In this short paper, I want to consider the ways in which Stuart Cunningham's focus on work that was policy-relevant and could speak to industry led him to an ambivalent relationship with the discipline of economics. Rejecting the binary opposition between alleged ‘neoliberal’ economics and the cultural sphere as a site of unbridled moral good, Cunningham sought to both engage with and critique the dominant paradigms of economics, and their influence in Australian public policy. In doing so, his work is strongly influenced by Ian Hunter's argument that scholarly work motivated by civically minded engagements with matters of public concern needed to go beyond moral grandstanding and engage critically with the institutional complexities of social and cultural governance.
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