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In contemporary society, global population movements, global conflict and ensuing migration have resulted in the presence of bicultural children in many nations, with multiple possibilities for musical engagement emerging within their home and host cultures. For these children, issues of social integration, identity construction, and cultural maintenance and change must be negotiated on a continual basis. This paper explores some of the ways in which music participation, and more specifically, participation in musical play, contributes to the well-being of bicultural children. In particular, the paper addresses the contribution of musical activities to the well-being of newly arrived refugee and voluntary migrant children and the ways in which these musical activities provide new musical and social beginnings for these children and young people. Drawing on research from the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, evolutionary musicology, anthropology, psychology and refugee studies, this paper focuses on my current research involving newly arrived forced and voluntary migrant children in Australia, but also on my previous cross-cultural study of musical play in a number of countries. Specific reference is made to Iraqi, South Sudanese and Sierra Leonean refugee children and young people in Australia, Punjabi children in the UK and newly arrived Central and South American immigrants in the USA.

Popular physical culture serves as a site, subject and medium for young people's learning (Sandford & Rich, 2006) and impacts their relationship with physical education, physical activity and the construction of their embodied identities. This paper addresses the potential of scrapbooking as a pedagogical and methodological tool to facilitate physical education researchers and teachers to listen to, and better understand and respond to extend students' existing knowledge of, and critical engagement with popular physical culture. The data draws from a three year Participatory Action Research project that was undertaken in an urban, secondary school and was designed to engage 41 girls (aged 15-19) in understanding, critiquing and transforming aspects of their lives that influenced their perspectives of their bodies and their physical activity and physical education engagement. In this paper the focus is on the engagement of eleven of these girls in a five week popular physical culture unit. The students' scrapbooks, audio-recordings of classes, a guided conversation, and field notes constitute the data sources. Findings suggest scrapbooking has the potential to allow researchers access, understand and respond to students' perspectives on popular physical culture and their lives in a way that other methods may not. Pedagogically, scrapbooking supported students in critically appraising and making meaning of "scraps" of popular physical culture.

This paper responds to the challenge of how educational research might be practised in a contemporary world that is no longer necessarily organised by nearness and unity. Focusing on ethnography, it argues for what a multi-sited imaginary contributes to research in the field of education. By giving prominence to the notion of multi-sited ethnography as it has been developed by the anthropologist George Marcus this paper shows how ethnography conceived this way is now necessary in educational research. By bringing together recent concepts from anthropology with educational ethnography, it provides an analysis and reconstruction of how to go about doing ethnography in a world that is characterised by partial connections. To highlight the contributions to education of this research imaginary the paper provides an example of how to approach a specific research topic in this field. In sum, this paper makes a unique contribution to educational research by providing an ethnographic approach for the study of contemporary educational lives.

Development workers studying at the graduate level benefit from exposure to the great variety of cultures and worldviews. In the Australian National University's Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development (MAAPD) program, peer learning is giving current and future development workers in the field and in the classroom the chance to exchange knowledge, experiences and ideas that bring theory into sharp relief. The program offers flexible and blended delivery options, and has recently focused on using online discussions to nurture the exchanges among on-and off-campus students. Students working alone in development settings as diverse as remote Australia, East Timor, Egypt or Afghanistan can thus interact with their peers in the program to compare their day-to-day experiences of social development, conflict, justice, exploitation, gender or environmental issues, as they attempt to apply theory to practice. Using survey feedback from MAAPD students, this paper examines how the online discussions supported peer learning and provided opportunities for more shared engagement in critical thinking about issues of concern.

This paper describes a field trip by senior undergraduate anthropology students to a local winery, where they participated in a wine-tasting class with winery staff. In response to explicit hints from a wine-tasting facilitator, and more subtle cues from the cultural capital embedded in their surroundings and the winery staff, the students expressed a shift in their perception of the wines as they learned to taste them in a way that was socially validated. In this way the students learned, as embodied knowledge, how their physical senses were influenced by their cultural surroundings. We describe the student excursion, and particularly their experiences, and we consider the trend in experiential learning literature to focus on the reflection stage in the constructivist cycle of experience, reflection, abstraction, and testing. While recognising the pedagogic value of reflection and rule extrapolation, we seek to characterise the learning that occurs "in the moment."

