Moving Statues and Moving Images: Religiousv Artifacts and the Spiritualism of Materiality

Chris Eipper                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

253-263

This paper addresses the spiritualisation of materiality integral to the expression of religious experience by devotees. It focuses on the ‘objective correlatives’ of emotion-imbued faith. Although primarily concerned with the aesthetics of contemporary Catholic mysticism, the aim is to suggestively allude to the implications for comparative analysis. Beginning with devotion to the rosary, it addresses the ‘moving statues’ phenomenon, which in the mid-1980s in Ireland led to numerous visionaries experiencing apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Arguing that sensory analogues are indispensable to the expression of feelings and thoughts, it directs our attention to the tensions implicit in the process, i.e., to the way humans (in this case, religious devotees) need to find and fix upon an adequate and appropriate sensory equivalent. It stresses that such tensions are integral to the formulation and communication of meaning. Further consideration of the imaginative power of material representations leads into a discussion of the influence now exerted by the moving image. The depiction of penitential suffering in The Passion of the Christ is then used to illustrate how film can function as an objective correlative, in this case by articulating notions of penance and redemption shared by Irish visionaries and their disciples.        

The Texture of Events and the Stuff of Dreams: Jean Rouch at the Heart of Film and Anthropology

Lorraine Mortimer    

264-275

Too little known in the English-speaking world, Jean Rouch died in 2004, leaving a prolific body of work. Influenced by the surrealists, by dance, cinema and music, his ‘shared anthropology’ and filmmaking began when he was an engineer in colonial West Africa during World War II—through friendship with African public works employees and revolt over the working and living conditions of the people forced to labour. Rouch saw his engineering, anthropology and filmmaking as creating with the concrete, ‘building bridges’. He did not renounce the ‘rational’, but wanted to supplement and broaden it with other ways of searching and knowing, always concerned with the relationship of the concrete material to the spiritual, dream and fantasy—working in the imaginative place where art meets science. This article discusses Rouch’s ciné-ethnography, focusing on a few of the many films he made.

Shifting Egalitarianisms and Contemporary Racism in Rural Victorian Football: The Rumbalarra Experience

Michael Tynan                                                                                                                             

276-294

This article builds on our understanding of racism towards Aboriginal people in Australia through an examination of discriminatory belief structures pervasive in the mainstream community as evidenced through the important social field of country football in regional Victoria. It analyses the power and pervasiveness of the racial stereotyping that exists in some segments of the community by using Langton’s (1997) notion of ‘iconic images’ as well as discussing the importance of particular ideological motivations around values such as ‘egalitarianism’. This is achieved through analysing the views of players, supporters and officials of mainstream clubs towards the Aboriginal Rumbalara Football Netball Club. This analysis is structurally situated within a broader understanding of Australian national identity, in particular looking at the intersection of the powerful cultural domains of sport and evolving expressions of whiteness and egalitarianism.

Focus: The Cronulla Riot Introduction: Ethnography and the Interpretation of Cronulla       

Gillian Cowlishaw                                                                      

295-299

'They Always Seem to be Angry': The Cronulla Riot and Civilising Pleasures of the Sun

Andrew Lattas                                  

300-319

Contemporary ethnic rivalries often deny participation in racism and instead use the language of nationalism to formulate an etiquette of civility as defining national belonging. In contemporary Australia, world events such as the Bali Bombing, the 9/11 attacks and the Global War on Terror have empowered a civilisational logic, which often becomes localised to provide the moral terms for culturally ranking who has the capacity to participate in the pleasures of a modern enlightened nation. A culture of relaxation built around the beach, around the civilised enjoyment of the outdoors, is used as a point of contrast for a renewed Orientalism. It takes up breaches of everyday etiquette to create a psychological portrait of an uncivilised Arab Other who does not know how to relax and be peaceful.

