon from 2000 to 2007, 46 (or some 12.6%) were, according to our judgment, either biographical or autobiographical texts. This is not far from the 10% of the 1912 Publishers Weekly listing, although, as above, the proportion of bestsellers that can be classified as life writing varied dramatically from year to year, with no discernible pattern of peaks and troughs. This proportion tallied to 4% auto/biographies in 2000, 14% in 2001, 10% in 2002, 18% in 2003 and 2004, 4% in 2005, 14% in 2006 and 20% in 2007. This could suggest a rising trend, although it does not offer any consistent trend data to suggest sales figures may either continue to grow, or fall again, in 2008 or afterwards. Looking at the particular texts in these lists (see Appendix 2) also suggests that there is no general trend in the popularity of life writing in relation to other genres. For instance, in these listings in Amazon.com, life writing texts only rarely figure in the top 10 books sold in any year. So rarely indeed, that from 2001 there were only five in this category. In 2001, John Adams by David McCullough was the best selling book of the year; in 2003, Hillary Clinton’s autobiographical Living History was 7th; in 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton reached number 1; in 2006, Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman was 9th; and in 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8th. Apart from McCulloch’s biography of Adams, all the above are autobiographical texts, while the focus on leading political figures is notable. Britain: Feather and Woodbridge With regard to the British situation, we did not have actual lists and relied on recent analysis. John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge find considerably higher levels for life writing in Britain than above with, from 1998 to 2005, 28% of British published non-fiction comprising autobiography, while 8% of hardback and 5% of paperback non-fiction was biography (2007). Furthermore, although Feather and Woodbridge agree with commentators that life writing is currently popular, they do not agree that this is a growth state, finding the popularity of life writing “essentially unchanged” since their previous study, which covered 1979 to the early 1990s (Feather and Reid). Australia: Nielsen BookScan 2006 and 2007 In the Australian publishing industry, where producing books remains an ‘expensive, risky endeavour which is increasingly market driven’ (Galligan 36) and ‘an inherently complex activity’ (Carter and Galligan 4), the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal that the total numbers of books sold in Australia has remained relatively static over the past decade (130.6 million in the financial year 1995–96 and 128.8 million in 2003–04) (ABS). During this time, however, sales volumes of non-fiction publications have grown markedly, with a trend towards “non-fiction, mass market and predictable” books (Corporall 41) resulting in general non-fiction sales in 2003–2004 outselling general fiction by factors as high as ten depending on the format—hard- or paperback, and trade or mass market paperback (ABS 2005). However, while non-fiction has increased in popularity in Australia, the same does not seem to hold true for life writing. Here, in utilising data for the top 5,000 selling non-fiction books in both 2006 and 2007, we are relying on Nielsen BookScan’s categorisation of texts as either biography or autobiography. In 2006, no works of life writing made the top 10 books sold in Australia. In looking at the top 100 books sold for 2006, in some cases the subjects of these works vary markedly from those extracted from the Amazon.com listings. In Australia in 2006, life writing makes its first appearance at number 14 with convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s My Story. This is followed by another My Story at 25, this time by retired Australian army chief, Peter Cosgrove. Jonestown: The Power and Myth of Alan Jones comes in at 34 for the Australian broadcaster’s biographer Chris Masters; the biography, The Innocent Man by John Grisham at 38 and Li Cunxin’s autobiographical Mao’s Last Dancer at 45. Australian Susan Duncan’s memoir of coping with personal loss, Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life makes 50; bestselling USA travel writer Bill Bryson’s autobiographical memoir of his childhood The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid 69; Mandela: The Authorised Portrait by Rosalind Coward, 79; and Joanne Lees’s memoir of dealing with her kidnapping, the murder of her partner and the justice system in Australia’s Northern Territory, No Turning Back, 89. These books reveal a market preference for autobiographical writing, and an almost even split between Australian and overseas subjects in 2006. 2007 similarly saw no life writing in the top 10. The books in the top 100 sales reveal a downward trend, with fewer titles making this band overall. In 2007, Terri Irwin’s memoir of life with her famous husband, wildlife warrior Steve Irwin, My Steve, came in at number 26; musician Andrew Johns’s memoir of mental illness, The Two of Me, at 37; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography Infidel at 39; John Grogan’s biography/memoir, Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, at 42; Sally Collings’s biography of the inspirational young survivor Sophie Delezio, Sophie’s Journey, at 51; and Elizabeth Gilbert’s hybrid food, self-help and travel memoir, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything at 82. Mao’s Last Dancer, published the year before, remained in the top 100 in 2007 at 87. When moving to a consideration of the top 5,000 books sold in Australia in 2006, BookScan reveals only 62 books categorised as life writing in the top 1,000, and only 222 in the top 5,000 (with 34 titles between 1,000 and 1,999, 45 between 2,000 and 2,999, 48 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 33 between 4,000 and 5,000). 2007 shows a similar total of 235 life writing texts in the top 5,000 bestselling books (75 titles in the first 1,000, 27 between 1,000 and 1,999, 51 between 2,000 and 2,999, 39 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 43 between 4,000 and 5,000). In both years, 2006 and 2007, life writing thus not only constituted only some 4% of the bestselling 5,000 titles in Australia, it also showed only minimal change between these years and, therefore, no significant growth. Conclusions Our investigation using various instruments that claim to reflect levels of book sales reveals that Western readers’ willingness to purchase published life writing has not changed significantly over the past century. We find no evidence of either a short, or longer, term growth or boom in sales in such books. Instead, it appears that what has been widely heralded as a new golden age of life writing may well be more the result of an expanded understanding of what is included in the genre than an increased interest in it by either book readers or publishers. What recent years do appear to have seen, however, is a significantly increased interest by public commentators, critics, and academics in this genre of writing. We have also discovered that the issue of our current obsession with the lives of others tends to be discussed in academic as well as popular fora as if what applies to one sub-genre or production form applies to another: if biography is popular, then autobiography will also be, and vice versa. If reality television programming is attracting viewers, then readers will be flocking to life writing as well. Our investigation reveals that such propositions are questionable, and that there is significant research to be completed in mapping such audiences against each other. This work has also highlighted the difficulty of separating out the categories of written texts in publishing studies, firstly in terms of determining what falls within the category of life writing as distinct from other forms of non-fiction (the hybrid problem) and, secondly, in terms of separating out the categories within life writing. Although we have continued to use the terms biography and autobiography as sub-genres, we are aware that they are less useful as descriptors than they are often assumed to be. In order to obtain a more complete and accurate picture, publishing