TAJA contents

The Australian Journal
of Anthropology

The Official Journal of
The Australian Anthropological Society

ISSN: 1035-8811

Volume 14, Number 3, December 2003

Mapitjakun_a Shall I Go Away From Myself Towards You? Being-with and Looking-at Across Cultural Divides
Ute Eickelkamp

Anthropologists increasingly express links between individuals or collectivities through the discursively convenient prefix ‘-inter’; inter-personal, inter-subjective, inter-cultural, inter-textual. However, attempts to describe the psychodynamics that effect the linkings that are integral to human social experience have not held pace. I want to suggest that a regard for the ontogenetic primary forms of encounter—looking, eating, playing—can substantiate the analysis of being a self among other selves within and across the boundaries of social worlds. Engaging a phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspective, this paper examines how we-relationships have been variously structured by Pitjantjatjara Aborigines in encountering others at home and in Germany

Snuggles, Cuddles and Sexuality: An(other) Anthropological Interpretation of May Gibb’s Snugglepot and Cuddlepie
Chris Eipper

This paper offers an interpretation of May Gibbs's classic illustrated children's story, The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Its inspiration was Annette Hamilton's anthropological analysis, 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: happy families in Australian society'. Rather than effacing that account, the re-interpretation draws on and augments it, even as it turns it 'inside out'. The paper argues that stories acquire mythic status by magnetising interpretation. In suggesting that questions of subjectivity, identity and sublimated obsession are central concerns of May Gibbs's story, it directs our attention to the authoring of culture, its creation, transmission and transformation. The 'Mother of the Gumnuts' emerges from her recurring depictions of kinship and friendship, marriage and adoption, twinship and mirroring, androgyny, ambiguity and ambivalence, as queerly contemporary. If the approach advocated here is correct, such a revelation (and the sense we make of its significance) will not only complicate, but also enhance, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie's enduring appeal and emblematic status as a national icon.

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Revisited: A Response to Chris Eipper
Annette Hamilton

A Reply to Obelia’s Mother
Chris Eipper

Traders, Kinsmen and Trading Counterparts: The Rise of Local Politicians in Northwestern Thailand
Niti Pawakapan

This paper focuses on local traders and their political activities and networks in northwestern Thailand. Most town residents are engaged in trade, full?time and part?time. A few well?off traders have become interested in politics and got involved in local politics. Getting political support, especially the votes, however, is no easy task. So how do they get the support? And what kinds of social organisation are involved? The paper attempts to demonstrate that local traders acquire political support through the co?operation of their bilateral kinsmen, trading counterparts, peers and neighbours. They form a complex network that overlaps with temple organisations and business relationships. As a result, such networks often successfully draw in political support from many townspeople, ranging from regular customers to temple?goers and elderly religious devotees.

The Goddess, the Ethnologist, the Folklorist and the Cadre: Situating Exegesis of Vietnam’s Folk Religion in Time and Place
Philip Taylor

Vietnamese anthropology has been portrayed as a project in close alignment with the goals of a progressivist, culturally assimilationist and security-oriented state. This paper explores unexpectedly positive assessments by anthropologists and folklorists of a recent popular upsurge in goddess worship, which many local scholars deem an example of local, time-honoured and integrative cultural practice. Such assessments may be viewed in the context of state attempts to strengthen national identifications as a counterbalance to its policies of economic liberalisation and integration with the capitalist world. Yet there is more to these interpretations than a story of intellectuals following an official script. In particular, we can factor in the effects upon these commentators themselves of rapid social and cultural change, particularly in urban areas where the majority of them are based. The paper argues for the need to move beyond a view of the Vietnamese state as the only or most critical factor in the shaping of local intellectual responses to popular practice.

