Anthropology in the Postmodern Landscape: The Importance of Cultural Brokers and Their Trade

This paper proposes that an anthropology of postmodern Australia should accord some priority to the analysis of cultural brokerage. In the first instance, cultural brokers are simply defined as those who trade in popular culture at a national/international level. They are located between the core areas of global production on the one hand and semi‐peripheral areas of popular consumption on the other. But brokers do much more than merely trade in culture. They define its meaning, they establish its significance in the overall order of things, they endow it with particular kinds of power. These points are briefly illustrated with reference to the Australian Grand Prix.