categories may need to be agreed upon, redefined and utilised across the publishing industry and within academia. This is of particular importance in the light of the suggestions (from total sales volumes) that the audiences for books are limited, and therefore the rise of one sub-genre may be directly responsible for the fall of another. Bair argues, for example, that in the 1980s and 1990s, the popularity of what she categorises as memoir had direct repercussions on the numbers of birth-to-death biographies that were commissioned, contracted, and published as “sales and marketing staffs conclude[d] that readers don’t want a full-scale life any more” (17). Finally, although we have highlighted the difficulty of using publishing statistics when there is no common understanding as to what such data is reporting, we hope this study shows that the utilisation of such material does add a depth to such enquiries, especially in interrogating the anecdotal evidence that is often quoted as data in publishing and other studies. Appendix 1 Publishers Weekly listings 1990–1999 1990 included two autobiographies, Bo Knows Bo by professional athlete Bo Jackson (with Dick Schaap) and Ronald Reagan’s An America Life: An Autobiography. In 1991, there were further examples of life writing with unimaginative titles, Me: Stories of My Life by Katherine Hepburn, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography by Kitty Kelley, and Under Fire: An American Story by Oliver North with William Novak; as indeed there were again in 1992 with It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography of Norman Schwarzkopf, Sam Walton: Made in America, the autobiography of the founder of Wal-Mart, Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, Every Living Thing, yet another veterinary outpouring from James Herriot, and Truman by David McCullough. In 1993, radio shock-jock Howard Stern was successful with the autobiographical Private Parts, as was Betty Eadie with her detailed recounting of her alleged near-death experience, Embraced by the Light. Eadie’s book remained on the list in 1994 next to Don’t Stand too Close to a Naked Man, comedian Tim Allen’s autobiography. Flag-waving titles continue in 1995 with Colin Powell’s My American Journey, and Miss America, Howard Stern’s follow-up to Private Parts. 1996 saw two autobiographical works, basketball superstar Dennis Rodman’s Bad as I Wanna Be and figure-skater, Ekaterina Gordeeva’s (with EM Swift) My Sergei: A Love Story. In 1997, Diana: Her True Story returns to the top 10, joining Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and prolific biographer Kitty Kelly’s The Royals, while in 1998, there is only the part-autobiography, part travel-writing A Pirate Looks at Fifty, by musician Jimmy Buffet. There is no biography or autobiography included in either the 1999 or 2000 top 10 lists in Publishers Weekly, nor in that for 2005. In 2001, David McCullough’s biography John Adams and Jack Welch’s business memoir Jack: Straight from the Gut featured. In 2002, Let’s Roll! Lisa Beamer’s tribute to her husband, one of the heroes of 9/11, written with Ken Abraham, joined Rudolph Giuliani’s autobiography, Leadership. 2003 saw Hillary Clinton’s autobiography Living History and Paul Burrell’s memoir of his time as Princess Diana’s butler, A Royal Duty, on the list. In 2004, it was Bill Clinton’s turn with My Life. In 2006, we find John Grisham’s true crime (arguably a biography), The Innocent Man, at the top, Grogan’s Marley and Me at number three, and the autobiographical The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama in fourth place. Appendix 2 Amazon.com listings since 2000 In 2000, there were only two auto/biographies in the top Amazon 50 bestsellers with Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life about his battle with cancer at 20, and Dave Eggers’s self-consciously fictionalised memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius at 32. In 2001, only the top 14 bestsellers were recorded. At number 1 is John Adams by David McCullough and, at 11, Jack: Straight from the Gut by USA golfer Jack Welch. In 2002, Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani was at 12; Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro at 29; Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper by Patricia Cornwell at 42; Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative by David Brock at 48; and Louis Gerstner’s autobiographical Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround at 50. In 2003, Living History by Hillary Clinton was 7th; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson 14th; Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How President Bill Clinton Endangered America’s Long-Term National Security by Robert Patterson 20th; Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer 32nd; Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor of Jordan 33rd; Kate Remembered, Scott Berg’s biography of Katharine Hepburn, 37th; Who’s your Caddy?: Looping for the Great, Near Great and Reprobates of Golf by Rick Reilly 39th; The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship about a winning baseball team by David Halberstam 42nd; and Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong 49th. In 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton was the best selling book of the year; American Soldier by General Tommy Franks was 16th; Kevin Phillips’s American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush 18th; Timothy Russert’s Big Russ and Me: Father and Son. Lessons of Life 20th; Tony Hendra’s Father Joe: The Man who Saved my Soul 23rd; Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton 27th; Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation 31st; Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty 42nd; and Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan was 43rd. In 2005, auto/biographical texts were well down the list with only The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion at 45 and The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls at 49. In 2006, there was a resurgence of life writing with Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman at 9; Grisham’s The Innocent Man at 12; Bill Buford’s food memoir Heat: an Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany at 23; more food writing with Julia Child’s My Life in France at 29; Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust at 30; CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival at 43; and Isabella Hatkoff’s Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (between a baby hippo and a giant tortoise) at 44. In 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8; Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe 13; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography of her life in Muslim society, Infidel, 18; The Reagan Diaries 25; Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI 29; Mother Teresa: Come be my Light 36; Clapton: The Autobiography 40; Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles 45; Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life 47; and Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant at 49. Acknowledgements A sincere thank you to Michael Webster at RMIT for assistance with access to Nielsen BookScan statistics, and to the reviewers of this article for their insightful comments. Any errors are, of course, our own. References Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). “About Us.” Australian Story 2008. 1 June 2008. ‹http://www.abc.net.au/austory/aboutus.htm>. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “1363.0 Book Publishers, Australia, 2003–04.” 2005. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1363.0>. Bair, Deirdre “Too Much S & M.” Sydney Morning Herald 10–11 Sept. 2005: 17. Basset, Troy J., and Christina M. Walter. “Booksellers and Bestsellers: British Book Sales as Documented by The Bookman, 1891–1906.” Book History 4 (2001): 205–36. Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 1 June 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. Carter, David, and Anne Galligan. “Introduction.” Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2007. 1–14. Corporall, Glenda. Project Octopus: Report Commissioned by the Australian Society of Authors. Sydney: Australian Society of Authors, 1990. Dempsey, John “Biography Rewrite: A&E’s Signature Series Heads to Sib Net.” Variety 4 Jun. 2006. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117944601.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1>. Donaldson, Ian. “Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography.” Australian Book Review 286 (Nov. 2006): 23–29. Douglas, Kate. “‘Blurbing’ Biographical: Authorship and Autobiography.” Biography 24.4 (2001): 806–26. Eliot, Simon. “Very Necessary but not Sufficient: A Personal View of Quantitative Analysis in Book History.” Book History 5 (2002): 283–93. Feather, John, and Hazel Woodbridge. “Bestsellers in the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 23.3 (Sept. 2007): 210–23. Feather, JP, and M Reid. “Bestsellers and the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 11.1 (1995): 57–72. Galligan, Anne. “Living in the Marketplace: Publishing in the 1990s.” Publishing Studies 7 (1999): 36–44. Grossman, Lev. “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” Time 13 Dec. 2006. Online edition. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1569514%2C00.html>. Gutjahr, Paul C. “No Longer Left Behind: Amazon.com, Reader Response, and the Changing Fortunes of the Christian Novel in America.” Book History 5 (2002): 209–36. Hamilton, Nigel. Biography: A Brief History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Kaplan, Justin. “A Culture of Biography.” The Literary Biography: Problems and Solutions. Ed. Dale Salwak. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. 1–11. Korda, Michael. Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900–1999. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001. Miller, Laura J. “The Bestseller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction.” Book History 3 (2000): 286–304. Morreale, Joanne. “Revisiting The Osbournes: The Hybrid Reality-Sitcom.” Journal of Film and Video 55.1 (Spring 2003): 3–15. Rak, Julie. “Bio-Power: CBC Television’s Life & Times and A&E Network’s Biography on A&E.” LifeWriting 1.2 (2005): 1–18. Starck, Nigel. “Capturing Life—Not Death: A Case For Burying The Posthumous Parallax.” Text: The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs 5.2 (2001). 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct01/starck.htm>.

Introduction The social roles of alcohol consumption are rich and varied, with different types of alcoholic beverages reflecting important symbolic and cultural meanings. Sparkling wine is especially notable for its association with secular and sacred celebrations. Indeed, sparkling wine is rarely drunk as a matter of routine; bottles of such wine signal special occasions, heightened by the formality and excitement associated with opening the bottle and controlling (or not!) the resultant fizz (Faith). Originating in England and France in the late 1600s, sparkling wine marked a dramatic shift in winemaking techniques, with winemakers deliberately adding “fizz” or bubbles to their product (Faith). The resulting effervescent wines were first enjoyed by the social elite of European society, signifying privilege, wealth, luxury and nobility; however, new techniques for producing, selling and distributing the wines created a mass consumer culture (Guy). Production of Australian sparkling wines began in the late nineteenth century and consumption remains popular. As a “new world” country – that is, one not located in the wine producing areas of Europe – Australian sparkling wines cannot directly draw on the same marketing traditions as those of the “old world”. One enterprising company, Treasury Wine Estates, markets a range of wines, including a sparkling variety, called 19 Crimes, that draws, not on European traditions tied to luxury, wealth and prestige, but Australia’s colonial history. Using Augmented Reality and interactive story-telling, 19 Crimes wine labels feature convicts who had committed one or more of 19 crimes punishable by transportation to Australia from Britain. The marketing of sparkling wine using convict images and convict stories of transportation have not diminished the celebratory role of consuming “bubbly”. Rather, in exploring the marketing techniques employed by the company, particularly when linked to the traditional drink of celebration, we argue that 19 Crimes, while fun and informative, nevertheless romanticises convict experiences and Australia’s convict past. Convict Heritage and Re-Appropriating the Convict Image Australia’s cultural heritage is undeniably linked to its convict past. Convicts were transported to Australia from England and Ireland over an 80-year period between 1788-1868. While the convict system in Australia was not predominantly characterised by incarceration and institutionalisation (Jones 18) the work they performed was often forced and physically taxing, and food and clothing shortages were common. Transportation meant exile, and “it was a fierce punishment that ejected men, women and children from their homelands into distant and unknown territories” (Bogle 23). Convict experiences of transportation often varied and were dependent not just on the offender themselves (for example their original crime, how willing they were to work and their behaviour), but also upon the location they were sent to. “Normal” punishment could include solitary confinement, physical reprimands (flogging) or hard labour in chain gangs. From the time that transportation ceased in the mid 1800s, efforts were made to distance Australia’s future from the “convict stain” of its past (Jones). Many convict establishments were dismantled or repurposed with the intent of forgetting the past, although some became sites of tourist visitation from the time of closure. Importantly, however, the wider political and social reluctance to engage in discourse regarding Australia’s “unsavoury historical incident” of its convict past continued up until the 1970s (Jones 26). During the 1970s Australia’s convict heritage began to be discussed more openly, and indeed, more favourably (Welch 597). Many today now view Australia’s convicts as “reluctant pioneers” (Barnard 7), and as such they are celebrated within our history. In short, the convict heritage is now something to be celebrated rather than shunned. This celebration has been capitalised upon by tourist industries and more recently by wine label 19 Crimes. “19 Crimes: Cheers to the Infamous” The Treasury Wine Estates brand launched 19 Crimes in 2011 to a target population of young men aged between 18 and 34 (Lyons). Two limited edition vintages sold out in 2011 with “virtually no promotion” (19 Crimes, “Canadians”). In 2017, 19 Crimes became the first wine to use an Augmented Reality (AR) app (the app was later renamed Living Wines Labels in 2018) that allowed customers to hover their [smart] phone in front of a bottle of the wine and [watch] mugshots of infamous 18th century British criminals come to life as 3D characters who recount their side of the story. Having committed at least one of the 19 crimes punishable by exile to Australia, these convicts now humor and delight wine drinkers across the globe. (Lirie) Given the target audience of the 19 Crimes wine was already 18-34 year old males, AR made sense as a marketing technique. Advertisers are well aware the millennial generation is “digitally empowered” and the AR experience was created to not only allow “consumers to engage with 19 Crimes wines but also explore some of the stories of Australia’s convict past … [as] told by the convicts-turned-colonists themselves!” (Lilley cited in Szentpeteri 1-2). The strategy encourages people to collect convicts by purchasing other 19 Crimes alcohol to experience a wider range of stories. The AR has been highly praised: they [the labels] animate, explaining just what went down and giving a richer experience to your beverage; engaging both the mind and the taste buds simultaneously … . ‘A fantastic app that brings a little piece of history to life’, writes one user on the Apple app store. ‘I jumped out of my skin when the mugshot spoke to me’. (Stone) From here, the success of 19 Crimes has been widespread. For example, in November 2020, media reports indicated that 19 Crimes red wine was the most popular supermarket wine in the UK (Lyons; Pearson-Jones). During the UK COVID lockdown in 2020, 19 Crimes sales