The Crown in Australia: An anthropological study of a constitutional symbol

Abstract

The Crown is the foundation of Australia’s constitutional order, and its representations are common throughout society, yet it is also curiously unrecognised and taken for granted. Even within the elite community of Australians whose work brings them into direct contact with the Crown – who are responsible for curating or representing it, or enacting its agency – many argue that it is insignificant, ‘merely symbolic’, or ornamental to actual political power. Its efficacy is minimised, and its presence unremarked. Over the past twenty years, however, the Crown has become embroiled in Australia’s vigorous, sometimes bitter, debate over constitutional reform, even while it evades direct interrogation. Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Australia, including interviews and participant observation, I set out to explore how Australians view the Crown and its constitutional role. I found that people typically think of it in terms of the Queen, rather than the offices of government or state. This leads me to ask: How is the Crown represented in Australia? Is it a unifying entity? To what extent has the Crown been indigenised, and in what ways does it still signal colonialism? How does the Crown interact with other symbols of national identity and conflict? If the Crown is a façade, what does it conceal? How is it used by actors in the constitutional reform debate? With that deliberation already well advanced, will the inevitable death of the popular Queen mean a constitutional reordering in Australia? To analyse the Crown’s diverse meanings I draw on theories of symbolism, power and ritual. Using Kantorowicz’s thesis of the king’s two bodies, I also draw out the significance of the distinction between the Crown as a person (Elizabeth Windsor) and the Crown as a set of institutions, or body politic (the Crown in right of the Commonwealth of Australia). The figures of the Crown-as-person and the Crown-as-office come together and pull apart in different situations and contexts in Australian life. I argue that, while the office of the Crown is concerned with relatively narrow legal issues around land, it remains primarily associated with Queen Elizabeth II and the British monarchy rather than with its institutional meanings. This places a delicate constitutional equilibrium at risk. I make my case by examining how the Crown conflates notions of symbolism, affect, mystique, charisma, kinship, and transcendence with issues of political power, authority, legitimacy, sovereignty, and nationalism. These political abstractions, like constitutional monarchy itself, must be symbolised so that people can imagine, and be moved to love – or hate – them. Keywords: Political symbol, Crown, Australia, constitutional reform, elites, constitutional monarchy, royalty, charisma, king’s two bodies, political anthropology, ethnography