Obituary to Kenneth Maddock, 1937-2003
Les Hiatt

A Tribute to Ken
Graham Walker

Book Review Essay: Longing for Belonging: A Critical Essay on Peter Read’s Belonging
Linn Miller

The question as to who properly belongs to and in this country has become a highly provocative and contested national issue. One part of this debate focuses specifically on the competing claims of Aboriginal and non-indigenous Australians. Here the train of reasoning seems to have reached a conceptual impasse. The contest is clear, but what is less clear is what is being contested. If belonging is constituted by an attachment to place, what sort of place and what sort of attachment? How can we understand the concept of belonging; not only who has it, but more fundamentally, what it is and how is it constituted?
One Australian author who engages with precisely these notions and particularly draws my attention is Peter Read. More than any other, his latest offering Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership promises to bring both the notion of belonging and the possibility of a belonging ‘shared’ between Aboriginal and settler Australians into sharper relief. However, although this work advances our understanding of the disparate ways in which non-indigenous Australians articulate their belonging, it fails to provide a coherent account of what makes us belong or why.
This paper examines the quest of Peter Read to secure for himself, and thus for other non-indigenous Australians, an attachment to country that is both meaningful and legitimate. It does so by providing a critical analysis of the conceptual framework he employs—a framework that appeals to principles of rationalisation, generalization, universalisation, and sharing, and for which displacement and Aboriginal narratives are key supports. Drawing on philosophical notions of place and identity, the paper then goes on to sketch an alternative model of belonging—one according to which not only non-indigenous Australians, but all Australians might appropriately aspire.

Lorraine Aragon Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian Minorities and State Development in Indonesia [Kathryn Robinson]

Jill Forshee Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives and Travel in Sumba [Lynda Newland]

Joy Hendry The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display [Malcom Crick]

Peter A. Jackson and Nerida M. Cook (eds) Genders and Sexualities in Modern Thailand [Philip Taylor]

Alice Beck Kehoe Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking [Jon Marshall]

Patrick Vinton Kirch On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact [Grant McCall]

Helen Reeves Lawrence (ed.) Traditionalism and Modernity in the Music and Dance of Oceania [Kalissa Alexeyeff]

Kin Liu In One’s Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform China [Alan Smart]

Daniel Miller and Don Slater The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach [Jon Marshall]

Roy Wagner An Anthropology of the Subject: Holographic Worldview and its Meaning and Significance for the World of Anthropology [Anthony Redmond]

Kathy Whimp and Mark Busse Protection of the Intellectual, Biological and Cultural Property in Papua New Guinea [Michael Goddard]

Mapitjakun_a Shall I Go Away From Myself Towards You? Being-with and Looking-at Across Cultural Divides Ute Eickelkamp	315-334
Anthropologists increasingly express links between individuals or collectivities through the discursively convenient prefix ‘-inter’; inter-personal, inter-subjective, inter-cultural, inter-textual. However, attempts to describe the psychodynamics that effect the linkings that are integral to human social experience have not held pace. I want to suggest that a regard for the ontogenetic primary forms of encounter—looking, eating, playing—can substantiate the analysis of being a self among other selves within and across the boundaries of social worlds. Engaging a phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspective, this paper examines how we-relationships have been variously structured by Pitjantjatjara Aborigines in encountering others at home and in Germany

Snuggles, Cuddles and Sexuality: An(other) Anthropological Interpretation of May Gibb’s Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Chris Eipper	335-354
This paper offers an interpretation of May Gibbs's classic illustrated children's story, The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Its inspiration was Annette Hamilton's anthropological analysis, 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: happy families in Australian society'. Rather than effacing that account, the re-interpretation draws on and augments it, even as it turns it 'inside out'. The paper argues that stories acquire mythic status by magnetising interpretation. In suggesting that questions of subjectivity, identity and sublimated obsession are central concerns of May Gibbs's story, it directs our attention to the authoring of culture, its creation, transmission and transformation. The 'Mother of the Gumnuts' emerges from her recurring depictions of kinship and friendship, marriage and adoption, twinship and mirroring, androgyny, ambiguity and ambivalence, as queerly contemporary. If the approach advocated here is correct, such a revelation (and the sense we make of its significance) will not only complicate, but also enhance, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie's enduring appeal and emblematic status as a national icon.