increased by 148 per cent in volume (Pearson-Jones). This success is in no small part to its innovative marketing techniques, which of course includes the AR technology heralded as a way to enhance the customer experience (Lirie). The 19 Crimes wine label explicitly celebrates infamous convicts turned settlers. The website “19 Crimes: Cheers to the Infamous” incorporates ideas of celebration, champagne and bubbles by encouraging people to toast their mates: the convicts on our wines are not fiction. They were of flesh and blood, criminals and scholars. Their punishment of transportation should have shattered their spirits. Instead, it forged a bond stronger than steel. Raise a glass to our convict past and the principles these brave men and women lived by. (19 Crimes, “Cheers”) While using alcohol, and in particular sparkling wine, to participate in a toasting ritual is the “norm” for many social situations, what is distinctive about the 19 Crimes label is that they have chosen to merchandise and market known offenders for individuals to encounter and collect as part of their drinking entertainment. This is an innovative and highly popular concept. According to one marketing company: “19 Crimes Wines celebrate the rebellious spirit of the more than 160,000 exiled men and women, the rule breakers and law defying citizens that forged a new culture and national spirit in Australia” (Social Playground). The implication is that by drinking this brand of [sparkling] wine, consumers are also partaking in celebrating those convicts who “forged” Australian culture and national spirit. In many ways, this is not a “bad thing”. 19 Crimes are promoting Australian cultural history in unique ways and on a very public and international scale. The wine also recognises the hard work and success stories of the many convicts that did indeed build Australia. Further, 19 Crimes are not intentionally minimising the experiences of convicts. They implicitly acknowledge the distress felt by convicts noting that it “should have shattered their spirits”. However, at times, the narratives and marketing tools romanticise the convict experience and culturally reinterpret a difficult experience into one of novelty. They also tap into Australia’s embracement of larrikinism. In many ways, 19 Crimes are encouraging consumers to participate in larrikin behaviour, which Bellanta identifies as being irreverent, mocking authority, showing a disrespect for social subtleties and engaging in boisterous drunkenness with mates. Celebrating convict history with a glass of bubbly certainly mocks authority, as does participating in cultural practices that subvert original intentions. Several companies in the US and Europe are now reportedly offering the service of selling wine bottle labels with customisable mugshots. Journalist Legaspi suggests that the perfect gift for anyone who wants a sparkling wine or cider to toast with during the Yuletide season would be having a customisable mugshot as a wine bottle label. The label comes with the person’s mugshot along with a “goofy ‘crime’ that fits the person-appealing” (Sotelo cited in Legaspi). In 2019, Social Playground partnered with MAAKE and Dan Murphy's stores around Australia to offer customers their own personalised sticker mugshots that could be added to the wine bottles. The campaign was intended to drive awareness of 19 Crimes, and mugshot photo areas were set up in each store. Customers could then pose for a photo against the “mug shot style backdrop. Each photo was treated with custom filters to match the wine labels actual packaging” and then printed on a sticker (Social Playground). The result was a fun photo moment, delivered as a personalised experience. Shoppers were encouraged to purchase the product to personalise their bottle, with hundreds of consumers taking up the offer. With instant SMS delivery, consumers also received a branded print that could be shared so [sic] social media, driving increased brand awareness for 19 Crimes. (Social Playground) While these customised labels were not interactive, they lent a unique and memorable spin to the wine. In many circumstances, adding personalised photographs to wine bottles provides a perfect and unique gift; yet, could be interpreted as making light of the conditions experienced by convicts. However, within our current culture, which celebrates our convict heritage and embraces crime consumerism, the reframing of a mugshot from a tool used by the State to control into a novelty gift or memento becomes culturally acceptable and desirable. Indeed, taking a larrikin stance, the reframing of the mugshot is to be encouraged. It should be noted that while some prisons were photographing criminals as early as the 1840s, it was not common practice before the 1870s in England. The Habitual Criminals Act of 1869 has been attributed with accelerating the use of criminal photographs, and in 1871 the Crimes Prevention Act mandated the photographing of criminals (Clark). Further, in Australia, convicts only began to be photographed in the early 1870s (Barnard) and only in Western Australia and Port Arthur (Convict Records, “Resources”), restricting the availability of images which 19 Crimes can utilise. The marketing techniques behind 19 Crimes and the Augmented app offered by Living Wines Labels ensure that a very particular picture of the convicts is conveyed to its customers. As seen above, convicts are labelled in jovial terms such as “rule breakers”, having a “rebellious spirit” or “law defying citizens”, again linking to notions of larrikinism and its celebration. 19 Crimes have been careful to select convicts that have a story linked to “rule breaking, culture creating and overcoming adversity” (19 Crimes, “Snoop”) as well as convicts who have become settlers, or in other words, the “success stories”. This is an ingenious marketing strategy. Through selecting success stories, 19 Crimes are able to create an environment where consumers can enjoy their bubbly while learning about a dark period of Australia’s heritage. Yet, there is a distancing within the narratives that these convicts are actually “criminals”, or where their criminal behaviour is acknowledged, it is presented in a way that celebrates it. Words such as criminals, thieves, assault, manslaughter and repeat offenders are foregone to ensure that consumers are never really reminded that they may be celebrating “bad” people. The crimes that make up 19 Crimes include: Grand Larceny, theft above the value of one shilling. Petty Larceny, theft under one shilling. Buying or receiving stolen goods, jewels, and plate... Stealing lead, iron, or copper, or buying or receiving. Impersonating an Egyptian. Stealing from furnished lodgings. Setting fire to underwood. Stealing letters, advancing the postage, and secreting the money. Assault with an intent to rob. Stealing fish from a pond or river. Stealing roots, trees, or plants, or destroying them. Bigamy. Assaulting, cutting, or burning clothes. Counterfeiting the copper coin... Clandestine marriage. Stealing a shroud out of a grave. Watermen carrying too many passengers on the Thames, if any drowned. Incorrigible rogues who broke out of Prison and persons reprieved from capital punishment. Embeuling Naval Stores, in certain cases. (19 Crimes, “Crimes”) This list has been carefully chosen to fit the narrative that convicts were transported in the main for what now appear to be minimal offences, rather than for serious crimes which would otherwise have been punished by death, allowing the consumer to enjoy their bubbly without engaging too closely with the convict story they are experiencing. The AR experience offered by these labels provides consumers with a glimpse of the convicts’ stories. Generally, viewers are told what crime the convict committed, a little of the hardships they encountered and the success of their outcome. Take for example the transcript of the Blanc de Blancs label: as a soldier I fought for country. As a rebel I fought for cause. As a man I fought for freedom. My name is James Wilson and I fight to the end. I am not ashamed to speak the truth. I was tried for treason. Banished to Australia. Yet I challenged my fate and brought six of my brothers to freedom. Think that we have been nearly nine years in this living tomb since our first arrest and