Hugh Mackay was in conversation with Alex Sloan on Hugh's new book, The Kindness Revolution. How we can restore hope, rebuild trust and inspire optimism. Hugh Mackay encourages us to find the best in ourselves and in our society in both good and troubled times.

Revolutions never start at the top. If we dare to dream of a more loving country - kinder, more compassionate, more cooperative, more respectful, more inclusive, more egalitarian, more harmonious, less cynical - there's only one way to start turning that dream into a reality: each of us must live as if this is already that country.

Following the ravages of 2020's bushfires and pandemic on our mental and emotional health and on the economy, Hugh Mackay reflects on the challenges we faced during that year of upheaval and the questions many of us have asked. What really matters to me? Am I living the kind of life I want? What sort of society do I want us to become?

Urging us not to let those questions go, and pointing to our inspiring displays of kindness and consideration, our personal sacrifices for the common good and our heightened appreciation of the value of local neighbourhoods and communities, he asks in turn: 'Could we become renowned as a loving country, rather than simply a "lucky" one?'

Absorbing, wise and inspiring, The Kindness Revolution is a distillation of Hugh Mackay's life's work. Written for our times, this truly remarkable book shows how crises and catastrophes often turn out to be the making of us.

Hugh Mackay AO is a social psychologist, and the author of 22 books, including eight novels. His non-fiction writing covers social analysis, psychology, communication and ethics. He has had a 60-year career in social research, and was also a weekly newspaper columnist for twenty-five years. He is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and the Royal Society of New South Wales, has been awarded honorary doctorates by five Australian universities. Hugh is an Honorary Professor at the ANU Research School of Psychology.

Alex Sloan AM, the 2017 Canberra Citizen of the Year, is a regular conversationalist for ANU Meet the Author events.

Professor Frank Bongiorno AM, Head of the ANU School of History and author of award-winning books The Sex Lives of Australians: A History and The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia, will deliver the vote of thanks.

In conversation with Hugh Mackay

Claiming the body as property has been represented as the best way to ensure control over our own choices and lives; a crucial way of asserting our rights to bodily integrity; and an important means of protection against the abuse of our bodily materials by today's biotechnology companies. Refusing to see our bodies as property, it is argued, reflects either a religious view of the body as belonging to God, or a misguided sentimentalism that blocks clear thinking about matters such as prostitution, surrogate motherhood, and the sale of spare kidneys. Since we trade in our bodies whenever we work for a wage, there is no reason to view markets in sex or reproduction as a problem.

Drawing on feminist arguments about the self as embodied, I argue that it is indeed a problem to think of the body as property, and a problem to view the body as a marketable substance. My minimal claim is that we do not need to assert property in the body in order to express what we mainly care about when we say ‘it’s my body’, which is bodily integrity. My maximal claim is that our ability to think of others as our equals is very much bound up with our bodies. The point at which some people’s bodies become the means to patch up the bodies of others – most dramatically, in the use of one person’s body parts to save or enhance the body of another – is therefore deeply threatening to equality.

About the presenter:

Currently a visitor to RSSS at ANU, Anne Phillips is Professor of Political and Gender Theory in the LSE Gender Institute and the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government and was Director of the LSE Gender Institute until September 2004. She is a leading figure in feminist political theory, and writes on issues of bodies and property, democracy and representation, equality, multiculturalism, and difference. Much of her work can be read as challenging the narrowness of contemporary liberal theory. In 1992, she was co-winner of the American Political Science Association's Victoria Schuck Award for Best Book on Women and Politics published in 1991 (awarded for Engendering Democracy). She was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of Aalborg in 1999; was appointed Adjunct Professor in the Political Science Programme of the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 2002-6; and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. In 2008, she received a Special Recognition Award from the Political Studies Association, UK, for her contribution to Political Studies. In 2012, she was awarded the title Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science.


Our bodies, whose property?

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Our bodies, whose property?

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