Snugglepot and Cuddlepie Revisited: A Response to Chris Eipper Annette Hamilton	355-360
A Reply to Obelia’s Mother Chris Eipper	361-364

Traders, Kinsmen and Trading Counterparts: The Rise of Local Politicians in Northwestern Thailand Niti Pawakapan	365-382
This paper focuses on local traders and their political activities and networks in northwestern Thailand. Most town residents are engaged in trade, full?time and part?time. A few well?off traders have become interested in politics and got involved in local politics. Getting political support, especially the votes, however, is no easy task. So how do they get the support? And what kinds of social organisation are involved? The paper attempts to demonstrate that local traders acquire political support through the co?operation of their bilateral kinsmen, trading counterparts, peers and neighbours. They form a complex network that overlaps with temple organisations and business relationships. As a result, such networks often successfully draw in political support from many townspeople, ranging from regular customers to temple?goers and elderly religious devotees.

The Goddess, the Ethnologist, the Folklorist and the Cadre: Situating Exegesis of Vietnam’s Folk Religion in Time and Place Philip Taylor	383-401
Vietnamese anthropology has been portrayed as a project in close alignment with the goals of a progressivist, culturally assimilationist and security-oriented state. This paper explores unexpectedly positive assessments by anthropologists and folklorists of a recent popular upsurge in goddess worship, which many local scholars deem an example of local, time-honoured and integrative cultural practice. Such assessments may be viewed in the context of state attempts to strengthen national identifications as a counterbalance to its policies of economic liberalisation and integration with the capitalist world. Yet there is more to these interpretations than a story of intellectuals following an official script. In particular, we can factor in the effects upon these commentators themselves of rapid social and cultural change, particularly in urban areas where the majority of them are based. The paper argues for the need to move beyond a view of the Vietnamese state as the only or most critical factor in the shaping of local intellectual responses to popular practice.

Obituary to Kenneth Maddock, 1937-2003 Les Hiatt	402-404
A Tribute to Ken Graham Walker	405

Book Review Essay: Longing for Belonging: A Critical Essay on Peter Read’s Belonging Linn Miller	406-418
The question as to who properly belongs to and in this country has become a highly provocative and contested national issue. One part of this debate focuses specifically on the competing claims of Aboriginal and non-indigenous Australians. Here the train of reasoning seems to have reached a conceptual impasse. The contest is clear, but what is less clear is what is being contested. If belonging is constituted by an attachment to place, what sort of place and what sort of attachment? How can we understand the concept of belonging; not only who has it, but more fundamentally, what it is and how is it constituted? One Australian author who engages with precisely these notions and particularly draws my attention is Peter Read. More than any other, his latest offering Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership promises to bring both the notion of belonging and the possibility of a belonging ‘shared’ between Aboriginal and settler Australians into sharper relief. However, although this work advances our understanding of the disparate ways in which non-indigenous Australians articulate their belonging, it fails to provide a coherent account of what makes us belong or why. This paper examines the quest of Peter Read to secure for himself, and thus for other non-indigenous Australians, an attachment to country that is both meaningful and legitimate. It does so by providing a critical analysis of the conceptual framework he employs—a framework that appeals to principles of rationalisation, generalization, universalisation, and sharing, and for which displacement and Aboriginal narratives are key supports. Drawing on philosophical notions of place and identity, the paper then goes on to sketch an alternative model of belonging—one according to which not only non-indigenous Australians, but all Australians might appropriately aspire.

Book Reviews
Lorraine Aragon Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian Minorities and State Development in Indonesia [Kathryn Robinson]	419
Jill Forshee Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives and Travel in Sumba [Lynda Newland]	420
Joy Hendry The Orient Strikes Back: A Global View of Cultural Display [Malcom Crick]	422
Peter A. Jackson and Nerida M. Cook (eds) Genders and Sexualities in Modern Thailand [Philip Taylor]	424
Alice Beck Kehoe Shamans and Religion: An Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking [Jon Marshall]	426
Patrick Vinton Kirch On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact [Grant McCall]	428
Helen Reeves Lawrence (ed.) Traditionalism and Modernity in the Music and Dance of Oceania [Kalissa Alexeyeff]	429
Kin Liu In One’s Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-Reform China [Alan Smart]	431
Daniel Miller and Don Slater The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach [Jon Marshall]	433
Roy Wagner An Anthropology of the Subject: Holographic Worldview and its Meaning and Significance for the World of Anthropology [Anthony Redmond]	436
Kathy Whimp and Mark Busse Protection of the Intellectual, Biological and Cultural Property in Papua New Guinea [Michael Goddard]	438