The Australian Museum, Sydney, is Australia's oldest museum, internationally recognised for its longstanding scientific contributions. Less well-known is the Museum's fine collection of monographs and journals relating to natural history and anthropology, which has been used to support the work of Museum staff and external enquirers since the late 1840s. This paper discusses the library's collection up to 1883, the date of its first published catalogue. The author urges library history researchers to make those who are responsible for Australia's book heritage in similar institutions aware of the significance of their collections. (Contains 25 notes.)

In 1936, Prof A. P. Elkin attended a seminar in Hawaii lasting several weeks, on the topic of 'native education'. In his various papers presented to a range of experts from the region and beyond during the formal conference held in Honolulu as part of the residency, Elkin set out his views on the future of the Indigenous people of Australia. Education would be pivotal to this new approach on pragmatic and humanitarian grounds. Elkin concurred with the findings of the residency: local forms of adapted education were considered appropriate for most Aboriginal Australians, only a minority continuing into further education; communities as well as children should be better prepared for their integration into the nation as the Indigenous people. This paper sets out to interrogate the proximity of anthropology and education in these claims, and the elision of Aboriginal people's agency including their contemporaneous campaigns for equal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the cultural conceptualisation of children's social identity and status through memorialisation, based on the study of children's grave markers and plots in five South Australian cemeteries (from colonisation to the present), with an age range from infant (including stillborn) to 20 years. The idea of childness, the differing conception of being or being labelled a child, was used as a measure to identify the degree of variation in child identity realised by child-only and family grave markers, showing both change and continuity in the representation of children through family choices of form, style, wording, motif, spatial arrangement and grave furniture. Archaeological evidence of childness was observed through representations of smallness, innocence, domesticity, play, temporality and the distinct emotional nature of the parent-child relationship. Notably in the latter period of study, within the context of lower child mortality, revised understandings of child identity and status were observed representing the social re-evaluation of prenatally deceased and stillborn children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the impact of a major life event–death–on the physical, psychological and social well-being of the deceased’s close friends. We utilised data from a large longitudinal survey covering a period of 14 years (2002–2015) consisting a cohort of 26,515 individuals in Australia, of whom 9,586 had experienced the death of at least one close friend. This longitudinal cohort dataset comprises responses to the SF-36 (health related quality of life measure) and allowed for analysis of the short and longer-term impacts of bereavement. In order to manage the heterogeneity of the socio-demographics of respondents who did/not experience a death event, we use a new and robust approach known as the Entropy Balancing method to construct a set of weights applied to the bereaved group and the control group (the group that did not experience death). This approach enables us to match the two groups so that the distribution of socio-demographic variables between the two groups are balanced. These variables included gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, personality traits, religion, relative socio-economic disadvantage, economic resources, and education and occupation and where they resided. The data show, for the first time, a range of negative and enduring consequences experienced by people following the death of a close friend. Significant adverse physical and psychological well-being, poorer mental health and social functioning occur up to four years following bereavement. Bereaved females experienced a sharper fall in vitality, suffered greater deterioration in mental health, impaired emotional and social functioning than the male counterparts up to four years after the death. The data show that the level of social connectedness plays an important role in bereavement outcomes. Specifically, we found that less socially active respondents experienced a longer deterioration in physical and psychological health. Finally, we found evidence that the death of a close friend lowered the respondent’s satisfaction with their health. Since death of friends is a universal phenomenon, we conclude the paper by reflecting on the need to recognise the death of a close friend as a substantial experience, and to offer support and services to address this disenfranchised grief. Recognising bereaved friends as a group experiencing adverse outcomes can be used internationally to prompt health and psychological services to assist this specific group, noting that there may be substantial longevity to the negative sequelae of the death of a friend. Facilitating bereaved people’s support networks may be a fruitful approach to minimising these negative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

