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Anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner is perhaps most well known for
coining the phrase the 'great Australian silence', addressing the
culture of denial or 'conscious forgetting' regarding the history
Australia since European arrival.This reprint of On Aboriginal
Religion pays tribute to the ongoing relevance of Stanner's work.
His research into Aboriginal religion was first published as a
series of articles in the journal Oceania between 1959 and 1963. In
1963 the articles were published as the collection in as Oceania
Monograph 11, which was later reprinted as a facsimile edition with
introductory sections by Francesca Merlan and Les Hiatt (1989).As
Stanner writes in his introduction to the 1963 collection, 'I
thought I should take Aboriginal religion as significant in its own
right and make it the primary subject of study, rather than study
it, as was done so often in the past, mainly to discover the extent
to which it expressed or reflected facts and preoccupations of the
social order'. It is this dedication to recording the beliefs and
observing the practice of Aboriginal religion that has made this
monograph so important.
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.
In the debates which followed the publication of Darwin's book on
the origin of species, Australian Aborigines were used as the ideal
exemplars of early human forms by European scholars bent on
discovering the origins of social institutions. The Aborigines have
consequently featured as the crucial case-study for generations of
social theorists, including Tylor, Frazer, Durkheim and Freud.
Arguments about Aborigines reviews a range of controversies such as
family life, religion and ritual, and land rights, which marked the
formative period of British social anthropology. Professor Hiatt
also examines how changes in Aboriginal practices have affected
scholarly debate. This elegant 1996 book will provide a valuable
introduction to aboriginal ethnography for students, scholars and
the general reader. It is also a shrewd and stimulating history of
the great debates of anthropology, seen through the prism of
Aboriginal studies.
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