ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the theoretical explanations of national identity before exploring how debates on national identity feature in contemporary Australia. A useful way to consider in greater depth the issue of national identity is to draw upon the work of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1992). Hall identifies five key elements of discourses that inform a sense of national identity. Two influential historians who have also written on the way in which national identity is formed are Linda Colley and Eric Hobsbawm. For Park and Burgess, an immigrant's sense of their former national identity might weaken over time, and this is especially so for the children of immigrants, but eventually a concomitant attachment to the new society would also start to cohere. In a controversial set of essays, Hage contends that Australian society is predicated on notions of 'whiteness' that exclude other races.