that it is impossible for mind or body to withstand the continual strain that is upon them. One or the other must give way. While the contrived voice of James Wilson speaks about continual strain on the body and mind, and having to live in a “living tomb” [Australia] the actual difficulties experienced by convicts is not really engaged with. Upon further investigation, it is also evident that James Wilson was not an ordinary convict, nor was he strictly tried for treason. Information on Wilson is limited, however from what is known it is clear that he enlisted in the British Army at age 17 to avoid arrest when he assaulted a policeman (Snoots). In 1864 he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and became a Fenian; which led him to desert the British Army in 1865. The following year he was arrested for desertion and was convicted by the Dublin General Court Martial for the crime of being an “Irish rebel” (Convict Records, “Wilson”), desertion and mutinous conduct (photo from the Wild Geese Memorial cited in The Silver Voice). Prior to transportation, Wilson was photographed at Dublin Mountjoy Prison in 1866 (Manuscripts and Archives Division), and this is the photo that appears on the Blanc de Blancs label. He arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia on 9 January 1868. On 3 June 1869 Wilson “was sentenced to fourteen days solitary, confinement including ten days on bread and water” (photo from the Wild Geese Memorial cited in The Silver Voice) for an unknown offence or breach of conduct. A few years into his sentence he sent a letter to a fellow Fenian New York journalist John Devoy. Wilson wrote that his was a voice from the tomb. For is not this a living tomb? In the tomb it is only a man’s body is good for the worms but in this living tomb the canker worm of care enters the very soul. Think that we have been nearly nine years in this living tomb since our first arrest and that it is impossible for mind or body to withstand the continual strain that is upon them. One or the other must give way. (Wilson, 1874, cited in FitzSimons; emphasis added) Note the last two lines of the extract of the letter have been used verbatim by 19 Crimes to create their interactive label. This letter sparked a rescue mission which saw James Wilson and five of his fellow prisoners being rescued and taken to America where Wilson lived out his life (Reid). This escape has been nicknamed “The Great Escape” and a memorial was been built in 2005 in Rockingham where the escape took place. While 19 Crimes have re-created many elements of Wilson’s story in the interactive label, they have romanticised some aspects while generalising the conditions endured by convicts. For example, citing treason as Wilson’s crime rather than desertion is perhaps meant to elicit more sympathy for his situation. Further, the selection of a Fenian convict (who were often viewed as political prisoners that were distinct from the “criminal convicts”; Amos) allows 19 Crimes to build upon narratives of rule breaking by focussing on a convict who was sent to Australia for fighting for what he believed in. In this way, Wilson may not be seen as a “real” criminal, but rather someone to be celebrated and admired. Conclusion As a “new world” producer of sparkling wine, it was important for 19 Crimes to differentiate itself from the traditionally more sophisticated market of sparkling-wine consumers. At a lower price range, 19 Crimes caters to a different, predominantly younger, less wealthy clientele, who nevertheless consume alcoholic drinks symbolic to the occasion. The introduction of an effervescent wine to their already extensive collection encourages consumers to buy their product to use in celebratory contexts where the consumption of bubbly defines the occasion. The marketing of Blanc de Blancs directly draws upon ideas of celebration whilst promoting an image and story of a convict whose situation is admired – not the usual narrative that one associates with celebration and bubbly. Blanc de Blancs, and other 19 Crimes wines, celebrate “the rules they [convicts] broke and the culture they built” (19 Crimes, “Crimes”). This is something that the company actively promotes through its website and elsewhere. Using AR, 19 Crimes are providing drinkers with selective vantage points that often sensationalise the reality of transportation and disengage the consumer from that reality (Wise and McLean 569). Yet, 19 Crimes are at least engaging with the convict narrative and stimulating interest in the convict past. Consumers are being informed, convicts are being named and their stories celebrated instead of shunned. Consumers are comfortable drinking bubbly from a bottle that features a convict because the crimes committed by the convict (and/or to the convict by the criminal justice system) occurred so long ago that they have now been romanticised as part of Australia’s colourful history. The mugshot has been re-appropriated within our culture to become a novelty or fun interactive experience in many social settings. For example, many dark tourist sites allow visitors to take home souvenir mugshots from decommissioned police and prison sites to act as a memento of their visit. The promotional campaign for people to have their own mugshot taken and added to a wine bottle, while now a cultural norm, may diminish the real intent behind a mugshot for some people. For example, while drinking your bubbly or posing for a fake mugshot, it may be hard to remember that at the time their photographs were taken, convicts and transportees were “ordered to sit for the camera” (Barnard 7), so as to facilitate State survelliance and control over these individuals (Wise and McLean 562). Sparkling wine, and the bubbles that it contains, are intended to increase fun and enjoyment. Yet, in the case of 19 Crimes, the application of a real-life convict to a sparkling wine label adds an element of levity, but so too novelty and romanticism to what are ultimately narratives of crime and criminal activity; thus potentially “making light” of the convict experience. 19 Crimes offers consumers a remarkable way to interact with our convict heritage. The labels and AR experience promote an excitement and interest in convict heritage with potential to spark discussion around transportation. The careful selection of convicts and recognition of the hardships surrounding transportation have enabled 19 Crimes to successfully re-appropriate the convict image for celebratory occasions. References 19 Crimes. “Cheers to the Infamous.” 19 Crimes, 2020. 14 Dec. 2020 <https://www.19crimes.com>. ———. “The 19 Crimes.” 19 Crimes, 2020. 14 Dec. 2020 <https://www.19crimes.com/en-au/the-19-crimes>. ———. “19 Crimes Announces Multi-Year Partnership with Entertainment Icon Snoop Dogg.” PR Newswire 16 Apr. 2020. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/19-crimes-announces-multi-year-partnership-with-entertainment-icon-snoop-dogg-301041585.html>. ———. “19 Crimes Canadians Not Likely to Commit, But Clamouring For.” PR Newswire 10 Oct. 2013. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/19-crimes-canadians-not-likely-to-commit-but-clamouring-for-513086721.html>. Amos, Keith William. The Fenians and Australia c 1865-1880. Doctoral thesis, UNE, 1987. <https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/12781>. Barnard, Edwin. Exiled: The Port Arthur Convict Photographs. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2010. Bellanta, Melissa. Larrikins: A History. University of Queensland Press. Bogle, Michael. Convicts: Transportation and Australia. Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 2008. Clark, Julia. ‘Through a Glass, Darkly’: The Camera, the Convict and the Criminal Life. PhD Dissertation, University of Tasmania, 2015. Convict Records. “James Wilson.” Convict Records 2020. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://convictrecords.com.au/convicts/wilson/james/72523>. ———. “Convict Resources.” Convict Records 2021. 23 Feb. 2021 <https://convictrecords.com.au/resources>. Faith, Nicholas. The Story of Champagne. Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2016. FitzSimons, Peter. “The Catalpa: How the Plan to Break Free Irish Prisoners in Fremantle Was Hatched, and Funded.” Sydney Morning Herald 21 Apr. 2019. