R.W. Connell is unquestionably the most intellectually ambitious Australian socialist. To call him a prodigious synthesiser is an insult, yet his mind is hospitable to an amazing variety of theoretical influences and thoroughly digested bodies of empirical data. Since his seminal essay ‘Images of Australia’(l968) he has set out to upgrade radically Australian sociology. While his assumptions are often contested, and his achievements are sometimes regarded as trite or tautologous, there is no doubt that he has originated the most consistent and theoretically sophisticated analysis of Australian society.