#MeToo deals in the everyday ambiguous and intersectional, providing a space for discussion of the grey areas of sexual propriety. Since 2017, when the term was mobilised spectacularly in the US entertainment industry, other industries have undertaken an examination of their own practices and norms. In this paper we consider the implications of this political moment for the discipline of anthropology, and specifically the idea of 'the field' in the context of anthropological training in Australia. We argue that fieldwork is tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, fetishised by anthropologists as a transformative domain in which the normative rules of gendered interaction are temporarily suspended in favour of fruitfully engaging informants. Drawing on Bourdieu, we argue that 'the field' (the methodological and symbolic space) is a 'field' (a domain of recognition) that junior anthropologists enter with the expectation that they will suffer as a necessary part of their initiation, placing some PhD students at an enhanced risk of sexual violence. We reflect on the attitude of anthropologists to fieldwork as part of a professional illusio, a belief in the value of 'playing the game' that limits our capacity to modify our methodology to make it safer for neophytes and to reimagine a more just discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodological shifts in human geography, generally under the banner of the 'cultural turn', have seen an increased focus on methods such as interviews, discourse and textual deconstruction, and the recognition of notions such as reflexivity and intersubjectivity. Together these approaches argue that there is no logical natural order of things or notions of universality. These approaches argue that there is no such thing as objectivity in social research, but that research is informed by the experiences, aims and agency of those performing the research and that researchers should be written into the research environment. Drawing on these insights, the purpose of this paper is to explore a methodological approach centred on actor-network theory (ANT) and suggest how this approach could add value to research being undertaken in human geography. Within such an approach all research findings are created by the researcher through, first, the objectives and framing of a research project and, second, the methods used to create and follow the research network. Drawing on research into residential development and planning on the fringe of Sydney, Australia, this paper has three objectives: first, to position all research as partial and as the product of associations that stretch beyond the research field; second, to argue that all research is a process of translation; and, third, to explore the manner in which we as researchers construct ourselves in efforts to enter networks of research interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quandong or native peach (Santalum acuminatum R.Br.) has been recognised as an important and tasty food resource among Aboriginal Australians in arid and semi-arid areas of southern Australia. It is valued for its fruit that is consumed raw or dried, and for its kernel, which is eaten raw or ground into paste for medicinal and skin care purposes. This paper reports on a study of ground stone implements within the Murray Darling Basin that has identified quandong stones as a distinct type of implement made specifically for the efficient cracking of quandong nuts. Data are presented on 1,327 ground stone implements from collections in 12 different locations in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), an area almost completely devoid of stone sources. Given the paucity of stone, multi-purpose use of implements is widely documented. Although it was common to find pits present in mortars and other ground stone tools demonstrating multiple functions, including use as anvils, a class of single purpose stones with multiple pits and distinctive form was identified. Most of these were found in areas known for groves of quandong and four were analysed for use-wear and residues along with two other ground stone items from the MDB. The results support their identification as specialised anvil stones for cracking quandong nuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers several areas of anthropological research which have yet to be drawn into conversation: Alfred Gell's anthropological theory of art, the literature on collecting and museum studies and the colonial art histories of Nicholas Thomas and others, and the archaeology of colonialism in Australia. The implications of the nexus of these various areas of research are considered with reference to the archaeological study of Kimberley points in Australia. While these points have been understood by both archaeologists and antiquarians as the pinnacle of Australian Aboriginal stone working practices, this paper considers them as an artefact of colonial desire. Their captivating agency for late-nineteenth-century collectors largely resided in their mysterious method of manufacture, but even after this was understood they continued to enthral antiquarians and archaeologists, who have come to represent their manufacture as ‘typical’ of Australian Aboriginal stone tool working despite its limited chronological and geographic distribution and its relationship to colonial trade. The acceptance of these objects, which essentially functioned as virtuoso tourist art, by colonial collectors and archaeologists as ‘authentic’ ethnographic objects within a discourse which would normally be prejudiced against such items suggests that Aboriginal people engaged actively in this process of captivation–indeed, that the agency of such virtuoso objects continued long after the lifetimes of their makers, as Gell suggested. This has wider implications for an understanding ofboth archaeology and colonial collecting and the relationship between objects and identity in settler societies and provides an opportunity to reflect on the usefulness of Gell's work in colonial contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses the concept of "double absence" and its legacy across three generations of participants. It seeks to illustrate the impact of this cognitive condition in relation to participants' personal, interactional, and institutional social fields. Specifically, the study attempts to frame a reflexive picture extrapolated from participants who in their narratives deliberately reported certain incidents that might have shaped, diachronically, their ethnic identity across generations. In particular, the paper focuses on how the first generation of participants manifests a condition of feeling "absent" which appears to be twofold: from the country of origin and from Australia. The second generation, in turn, appears to present a condition of liminality, originated through growing up between two worlds (the one of their immigrant parents and the Australian one). The third generation, because of a perceived positive evaluation of their ethnic background from the "dominant" society, appears to manifest their ethnic identity openly. A pivotal role seems to be played by the amount of cultural capital accumulated by individuals and their perceptions of what Gramsci would call the senso comune , the "common sense" of the dominant society, which might shape individuals' ethnic identity: specifically, their positionality, in terms of their ethnic perceptions of "being in the world." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the cost-effectiveness of a 20% price discount on healthy food and beverages with and without consumer nutrition education, as trialled in remote Northern Australia. Changes in actual store sales, from the pre-discount baseline period, were analysed for population impact on consumption of fruit and vegetables, water and artificially sweetened soft drinks, in addition with total dietary weight (grams), energy (Mega Joules), and sodium (milligrams). Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), arising from changes in dietary risk factor prevalence in the population, were estimated as the primary health outcome in a multi health-state Markov model. The costs of the strategies were sourced from paid invoices and time estimates of staff providing store-based discount promotion and consumer education. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio adopted a partial societal perspective, (including health and retail sector costs), as cost per DALY averted and was presented in 2011 Australian dollars. The price discount, helped address a gap in food price equity for residents of remote communities. However, the discount strategy, with or without consumer education led to a net loss of population health –36 95%CI (-47,-25) or -21(-28, -15) DALYs respectively, at increased cost to the retail and health sectors, of AUD860000 95%CI (710000, 1million) or AUD500000 (410000, 590000). The strategies trialled were thereby categorised as dominated by current practice while acknowledging considerable uncertainty surrounding the health outcome estimates. The 20% discount on limited targeted products appeared to need to be considered in conjunction with other marketing strategies to support healthy food choices, if remote Australian Indigenous population health is to be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecstasy (MDMA) has attracted widespread attention with its association as a “recreational substance” that is concentrated in club and rave settings. This paper outlines a phenomenologically grounded ethnographic study of the experiences of ecstasy users in the Sydney, Australia, area. I espouse phenomenology as a framework for describing and understanding these experiences. A number of excerpts are presented from my primary corpus of ethnographic material. For the purposes of this paper I assemble user's reports into nine thematic areas: (1) initial reactions and peaking; (2) the rush; (3) plateau; (4) coming down/scattering; (5) love; (6) peace, love, understanding, and respect; (7) connections on ecstasy; (8) unificatory experiences; (9) returning to baseline. The typical experiences presented in these reports confirm and extend interdisciplinary approaches to understanding ecstasy. I suggest that a context-specific approach that is phenomenologically attuned to user's experiences with ecstasy can contribute to the growing body of literature undertaken in the Australian and international research community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns itself with some of the consequences of legislatively supported public health interventions into smoking. These have emerged from the legislative environment of 'smokefree' in Australia, and centrally concern the constitution of public space under its operation; the conceptualisation of risk which circulates within it; and the way in which agency may be imagined in public health framings of smoking. I make a critical anthropological analysis of the ways in which risk, agency and a certain kind of public are imagined and brought to bear on smokers in particular ways. The paper is equally an invitation into the social practice of smoking, as it is undertaken by smokers and as I have ethnographically encountered smoking practice since I began work in the area in 2005. Both the critical analysis and the invitation are difficult to make in a context where research on smoking is increasingly expected to contribute to a public health cessation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the marginalization of consultant anthropology within the field of Australian anthropology. It talks on the democratic-political values of egalitarianism, neo-liberal conservatism and the politics of anti-politics. It mentions the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act justified by some anthropologists. It also discusses the impartial humanitarian claims of anthropological consultancy.

