The Public Habitus of Kevin Rudd

Canberra.
The next speaker at ANZCA 2010 is Geoffrey Craig, whose focus is on the public image of (now former) Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Rudd has been widely criticised for an often somewhat stilted public persona. This ties into Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the permanent manners of being, seeing, acting and thinking, and the schemes of perception, conception, and action. These are also situated in fields of action which bestow individuals with authority and power once they understand and negotiate the norms and rules of the specific game.

In the political field, politicians' discourses are constrained by an internal relational logic, defined by the values of the opponents, and by the ability of politicians to appeal to the values of individuals outside the political field. This is further complicated by the internal logics and dynamics of journalism as a form of mediation between politicians and the public; media events come to be political events in their own right, and mediatised politics comes to reshape the political field overall. The political field is a site of representational labour and struggle - enacted in the course of communicative interaction (which Bourdieu tends to overlook).

Geoffrey applies these observations to interviews with Kevin Rudd on Insiders (by Barrie Cassidy) and the 7.30 Report (by Kerry O'Brien). The different settings and institutional placements of these two ABC programmes affect how these interviews played out, of course; as does the underlying public service nature of the broadcaster itself, of course. The role, personal identity, and symbolic weight of Cassidy and O'Brien as journalists and interviewers also plays a role here.

In both interviews, Rudd's habitus is a central site of struggle; O'Brien asks specifically about damage to 'brand Rudd', focussing on the individual, while in response Rudd finally locates his difficulties in the political field, highlighting the overall political process. Rudd's attempt is to promote his public persona as leader of the government rather than highlight his personal brand.

Both interviews, indeed, are explicitly about the management of the political field, both internally and in relation to other fields (media, journalism); in discussing the demotion of Minister Peter Garrett, for example, Rudd is downplaying his own agency and speaks in passive voice about this action, while in an interview about the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate summit the interviewer and other journalists are positioned as onlookers onto the political field proper.

Frequently, Rudd employs an action/verbal binary to undermine the authority of the journalistic field and to establish a close and direct association with the public. Through this process, mediation itself becomes the site of struggle between different fields. Rudd acknowleges the validity of criticisms of the government by the public in order to reestablish favour with the electorate, and he frequently uses colourful and colloquial language in doing so.

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