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-catalpa-how-the-plan-to-break-free-irish-prisoners-in-fremantle-was-hatched-and-funded-20190416-p51eq2.html>. Guy, Kolleen. When Champagne Became French: Wine and the Making of a National identity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins UP, 2007. Jones, Jennifer Kathleen. Historical Archaeology of Tourism at Port Arthur, Tasmania, 1885-1960. PhD Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 2016. Legaspi, John. “Need a Wicked Gift Idea? Try This Wine Brand’s Customizable Bottle Label with Your Own Mugshot.” Manila Bulletin 18 Nov. 2020. 14 Dec. 2020 <https://mb.com.ph/2020/11/18/need-a-wicked-gift-idea-try-this-wine-brands-customizable-bottle-label-with-your-own-mugshot/>. Lirie. “Augmented Reality Example: Marketing Wine with 19 Crimes.” Boot Camp Digital 13 Mar. 2018. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://bootcampdigital.com/blog/augmented-reality-example-marketing-wine-19-crimes/>. Lyons, Matthew. “19 Crimes Named UK’s Favourite Supermarket Wine.” Harpers 23 Nov. 2020. 14 Dec. 2020 <https://harpers.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/28104/19_Crimes_named_UK_s_favourite_supermarket_wine.html>. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "John O'Reilly, 10th Hussars; Thomas Delany; James Wilson, See James Thomas, Page 16; Martin Hogan, See O'Brien, Same Page (16)." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1866. <https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-9768-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99>. Pearson-Jones, Bridie. “Cheers to That! £9 Bottle of Australian Red Inspired by 19 Crimes That Deported Convicts in 18th Century Tops List as UK’s Favourite Supermarket Wine.” Daily Mail 22 Nov. 2020. 14 Dec. 2020 <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-8933567/19-Crimes-Red-UKs-favourite-supermarket-wine.html>. Reid, Richard. “Object Biography: ‘A Noble Whale Ship and Commander’ – The Catalpa Rescue, April 1876.” National Museum of Australia n.d. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://www.nma.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/2553/NMA_Catalpa.pdf>. Snoots, Jen. “James Wilson.” Find A Grave 2007. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19912884/james-wilson>. Social Playground. “Printing Wine Labels with 19 Crimes.” Social Playground 2019. 14 Dec. 2020 <https://www.socialplayground.com.au/case-studies/maake-19-crimes>. Stone, Zara. “19 Crimes Wine Is an Amazing Example of Adult Targeted Augmented Reality.” Forbes 12 Dec. 2017. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/zarastone/2017/12/12/19-crimes-wine-is-an-amazing-example-of-adult-targeted-augmented-reality/?sh=492a551d47de>. Szentpeteri, Chloe. “Sales and Marketing: Label Design and Printing: Augmented Reality Bringing Bottles to Life: How Treasury Wine Estates Forged a New Era of Wine Label Design.” Australian and New Zealand Grapegrower and Winemaker 654 (2018): 84-85. The Silver Voice. “The Greatest Propaganda Coup in Fenian History.” A Silver Voice From Ireland 2017. 15 Dec. 2020 <https://thesilvervoice.wordpress.com/tag/james-wilson/>. Welch, Michael. “Penal Tourism and the ‘Dream of Order’: Exhibiting Early Penology in Argentina and Australia.” Punishment & Society 14.5 (2012): 584-615. Wise, Jenny, and Lesley McLean. “Pack of Thieves: The Visual Representation of Prisoners and Convicts in Dark Tourist Sites.” The Palgrave Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture. Eds. Marcus K. Harmes, Meredith A. Harmes, and Barbara Harmes. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 555-73.

From the mid-twentieth century, state and public conceptions of deviance and crime control have turned increasingly punitive (Hallett 115; Hutchinson 138). In a Western context, criminal justice has long been retributive, prioritising punishment over rehabilitation (Wenzel et al. 26). Within that context, there has been an increase in punitiveness—understood here as a measure of a punishment’s severity—the intention of which has been to help restore the moral imbalance created by offending while also deterring future crime (Wenzel et al. 26). Entangled with the global spread of neoliberal capitalism, punitiveness has become internationally pervasive to a near-hegemonic degree (Sparks qtd. in Jennings et al. 463; Unnever and Cullen 100).The punitive turn has troubling characteristics. Punitive policies can be expensive, and increased incarceration stresses the criminal justice system and leads to prison overcrowding (Hutchinson 135). Further, punitiveness is not only applied unequally across categories such as class, race, and age (Unnever and Cullen 105-06; Wacquant 212) but the effectiveness of punitive policy relative to its costs is contested (Bouffard et al. 466, 477; Hutchinson 139). Despite this, evidence suggests public demand is driving punitive policymaking, but that demand is only weakly related to crime rates (Jennings et al. 463).While discussion of punitiveness in the public sphere often focuses on measures such as boot camps for young offenders, increased incarceration, and longer prison sentences, punitiveness also has a darker side. Our research analysing discussion taking place on a large, regional, crime-focused online forum reveals a startling degree and intensity of violence directed at offenders and related groups. Members of the discussion forum do propose unsurprising measures such as incarceration and boot camps, but also an array of violent alternatives, including beating, shooting, dismemberment, and conversion into animal food. This article draws on our research to explore why discussion of punitiveness can be so intensely violent.Our research applies thematic analysis to seven discussion threads posted to a large regional online forum focused on crime, made between September and November 2017. One discussion thread per week of the study period was purposively sampled based on relevance to the topic of punitiveness, ultimately yielding 1200 individual comments. Those comments were coded, and the data and codes were reiteratively analysed to produce categories, then basic, organising, and global themes. We intended to uncover themes in group discussion most salient to punitiveness to gain insight into how punitive social interactions unfold and how those who demand punitiveness understand their interactions and experiences of crime. We argue that, in this online forum, the global theme—the most salient concept related to punitiveness—is a “subaltern citizenship”. Here, a clear division emerges from the data, where the group members perceive themselves as “us”—legitimate citizens with all attendant rights—in opposition to an external “them”, a besieging group of diverse, marginalised Others who have illegitimately usurped certain rights and who victimise citizens. Group members often deride the state as too weak and untrustworthy to stop this victimisation. Ironically, the external Others perceived by the group to hold power are themselves genuinely marginalised, though the group does not recognise or see that form of marginalisation as legitimate. In this essay, to preserve the anonymity of the forum and its members, we refer to them only as “the Forum”, located in “the City”, and refrain from direct quotes except for commonly used words or phrases that do not identify individuals.It is also important to note that the research described here deliberately focused on a specific group in a specific space who were concerned about specific groups of offenders. Findings and discussion, and the views on punitiveness described, cannot be generalised to the broader community. Nor do we suggest these views can be considered representative of all Forum members as we present here only a limited analysis of some violent discourse emerging from our research. Likewise, while our discussion often centres on youth and other marginalised groups in the context of offending, we do not intend to imply that offending is a characteristic of these groups.Legitimate CitizenshipCommonly, citizenship is seen as a conferred status denoting full and equal community membership and the rights and responsibilities dictated by community values and norms (Lister 28-29). Western citizenship norms are informed by neoliberal capitalist values: individual responsibility, an obligation to be