A Good Life Human rights and encounters with modernity A Good Life Human rights and encounters with modernity Mary Edmunds Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Edmunds, Mary, 1943- author. Title: A good life : human rights and encounters with modernity / Mary Edmunds. ISBN: 9781922144669 (paperback) 9781922144676 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Human beings--Social conditions--20th century. Human beings--Social conditions--21st century. Human Rights. Ethnology--Australia. Ethnology--Thailand. Ethnology--Spain. Social change. Dewey Number: 909.82 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover image: Photograph of Amanda Lempriere, Strathburn Station, Cape York, by Karen Leeman (nee Lempriere), 1998 Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2013 ANU E Press Contents Foreword . vii Acknowledgments . ix Notes on names and spellings . xi List of maps . xiii Introduction Introduction . 3 1 . Culture, morality, modernity, and the transformation of social imaginaries . 9 Part I. Tradition and transformation in a non-colonised state: Thailand 2 . Continuities and crisis . 39 3 . Dictatorship and democracy: Competing social imaginaries . 71 Part II. Tradition and transformation in a non-colonised state: Spain 4 . Old orders and new: The nuns as historical actors . 105 5 . ‘Quiero ser protagonista de mi vida’: ‘I want to be the main actor in my own life’ . 131 Part III. Colonised people and the nation-state: Aboriginal Australia 6 . Ordinary people enduring extraordinary things . 159 7 . A winnin’ battle . 191 Part IV. Modernity and human rights 8 . Durban 2001, the United Nations World Conference against Racism . 221 9 . Human rights and the promise of a good life . 249 References . 267 Index . 289 v Foreword This is a book about hope, the hope that we have ways to live together in a rapidly changing world which will enable us to ‘live a good life in the modern world’. It goes beyond hope and suggests how we may do this. The how is a critical question at a time when rapid change is impacting on all societies. What will be the human outcomes of political turmoil in the Middle East and elsewhere? How will lives and societies be affected by the bewildering pace of economic change in places as disparate as China and the Pilbara region of Western Australia? How will we live together as the gap widens between those who rise in the new economies and those who through accident of birth, capacity or opportunities are unable to benefit? How will we manage the social impact of new media and invasive technologies that render privacy a distant memory? How do we live peacefully in a world where the race is to the swift and the appurtenances to modern life are so widely displayed and so unevenly available? How do we have a good society for all in the context of rising fundamentalism threatening violence and new despotisms? It is easy and even rational to be pessimistic when the race is to the swift, the strong overwhelm the weak, and unreason prevails. The author draws her hope from her work as an anthropologist, staying true to her belief that ‘examining the content and context of people’s everyday lives’ is at the heart of that discipline. Across 30 years, she draws on the experiences of three widely different groups caught up in very different ways in ‘sweeping structural changes wrought by modernisation’, each of whom has been able to craft their own answers to the questions she poses: what does it mean to be good and do good? What does it mean to have a good life? What sort of society do I want in order to have a good life? In examining the disparate lives and circumstances of Spanish nuns affected by the Second Vatican Council, Thai factory workers at a time of political upheaval, and Aboriginal people in the Pilbara at a time of astounding economic and hence physical change, and their respective responses to change, a pattern emerges. The past cannot continue as it was. Modernity intrudes and is imposed in ways incompatible with the past. At the same time, the past as it was can have a role in shaping the future and be present in it in ways that are respectful of the past. A new order can emerge that enables each potentially conflicting element to construct a new future, which accords with autochthonous notions of what is a good life and a good society. And the enabling factor for all this to happen is a respect for human rights. vii A Good Life: Human rights and encounters with modernity It might be otherwise expressed by those who are averse to the elevation of rights over responsibilities: that human beings in any society have the capacity to negotiate change and achieve ultimate harmony about how lives will be lived, as long as the position of each element in that society is accorded respect. Just call on everyone to act responsibly. But, as any practitioner who has worked at the interface between the powerful and the powerless knows, the reality is that respect can never be guaranteed by goodwill alone. In each of the studies presented an element of goodwill is present and acknowledged but it is difficult to imagine that the Thai factory workers could have organised as they did without the political and legal reforms of the day. In the same way, the nuns were faced with change by the Vatican Council, which then provided a legal framework for negotiating the tensions between modernity and earlier traditions. In the Pilbara, vague goodwill was overtaken by the emergence of native title, which at a minimum ensured that Aboriginals had a negotiating, rather than the earlier supplicant position. Early in the life of the National Native Title Tribunal a seminar was held at the University of Western Australia on agreement-making between Indigenous people and, inter alia, mining companies. One of the speakers was a distinguished academic from the United States experienced in negotiations between Native Americans and miners. He gave some splendid best-practice examples of beneficial agreements. A shiny-eyed Australian, moved by these examples, asked why it was that miners in the United States were so positive as against the then generally negative attitude of prominent companies in Australia. His reply was that he got his best results from miners in the States by hitting them over the head with a piece of four-by-two timber. The recognition of native title in Australia, which gave Aboriginal people a legally backed place at the negotiating table, was the metaphorical piece of timber that transformed the mining interest into a leader in pursuing agreed rather than imposed outcomes. For all of us who are involved in working with those who are threatened or ill served by externally imposed change this book is an important reminder that reasoned and reasonable outcomes are most likely where the rights of all parties are real and respected. We are reminded that respect for human rights is not some abstract academic folly but rather the best guarantee that we can each have an opportunity to create a society that works for us and enables us, and those with whom we share our place, to enjoy a good life. Hon. Fred Chaney AO October 2012 viii Acknowledgments When I took up my appointment at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at The Australian National University in 2003,1 I thought I had died and gone to heaven. In times of great pressure on universities to adopt managerialist assumptions and organisation, not just to funding, but also to academic work, the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research was a haven of intellectual excitement and reflective space. I thank Professor Howard Morphy and Dr Mandy Thomas for making my time there possible, and my colleagues and postdoctoral students for challenging and enriching my intellectual imagination. In particular, Dr Monique Skidmore stretched my thinking by being much more academically modern than I, and suggesting the possibility that my original more modest proposal could usefully encompass the sweep of my previous research. This book is the result. In the process, I also received invaluable support from the Centre’s Executive Director, Anne-Maree O’Brien, and her administrative colleagues, especially Alan Wyburn and Suzanne Groves. Glenn Schultz and Anna Foxcroft provided timely and always helpful technical support. My thanks go also to the many people with whom I have shared my research journey over the past 30 years. My former husband, Brendan Doran, was the reason that I found myself in Bangkok and Madrid; his support was strong and unstinting, even in the face of some disapproval from his diplomatic superiors. Without that support, I would have found it much more difficult to turn his overseas postings into research projects of my own. The late Professor Anthony Forge accepted my unorthodox proposals to undertake, first a Master’s degree and then a PhD, while on overseas postings, and assisted me in negotiating the necessary approvals from The Australian National University. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies—now the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies—provided me with the opportunity to carry out the first Roebourne research. I have engaged in an ongoing dialogue with Diane Smith since we were undergraduates together at the University of Queensland; I value greatly her extensive knowledge and experience, anthropological and practical, and always deep insight.