Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology

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Overview
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
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Table of Contents

Overview

The emergence of anthropology in Britain coincided with the publication of Darwin's book on the origin of species. In the context of inescapable questions about the natural history of our own species, Australian Aborigines were assigned the role of exemplars par excellence of beginnings and early human forms. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, European scholars bent on discovering the origins of social institutions began a rush on the Australian material that lasted well into the present century. The Aborigines have consequently featured as a crucial case-study for generations of social theorists, including Tylor, Frazer, Durkheim and Freud. Arguments about Aborigines reviews a range of controversies (some still alive) that played an important role in the formative period of British social anthropology. The chapters cover family life, male/female relationships, conception beliefs, the mother-in-law taboo, various aspects of religion and ritual, political organization, and land rights: all subjects that have been matters of lively interest and long-running research. Along the way, the study traces changes in Aboriginal circumstances and practices and notes the ways in which these changes affected the scholarly debate.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"In our native titles era, lawyers, historians and interested non-professionals would find it useful to learn more of anthropologists' intellectual engagements with Aboriginal people over the past century or so. This important book is a good place to start; it is an achievement worthy of a distinguished tribal elder." Bruce Rigsby, Australian Journal of Politics and History

"Reading each of these chapters as separate essays provides one with a brilliant and critical commentary on the history of anthropological thought....Reading the essays in their totality is fascinating. In many ways they read like a mystery of a detective story where the plot is set in the 1850's, subplots and mini-narratives are added on and eventually the 'scientism' of social anthropology displaces the misnomers of the nineteenth century as well as the metaphysics of Aboriginal thought and interpretation." Aram Yengoyan, American Anthropologist

"Reading the essays in their totality is fascinating. In many ways they read like mystery or detective stories in which the plots are set in the 1850's, subplots and mininarratives are added on, and eventually the scientism of social anthropology displaces the misnomers of the 19th century as well as the metaphysics of Aboriginal thought and interpretation. Each chapter drew me intellectually and inquisitively to the ideas and issues espoused prior to 1910." Aram A. Yengoyan, American Anthropologist

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521460088
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 6/28/1996
Pages: 225
Product dimensions: 5.98 (w) x 8.98 (h) x 0.55 (d)

	List of illustrations
	Preface
	Acknowledgments
1	Prologue	1
2	Real estates and phantom hordes	13
3	Group marriage	36
4	The woman question	57
5	People without politics	78
6	High gods	100
7	Conception and misconception	120
8	Dangerous mothers-in-law and disfigured sisters	142
9	Initiation: the case of the cheeky yam	165
10	Epilogue	183
	Notes	187
	References	207
	Index	222

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