Globalistion and the Genesis of Values Diane Austin-Broos	1-18

This talk was delivered as an Inaugural Lecture in Anthropology at the University of Sydney on the evening of August 22, 2001. It was sponsored by the Arts Association of the University of Sydney. In it I present an overview of my career, noting the consistencies between my work in philosophy and in anthropology, and between what may appear as two quite disparate field sites, urban Jamaica and Central Australia. A method that involves a sociology of value, and an historical anthropology, brings these research areas into interesting relations, as does a growing concern with women’s roles in the course of change.

Surrender to the Market: Thoughts on Anthropology, The Body Shop, and Intellectuals Rohan Bastin	19-38

The direction of anthropology over the last century is tied to the shifts from colonialism to postcolonialism and from modernism to postmodernism. These shifts have seen the thoroughgoing incorporation of the world population into the economic, political and juridical domain established through the last throes of colonialism and the transmutations of capitalism and the State. Anthropology, a discipline whose history shows close and regular links with colonial government, also transforms in association with the world it describes and partly creates. Two dominant trends in contemporary anthropology—applied consultancy and historicist self-reflexivity—are compared for the ways they represent the transmutation, which is characterised, following Fredric Jameson as ‘the surrender to the market’. In this way it is asserted that just as the discipline had hitherto revealed its links to colonialism, it now reveals its links to globalisation through a form of commodified self-obsession. To illustrate this quality the paper considers the global chain of cosmetics stores, The Body Shop, as an example of ‘late capitalism’ and the moral juridical framework of globalisation. Finally, it treats these developments in anthropology as more generally affecting intellectuals and knowledge production through the promotion of intellectual ‘silence’.

Multiculturalism, Latin America and ‘Indigeneity’ in Australia Erez Cohen	39-52

What are the relations between the discourse of ‘multiculturalism’ and that of ‘Indigeneity’ in Australia? In problematising these relations this paper explores the affiliations that Latin American migrants and political refugees living in Adelaide have with the notion of ‘Indigeneity’. For some Latin Americans affiliations with the struggle of Aboriginal people and Indigeneity is a product of strong political identification with the political left and the struggle for human rights in their countries of origin. At the same time references to Latin Americans’ ‘Indigeneity’ are often evoked within Australian multicultural settings and performances that promote ‘cultural diversity’ and are consumed by White Australians for their exotic otherness and as forms of cultural enrichment. Such representations work to marginalise further the migrants (and the ‘indigenous’) into a cultural sphere which marks them as the tolerated ethnic ‘Other’.

Deep Identity, Shallow Time: Sustaining a Future in Victorian Fishing Communities Monica Minnegal, Tanya J. King, Roger Just and Peter D. Dwyer	53-71

Like commercial fishers everywhere, it seems, those living in coastal communities of Victoria perceive themselves to be under threat from recreational fishers, environmentalists, imposed management regimes, and modernisation and globalisation of the industry. In responding to these threats they appeal to conventional props of tradition – to continuity in genealogical time, affiliation with place and specialised knowledge and practice. This seems paradoxical, given that most established fishers in Victoria are first or second generation members of an industry that, through its 150 year history, has been characterised by innovation and mobility. We argue that fisher identity is grounded primarily in engagement with an environment that is not familiar to outsiders and that the apparent paradox arises because, in contexts of threat, fishers like other political actors reshape strongly felt identity as tradition.

The Imagined Child: Ambiguity and Agency in Australian Intercountry Adoption Jon Telfer	72-96

The adoption by Australian couples of children from 'overseas' involves elaborate processes of bureaucratic assessment, approval and 'parent education'. This paper explores adults' notions of 'child'(ren) from 'overseas', which help shape and constitute such social processes, not only with couples seeking to adopt, but also with those cultural brokers who assess, regulate and 'educate' couples pursuing adoption, such as social workers and psychologists. The ways in which the adoptive 'child' is imagined and anticipated by counsellors and would-be parents alike are explored through ethnographic data from South Australia. However, the proclivities of prospective adoptive parents to imagine their child-to-be are attenuated by certain social knowledge in relation to countries of origin. This leads to an exploration of ambiguities and tensions between the intercountry adoptive child as a tabula rasa and as a culturally and historically constituted person. The significance of ambiguities and contradictions for the child's agency and identities is highlighted, within the context of certain social policies around adoption. The chronological age of the child at the time of 'allocation' to its adoptive parents is considered as constituting a cultural fulcrum, upon which the identity and situational significance of the 'origins' of the child are deemed to subsequently turn.

On Shifting Ground: Changing Formulations of Place in Anthropology Sally Ward	80-96

This article explores the ways in which anthropologists have formulated ‘place’. In recent years place and its companion concept ‘home’ have become themes conceived in terms of fluidity, unboundedness and multiplicity. These formulations are most apparent in that body of literature concerned with people who move between geographical and cultural worlds. The nature of recent conceptions I argue, is a necessary adaptation if anthropologists are to capture meaning in a world of increasing transnational flux.

C. Mantziaris and D. Martin, Native Title Corporations: A Legal and Anthropological Analysis. Sydney: The Federation Press. 2000. xxxiv + 366 pp., bibliog., index. AUD99.00 (Hc.), ISBN 1-86287-372-0.

This is a review article of the book Native Title Corporations: A Legal and Anthropological Analysis from the point of view of anthropology. I begin by highlighting the development of Anglo-Australian social anthropology from such figures as Radcliffe-Brown and Fortes, who were heavily influenced by regulatory and normative models from the domain of legal and judicial scholarship and speculate on the contemporary conditions by which this original social anthropological metaphor has apparently achieved a new literalisation. I criticise the legalistic appropriation of anthropological and ethnographic methodology that this book makes explicit, and finally, I express scepticism for the future success of the prescribed body corporate, as described in the Native Title Act (1993), as a model for the possession, transmission and elaboration of indigenous rights to country.

Obituary to Dr. Jonathan Robert Telfer, 1953-2002 Adrian Peace	111-112

Book Reviews

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