in paid employment, participation in economic consumption, the sanctity of ownership, and that the principal role of government is to defend the conditions under which these norms can freely thrive (Walsh 861-62). While norms are shaped by laws and policy frameworks, they are not imposed coercively or always deployed consciously. These norms exist as shared behavioural expectations reproduced through social interaction and embodied as “common sense” (Kotzian 59). As much as Western democracies tend to a universalist representation of one, undifferentiated citizenship, it is clear that gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and migrant status all exist in different relationships to citizenship as an identity category. Glass ceilings, stolen generations, same-sex marriage debates, and Australian Government proposals to strip citizenship from certain types of criminal offender all demonstrate that the lived experience of norms surrounding citizenship is profoundly unequal for some (Staeheli et al. 629-30). An individual’s citizenship status, therefore, more accurately exists on a spectrum between legitimacy—full community membership, possessing all rights and living up to all associated responsibilities—and illegitimacy—diminished membership, with contested rights and questionable fulfilment of associated responsibilities—depending on the extent of their deviation from societal norms.Discussing punitiveness, Forum members position themselves as “us”, that is, legitimate citizens. Words such as “we” and “us” are used as synonyms for society and for those whose behaviours are “normal” or “acceptable”. Groups associated with offending are described as “they”, “them”, and their behaviours are “not normal”, “disgusting”, “feral”, and merit the removal of “them” from civilisation, usually to “the middle of nowhere” or “the Outback”. Possession of legitimate citizenship is implicit in assuming authority over what is normal and who should be exiled for failing the standard.Another implicit assumption discernible in the data is that Forum members perceive the “normal we” as good neoliberal citizens. “We” work hard, own homes and cars, and take individual responsibility. There is a strong imputation of welfare dependency among offenders, the poor, and other suspect groups. Offending is presented as something curable by stripping offenders or their parents of welfare payments. Members earn their status as legitimate citizens by adhering to the norms of neoliberal citizenship in opposition to potential offenders to whom the benefits of citizenship are simply doled out.Forum members also frame their citizenship as legitimate by asserting ownership over community spaces and resources. This can be seen in their talking as if they, their sympathetic audience, and “the City” are the same (for example, declaring that “the City” demands harsher punishments for juvenile offenders). There are also calls to “take back” the streets, the City, and Australia from groups associated with offending. That a space can and should be “taken back” implies a pre-existing state of control interrupted by those who have no right to ownership. At its most extreme, the assertion of ownership extends to a conviction that members have the right to position offenders as enemies of the state and request that the army, the ultimate tool of legitimate state violence, be turned against them if governments and the criminal justice system are too “weak” or “soft” to constrain them.The Illegitimate OtherThroughout the data, perceived offenders are spoken of with scorn and hatred. “Perceived offenders” may include offenders and their family, youths, Indigenous people, and people of low socioeconomic status, and these marginalised groups are referenced so interchangeably it can be difficult to determine which is being discussed.Commenting on four “atsi [sic] kids” who assaulted an elderly man, group members asserted “they” should be shot like dogs. The original text gives no antecedents to indicate whether “they” is meant to indicate youths, Indigenous youths, or offenders in general. However, Australia has a colonial history of conflating crime and indigeneity and shooting Indigenous people to preserve white social order (Hill and Dawes 310, 312), a consequence of the tendency of white people to imagine criminals as black (Unnever and Cullen 106). It must be noted that the racial identity of individual Forum members is unknown. This does constitute a limitation in the original study, as identity categories such as race and class intersect and manifest in social interactions in complex ways. However, that does not prevent analysis of the text itself.In the Forum’s discursive space, “they” is used to denote offenders, Indigenous youths, youths, or the poor interchangeably, as if they were all a homogeneous, mutually synonymous “Other”. Collectively, these groups are represented as so generally hopeless that they are imagined as choosing to offend so they will be sentenced to the comforts of “holiday camp” prisons where they can access luxuries otherwise beyond their reach: freedom from addicted parents, medical care, food, television, and computers. A common argument, that crime is an individual choice, is often based on the idea that prison is a better option for the poor than going home. As a result, offending by marginalised offenders is reconstructed as a rational choice or a failure of individual responsibility rather than a consequence of structural inequality.Further, parents of those in suspect populations are blamed for intergenerational maintenance of criminality. They are described as too drunk or drugged to care, too unskilled in parenting due to their presumed dreadful upbringing, or too busy enjoying their welfare payments to meet their responsibility to control their children or teach them the values and skills of citizenship. Comments imply parents probably participated in their children’s crimes even when no evidence suggests that possibility and that some groups simply cannot be trusted to raise disciplined children owing to their inherent moral and economic dissipation. That is, not just offenders but entire groups are deemed illegitimate, willing to enjoy benefits of citizenship such as welfare payments but unwilling or unable to earn them by engaging with the associated responsibilities. This is a frequent argument for why they deserve severely punitive punishment for deviance.However, the construction of the Other as illegitimate in Forum discussions reaches far beyond imagining them as lacking normative skills and values. The violence present on the Forum is startling in its intensity. Prevalent within the data is the reduction of people to insulting nicknames. Terms used to describe people range from the sarcastic— “little darlings”—through standard abusive language such as “bastards”, “shits”, “dickheads”, “lowlifes”, to dehumanising epithets such as “maggots”, “scum”, and “subhuman arsewipes”. Individually and collectively, “they” are relentlessly framed as less than human and even less than animals. They are “mongrels” and “vermin”. In groups, they are “packs”, and they deserve to be “hunted” or just shot from helicopters. They are unworthy of life. “Oxygen thieves” is a repeated epithet, as is the idea that they should be dropped out at sea to drown. Other suggestions for punishment include firing squads, lethal injections, and feeding them to animals.It is difficult to imagine a more definitive denial of legitimacy than discursively stripping individuals and groups of their humanity (their most fundamental status) and their right to existence (their most fundamental right as living beings). The Forum comes perilously close to casting the Other as Agamben’s homo sacer, humans who live in a “state of exception”, subject to the state’s power but excluded from the law’s protection and able to be killed without consequence (Lechte and Newman 524). While it would be hyperbole to push this comparison too far—given Agamben had concentration camps in mind—the state of exception as a means of both excluding a group from society and exercising control over its life does resonate here.Themes Underlying PunitivenessOur findings indicate the theme most salient to punitive discussion is citizenship, rooted in persistent concerns over who is perceived to have