Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson Edited by Yasmine Musharbash & Marcus Barber THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E PRESS E PRESS 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/ethnography_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Musharbash, Yasmine. Title: Ethnography and the production of anthropological knowledge: essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson/ Yasmine Musharbash & Marcus Barber. ISBN: 9781921666971 (eBook) 9781921666964 (pbk.) Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Peterson, Nicolas, 1941- Anthropology--Australia. Festschriften--Australia. Other Authors/Contributors: Peterson, Nicolas, 1941- Barber, Marcus. Dewey Number: 301.0994 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 design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: Still from Derby Tjampitjimpa talks to Nick Peterson. A conversation with a Warlpiri man, filmed by R. Sandall (1972), courtesy of AIATSIS. Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2011 ANU E Press Contents List of Figures and Tables . vii Acknowledgments . ix Contributors . xi Foreword . xvii Fred Myers 1 . Nic’s Gift: Turning ethnographic data into knowledge . 1 Yasmine Musharbash Part I. Ritual, Material Culture, Land and Ecology 2 . Splitting the Atom of Kinship: Towards an understanding of the symbolic economy of the Warlpiri fire ceremony . 17 John Morton 3 . The ‘Expanding Domain’ of Warlpiri Initiation Rituals . 39 Georgia Curran 4 . Who Owns the ‘De-Aboriginalised’ Past? Ethnography meets photography: a case study of Bundjalung Pentecostalism . 51 Akiko Ono 5 . Thomson’s Spears: Innovation and change in eastern Arnhem Land projectile technology . 69 Harry Allen 6 . ‘Nothing Ever Changes’: Historical ecology, causality and climate change in Arnhem Land, Australia . 89 Marcus Barber 7 . The Language of Property: Analyses of Yolngu relations to country . 101 Ian Keen v Part II. Demand Sharing, the Moral Domestic Economy, Policy and Applied Anthropology 8 . From Applied Anthropology to an Anthropology of Engagement: Japanese anthropology and Australianist studies . 123 Sachiko Kubota 9 . Community Development as Fantasy? A case study of contemporary Maori society . 133 Toon van Meijl 10 . Give or Take: A comparative analysis of demand sharing among the Menraq and Semai of Malaysia . 147 Alberto Gomes 11 . Owning Your People: Sustaining relatedness and identity in a South Coast Aboriginal community . 159 Natalie Kwok 12 . Demand Sharing, Nutrition and Warlpiri Health: The social and economic strategies of food choice . 175 Eirik Saethre 13 . A Genealogy of ‘Demand Sharing’: From pure anthropology to public policy . 187 Jon Altman 14 . Policy Alchemy and the Magical Transformation of Aboriginal Society . 201 David F. Martin Afterword: Peterson’s Impartye—A short appreciation . 217 Diane Austin-Broos Appendix 1 — Graduate students supervised by Professor Peterson . 223 Appendix 2 — Nicolas Peterson: Collated publications, reports and films . 227 vi Index . 239 List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 2.1 Ceremonial interaction between ‘owners’ and ‘managers’ in the fire ceremony Figure 2.2 The basic properties of four sections Figure 2.3 A central Australian atom of kinship Figure 2.4 Matrifilial and patrifilial interests in bestowal Figure 4.1 Open-air meeting at Cabbage Tree Island, ca. 1955 Figure 4.2 Night service at the Tabulam convention, 1955 Figure 4.3 Organisers of the Tabulam convention, 1955 Figure 4.4 Tents hired to accommodate visitors to the Tabulam convention, 1955 Figure 4.5 Meal break at a hall at the Tabulam convention, 1955 Figure 5.1 Spears from different areas of Arnhem Land in the Thomson collection Figure 5.2 Types of spears in the Thomson collection, morphological/ functional categories Figure 5.3 Distribution of dart-like spears with plain hardwood heads, number against mass, calculated in 20 g intervals, 0–400 g Tables Table 3.1 Generational moieties and their roles Table 5.1 Number, percentage and metrical characteristics of spear types in the Thomson Collection (MV) vii Ethnography and the Production and Anthropological Knowledge Table 5.2 Characteristics of composite spears with hardwood heads, including blade-like heads, divided into different shaft types Table 5.3 Woody species used in spear manufacture Table 5.4 Spear shaft types in terms of spearheads as a percentage of overall spear types viii Acknowledgments The editors thank Ros Peterson for much appreciated background work and splendid