Cruising: ‘Moral Panic’ and the Cronulla Riot

Judy Lattas                                

  320-335

In this paper I draw on ethnography I undertook amongst locals in the Cronulla area after the riot of December 2005. A number of the young beach goers I came across had been on a P&O ‘schoolies cruise’ at the time of the riot. For two weeks the students depended on the media for information about what was going on in their suburbs. Sailing back, I was told, a pumped-up chorus of ‘Shi-ire!’ and ‘White Pride!’ rang out over Sydney Heads, as expectations climbed high of the ship being met by gangs of Middle Eastern youths, ready for the fight. Back on the beach, months later, bodies baking in the sun try to reconcile the thought of riot with what they know about Australia, and Cronulla, as a place of laid back, leisurely, lazily tolerant people. How can the two scenes of bodily excess be brought together? What are the limits of the ‘moral panic’ idea, in relation to the Cronulla riot? How do the competing truths of major discourses on Cronulla misrepresent the community in question?

Surfies versus Westies: Kinship, Mateship and Sexuality in the Cronulla Riot

Anthony Redmond                                 

 336-350

In the predominantly affluent and Anglo Sutherland Shire in southern suburban Sydney, neighbourhood and extended kinship ties continue to exert powerful forces shaping local identities. During the riot of 11 December 2005 these identities were brought into relief by being pitted against the Lebanese immigrant youth who have been spatially and morally separated from Anglo-Australians. I argue that the strong homosociality exhibited in several different contexts by young Anglo-Australian men (the barbecue area, a sports team’s ‘gang bang’, the violent defence of a neighbourhood controlled beach) and young Lebanese Australian men (paternal cousin and fraternal solidarities, an infamous series of gang rapes, their response to the White riot at Cronulla) are forms of separation that produce particular kinds of male sexual, class and ethnic subjects. I propose that a study of the role of kinship and cohort relationships in Anglo-Australian and Lebanese-Australian male groups should include the nature of incestophobia as an essential component of the precipitating fantasies leading to the riot and the subsequent retaliation.

Book Reviews

Kathleen Adams. Art as Politics: Recrafting Identities, Tourism, and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia. [Jeremy MacClancy]         

351

Partha Chatterjee. A Princely Imposter? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal. [Ian Bedford]                       

352

Paul D’Arcy. The People of the Sea: Environment, Identity, and History in Oceania. [Sandra Pannell]   

354

John Gray. Domestic Mandala: Architecture of Lifeworlds in Nepal. [Michael Allen] 

356

Claudia Gross, Harriet D. Lyons and Dorothy A. Counts (eds). A Polymath Anthropologist: Essays in Honour of Ann Chowning. [D. S. Walsh]    

357

Nora Haenn and Richard R. Wilk (eds). The Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture and Sustainable Living. [Ade Peace]   

359

Jane Lydon. Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians.[Melinda Hinkson]                                                                                               

360

Allan Marett. Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia. [P. G. Toner] 

361

Donald S. Moore. Suffering for Territory: Race, Place and Power in Zimbabwe. [Fernanda Claudio]       

363

Raul Pertierra. Transforming Technologies, Altered Selves: Mobile Phone and Internet Use in the Philippines. [Bella Ellwood-Clayton]  

364

Han ten Brummelhuis. King of the Waters: Homan van der Heide and the Origin of Modern Irrigation in Siam. [Paul T. Cohen]         

366

Arjun Appadurai. Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography

231

Adrian Franklin. Animal Nation: The True Story of Animals and Australia. [Barbara Noske]              

232

Holger Jebens (ed.). Cargo, Cult, and Culture Critique. [Andrew Lattas]           

234

Vivienne Kondos. On the Ethos of Hindu Women: Issues, Taboos and Forms of Expression  [Caroline Osella]       

236

Aihwa Ong. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. [Pál Nyírí]            

238

Peter H. Russell. Recognising Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism. [Paul Burke]   

240

Monique Skidmore. Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear. [Lenore Manderson]            

242

Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern (eds). Anthropology and Consultancy: Issues and Debates. [Michael Goddard]            

244

Linda Whiteford and Scott Whiteford (eds). Globalization, Water, and Health: Resource Management in Times of Scarcity [Sandy Toussaint]  

246

Films

Koriam’s Law: Film, Ethnography and Irreconcilable Accountings. Review of Koriam’s Law-and the Dead Who Govern [Jennifer Deger]  

249