it, who is not, and what should be done about those Others whose deviance renders their citizenship less legitimate. Citizenship norms—real or aspirational—of society’s dominant groups constitute the standards by which Forum members judge their experiences of and with crime, perceived offenders, the criminal justice system, and the state. However, Forum members do not claim a straightforward belonging to and sharing in the maintenance of the polity. Analysis of the data suggests Forum members consider their legitimate citizenship tainted by external forces such as politics, untrustworthy authorities and institutions, and the unconstrained excess of the illegitimate Other. That is, they perceive their citizenship to be simultaneously legitimate and undeservedly subaltern.According to Gramsci, subaltern populations are subordinate to dominant groups in political and civil society, lulled by hegemonic norms to cooperate in their own oppression (Green 2). Civil society supports the authority of political society and, in return, political society uses the law and criminal justice system to safeguard civil society’s interests against unruly subalterns (Green 7). Rights and responsibilities of citizenship reside within the mutual relationship between political and civil society. Subalternity, by definition, exists outside this relationship, or with limited access to it.Forum members position themselves as citizens within civil society. They lay emphatic claim to fulfilling their responsibilities as neoliberal citizens. However, they perceive themselves to be denied the commensurate rights: they cannot rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from the illegitimate Other. The courts are “soft”, and prisons are “camps” with “revolving doors”. Authorities pamper offenders while doing nothing to stop them from hurting their victims. Human rights are viewed as an imposition by the UN or as policy flowing from a political sphere lacking integrity and dominated by “do gooders”. Rights are reserved only for offenders. Legitimate citizens no longer even have the right to defend themselves. The perceived result is a transfer of rights from legitimate to illegitimate, from deserving to undeserving. This process elides from view the actual subalterns of Australian society—here, most particularly Indigenous people and the socioeconomically vulnerable—and reconstructs them as oppressors of the dominant group, who are reframed as legitimate citizens unjustly made subaltern.The Violence in PunitivenessOn the Forum, as in the broader world, a sense of “white victimisation”—the view, unsupported by history or evidence, that whites are an oppressed people within a structure systematically doling out advantage to minorities (King 89)—is a recurrent legitimising argument for punitiveness and vigilantism. Amid the shrinking social safety nets and employment precarity of neoliberal capitalism, competitiveness increases, and white identity forms around perceived threats to power and status incurred by “losing out” to minorities (Sacks and Lindholm 131). One 2011 study finds a majority of white US citizens believe themselves subject to more racism than black people (King 89). However, these assumptions of whiteness tend to be spared critical examination because, in white-dominated societies, whiteness is the common-sense norm in opposition to which other racial categories are defined (Petray and Collin 2). When whiteness is made the focus of critical questioning, white identities gain salience and imaginings of the “dark other” and besieged white virtues intensify (Bonilla-Silva et al. 232).With respect to feelings of punitiveness, Unnever and Cullen (118-19) find that the social cause for punitiveness in the United States is hostility towards other races, that harsh punishments, including the death penalty, are demanded and accepted by the dominant group because they are perceived to mostly injure “people they do not like” (Unnever and Cullen 119). Moreover, perception that a racial group is inherently criminal amplifies more generalised prejudices against them and diminishes the capacity of the dominant group to feel empathy for suffering inflicted upon them by the criminal justice system (Unnever and Cullen 120).While our analysis of the Forum supports these findings where they touch on crimes committed by Indigenous people, they invite a question. Why, where race is not a factor, do youths and the socioeconomically disadvantaged also inspire intensely violent punitiveness as described above? We argue that the answer relates to status. From this perspective, race becomes one of several categories of differentiation from legitimate citizenship through an ascription of low status.Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron (29) contend punitiveness, with respect to specific offences, varies according to the symbolic meaning the offence holds for the observer. Crimes understood as a transgression against status or power inspire a need for “revenge, punishment, and stigmatisation” (Wenzel et al. 41) and justify an increase in the punitiveness required (Wenzel et al. 29, 34). This is particularly true where an offence is deemed to make someone unfit for community membership, such that severe punishment serves as a symbolic marker of exile and a reaffirmation for the community of the violated values and norms (Wenzel et al. 41). Indeed, as noted, Forum posts regularly call for offenders to be removed from society, exiled to the outback, or shipped beyond Australia’s territorial waters.Further, Forum members’ perception of subaltern citizenship, with its assumption of legitimate citizenship as being threatened by undeserving Others, makes them view crime as implicitly a matter of status transgression. This is intensified by perception that the political sphere and criminal justice system are failing legitimate citizens, refusing even to let them defend themselves. Virulent name-calling and comparisons to animals can be understood as attempts by the group to symbolically curtail the undeservedly higher status granted to offenders by weak governments and courts. More violent demands for punishment symbolically remove offenders from citizenship, reaffirm citizen values, and vent anger at a political and criminal justice system deemed complicit, through weakness, in reducing legitimate citizens to subaltern citizens.ConclusionsIn this essay, we highlight the extreme violence we found in our analysis of an extensive online crime forum in a regional Australian city. We explore some explanations for violent public punitiveness, highlighting how members identify themselves as subaltern citizens in a battle against undeserving Others, with no support from a weak state. This analysis centres community norms and a problematic conception of citizenship as drivers of both public punitiveness and dissatisfaction with crime control policy and the criminal justice system. We highlight a real dissonance between community needs and public policy that may undermine effective policymaking. That is, evidence-based crime control policies, successful crime prevention initiatives, and falling crime rates may not increase public satisfaction with how crime is dealt with if policymakers pursue those measures without regard for how citizens experience the process.While studies such as that by Wenzel, Okimoto, and Cameron identify differences in status between legitimate citizens and offenders as amplifiers of punitiveness, we suggest the amplification may be mediated by the status relationship between legitimate citizens and authority figures within legitimate society. The offender and their crime may not contribute as much to the public’s outrage as commonly assumed. Instead, public punitiveness may predominantly arise from the perception that the political sphere, media, and criminal justice system respond to citizens’ experience of crime in ways that devalue the status of legitimate citizens. At least in the context of this regional city, this points to something other than successful crime control being integral to building more effective and satisfactory crime control policy: in this case, the need to rebuild trust between citizens and authority groups.ReferencesBonilla-Silva, Eduardo, Carla Goar, and David G. 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