Dancing with a Difference: Reconfiguring the Poetic Politics of Aboriginal Ritual as National Spectacle1

This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross‐cultural encounter that engages Aboriginal identities with those of the Australian nation. I question the nature of this encounter in terms of a performative dialogue that is both musically and kinesically presented by indigenous communities and ‘translated’ into political discourse by the government. The sentiments of ‘translation’ raise questions as to how local ritual expressions of Aboriginal dance can mediate dialogue when presented as national spectacle. What is being meditated? What is happening in the process of evocation? In this performative nexus, I focus specifically on the poetic politics of Yolngu ritual as spectacle; the nature of performative dialogue in terms of shared dance forms between indigenous communities; the problem of the authentication of dance identities; and how corporeal dispositions of indigenous dance genres influence national sentiment by their symbolic power. I pursue these issues through an analysis of how ancestral dances have been repositioned in national performance venues, such as concerts, cultural centres and ritual arenas, as a means of asserting performative statements about indigenous positioning within the nation‐state. The nature of this dialogue raises questions of authenticity and processes of authentication. It highlights indigenous concerns to control representations of indigeneity as national event, as well as a desire to convey something of the sentiment and sentience embodied in the poetics of their ancestral performances.     

Promoting Primitivism: Conservationist Depictions of Aboriginal Australians1

Aborigines, like native Americans and others, face the unending task of resisting attempts, on the one hand to cut them off from their ‘heritage’, and on the other to bury them within it as ‘a thing of the past’ (Beckett 1988: 212).     

Children and Youth in Aboriginal Australia: An Overview of the Literature

The following overview of the existing literature relating to Aboriginal childhood and adolescence across Australia is intended to support the development of this potentially strong interdisciplinary research field. It presents a select number of works in historical context, concluding with critical comments and supplemented by additional references presented according to type of study. No claim is made to have covered the literature exhaustively.     

A Rainbow of Gangs: Street Cultures of the Mega-City

A Rainbow of Gangs: Street Cultures of the Mega-City . James Diego Vigil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. 213 pp.     

On the Rationality of Decision-Making Studies: Part 1: Decision Models of Treatment Choice

With reference to both critiques and empirical studies, the theoretical and methodological grounding of anthropological research on medical decision making is examined in this article, giving particular attention to the construction and evaluation of cognitively oriented decision models. A decisionmodeling study carried out in the Mexican village of Pichátaro (in conjunction with James C. Young) frames an exploration of some of the tensions and points of contention about the aims and designs of cognitively oriented studies of decision modeling. While a decision model can provide a reasonably good guide to an understanding of treatment actions and the culturally based rationality that underlies them, such models fall short when they are oriented primarily around predicting treatment accounts. They should also attend to the jointly cultural, personal, social, and cognitive constructive processes through which meaning is conferred upon the occurrence of illness, [care seeking, decision models, decision making, Mexico]     

God,sex, and money among the ultra-Orthodox in Israel: An integrated sociocultural and evolutionary perspective

The origin of the tendency for men to value wealth more than women can be explained by both social role theory and evolutionary theory. We integrate these two perspectives to provide insight into a unique cultural context, the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, where social roles are reversed, such that women are the primary breadwinners in the family. Studies 1a and 1b provide support for social role theory's claim that men and women will internalize attitudes toward wealth that are consistent with their gender role in society. These findings are then integrated with an evolutionary perspective suggesting that men strive to elevate their personal status as a means of attracting mates. In most modern societies this equates to the accumulation of wealth, but in the ultra-Orthodox community it is religious devotion and piety that determine the status of men. An examination of mating preferences in the ultra-Orthodox community confirms many predictions from an evolutionary perspective and departs only in that women do not show a preference for mates with good financial prospects, but rather, owing to the unique sociocultural definition of status, women display a preference for men of strong religious devotion (Study 2). This contrasts with the secular Jewish community where women show the typical preference for wealthy men (Study 3). These findings are consistent with the idea that men may have evolved preferences for achieving status given the mating advantages it confers with women, but how status is achieved may be culturally specific.     

Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership: Materialization of State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan

Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership: Materialization of State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan. Saburo Sugiyama. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 280 pp.     

No Exit: Aboriginal Australians and the Historicizing of Interpretation and Theory

Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology, L. R. Hiatt Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 225 pp.
What the Bones Say: Tasmanian Aborigines, Science, and Domination. John J. Cove. Ottawa, Canada: Carleton University Press, 1995. 221 pp.