Indigenous affairs

![CDATA[Should the goals of Indigenous affairs policy be to achieve equality of socioeconomic status or to facilitate choice and self-determination? The former tends to imply integration and urban migration, while the latter may require adherence to different life worlds and resistance to transformation. In Australia, different social science disciplines have framed this ‘problem’ at the very heart of Indigenous affairs policy in different ways and correspondingly have put forward different policy proposals. For instance, whereas anthropology dwells on cultural difference and presumes that difference to be a social good, economics dwells on socioeconomic inequality and presumes that difference to be the legacy of historic exclusion, racism and neglect. One history of the policy-relevant social sciences can be told as a playing out of the competition between these two discourses of difference.]]