hospitality; Katarina Ferro at the University of Sydney for research assistance; Shannan Dodson at AIATSIS for help with finding the cover image; the following people at Yuendumu for assisting with the permission granting process: Thomas Jangala Rice, Simon Japangardi Fisher, Susan Locke and Drew Anderson; Hilary Bek at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, The Australian National University, for providing answers to a hundred questions over the review period; Jan Borrie for her copyediting services; and Professor Françoise Dussart for getting the ball rolling. Yasmine Musharbash acknowledges the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney’s generosity in providing her with a start-up and research assistance funds, which she could draw upon for this volume. We would like to acknowledge the large number of apologies we received by panel members and former students who would very much have liked to contribute to this volume but for one reason or another (time constraints in the main), unfortunately, could not do so. It reflects the degree of esteem in which Nicolas Peterson is held that there were originally close to 30 contributions, and, whilst we were sorry to see some original and refreshing contributions not reach submission stage, it did make the prompt production of the volume somewhat easier to achieve. ix Contributors Harry Allen Harry Allen is an Australian-trained archaeologist who has taught for many years in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he is currently Associate Professor of Archaeology. He has carried out archaeological fieldwork in southern and northern Australia and New Zealand with a particular emphasis on the manner in which history, material culture, archaeology and Indigenous knowledge can be combined to produce a unique understanding of the past. His studies of Australian Aboriginal material culture are centred on the Donald Thomson collection at the Melbourne Museum, a branch of Museum Victoria, where he is an Honorary Associate. He is also a Research Associate in the Archaeology Program, School of Historical and European Studies, at La Trobe University. Jon Altman Jon Altman is a New Zealand-trained economist who turned to anthropology in 1978 after meeting Nic Peterson in 1977. He completed a PhD in Anthropology in 1982, working with Kuninjku people in western Arnhem Land, with Nic as his primary supervisor; and has been at The Australian National University ever since—first as a research fellow and then, from 1990 to 2010, as inaugural Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR). In 2008, Professor Altman was awarded an Australian Research Council Australian Professorial Fellowship and he is now a research professor at CAEPR focusing his work on Aboriginal hybrid economies and development futures in remote Australia. His books include Hunter-Gatherers Today (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1987) and Observing the Economy (with C. Gregory, Routledge, 1989), and he has recently co-edited (both with Melinda Hinkson) Coercive Reconciliation—Stabilise, Normalise, Exit Aboriginal Australia (Arena, 2007) and Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia (UNSW Press, 2010). Diane Austin-Broos Diane Austin-Broos is Professor Emeritus at Sydney University. She worked in the Caribbean for 18 years prior to beginning research in central Australia in 1989. She retains a keen interest in both fields, has published widely, and contributes regularly to invited sessions of the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. Recent publications include Arrernte xi Ethnography and the Production and Anthropological Knowledge Present, Arrernte Past: Invasion, Violence and Imagination in Indigenous Central Australia (University of Chicago Press, 2009) and ‘Quarantining violence: how anthropology does it’ in J. Altman and M. Hinkson (eds) Culture Crisis: Anthropology and Politics in Aboriginal Australia (UNSW Press, 2010). A forthcoming book discusses the politics of debate about remote Aboriginal Australia. Marcus Barber Marcus Barber studied marine biology and the history and philosophy of science before commencing a PhD in Anthropology at The Australian National University. Nicolas Peterson was his primary supervisor, and Marcus Barber’s doctoral research focused on Indigenous relationships to water and the marine environment in remote Arnhem Land. He assisted with the conduct of the Blue Mud Bay case, which led to changes in the sea tenure regime in the Northern Territory. Following his PhD, Marcus