This paper reviews the application of demographic analysis to Indigenous Affairs public policy in Australia as an exemplar case of the demography of disadvantage. Demography has found a natural and successful role using census, survey and administrative data, but for the most part this is restricted to a series of gap analyses based on a deficit model of Indigenous well-being as measured by standard social indicators. While useful for macropolicy settings, translation of these research findings into coherent policy on the ground is thwarted by a lack of ethnographically informed data that account for the intercultural world in which many Indigenous people exist and operate. This is because the categories and contexts deployed are uncritically those of the mainstream, and not those reflective of Indigenous social structures or life projects. This inadequacy is explored against the background of an emerging dialogue between demography and anthropology. Ironically, Australian demographers pioneered such a dialogue but so far it has failed to penetrate demographic research that informs Indigenous public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses large-scale genealogical work at thee projects in Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Australia and considers three questions: in what respects is genealogy intellectual property (IP) and, if so, who owns it; what were the regimes of petitions that permitted the collection of genealogical knowledge in each of the three cases; and what duty of care do collector/curators of genealogical knowledge have in respect of preservation and safeguarding against improper use? It is argued that a new form of "emergent" knowledge arises in which intellectual property rights (IPR) are unclear. What is more certain is that anthropologists owe a 'cultural heritage duty of care' towards genealogical information The key criterion is that anthropologists must he in a position, and allowed by those who employ them, to guarantee 'unbroken eyesight' of genealogical materials regardless of what media they are on or how they are stored [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes an ethnographic journey into Italian-Australian cultural production through an examination of the Italian term for both the flavour and taste of herbs, aroma. Here, I explore the ways in which staple foods and their commensalities engender staple cultural production without necessarily overdetermining the culture produced. Taking the material indeterminacy of culture as a theoretical starting point, I argue that this is the reliable beauty of aroma as well as is its capacity to capture the realities of culture as lived experience. When culture is approached from this direction, stature is returned to ethnographic subjects as people living lives rather than as automatons of cultural form. From this vantage, a theoretical preoccupation with order and structure may be seen to hinder rather than enhance an apprehension of ethnographic fact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the challenges presented to the everyday praxis of maintaining Cuban identity in the Australian context through an examination of the preparation and eating of Cuban food by migrants in Sydney. I argue that the very different demographic configuration of Cubans in Australia and the US is played out through the different experiences of eating. Cuban identity in the US contrasts markedly with the situation in NSW where the small population of Cubans focus on maintaining a Cuban world in their domestic space through the practice of eating Cuban food, rather than in the public domain. The struggle to find and prepare Cuban food in Australia reflects a distance and separation from homeland both spatially and temporally. The paper suggests that the eating habits of this group constitute a significant ethnic marker used by members of the group to differentiate themselves as Cubans in Australia. Additionally, I argue that the existence of a substantial multicultural and ethnic food market in Australia allows Cuban migrants to acquire the products needed for the Cuban cuisine, from shops primarily serving numerically larger ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social reproduction of precarity among white South African migrants in Australia. Building on Griffiths and Prozesky’s elucidation of the white South African imaginary and its role in triggering emigration, we draw on ethnographic data on white South Africans living in Melbourne to argue that our informants reproduce what Hage terms a ‘white nation fantasy’. In documenting the ways our informants’ migration experiences can be read as a function of a threatened social imaginary, we suggest that their ‘successful’ resettlement in Australia points to the congruence of their ontological grounding with the white nation fantasy predominating in Australia. Ultimately, however, we argue that the sense of precarity our informants experience in Australia is intrinsically embedded in their reproduction of the white nation fantasy. Our case study therefore serves as a cautionary tale to inflexible constructions of whiteness globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feral animals are commonly constructed as the scourge of the Australian landscape. The transgressive act of introduced, domestic animals going wild elicits strong emotive responses within the community, often conceived in a kind of Freudian spectre of das unheimliche (the uncanny/ unhomely), as the once familiar becomes uncontrolled, strange and frightening. Meanwhile, exponential global growth in human populations, and the resulting strain on the environment and food security, is necessitating the rethinking of meat consumption. In Australia, while the stigma surrounding feral animals has historically inhibited their consumption, feral meat is regarded by a growing body of advocates as an environmentally favourable alternative to farmed meat, allowing not only the avoidance of animal suffering within the industrial agriculture model, but also benefitting ecosystems through the removal of damage-wreaking interlopers. This paper explores the feral turn and its contemporary manifestations as a growing food movement in Melbourne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health promotion researchers must consider the ethics of their research, and are usually required to abide by a set of ethical requirements stipulated by governing bodies (such as the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council) and human research ethics committees (HRECs). These requirements address both deontological (rule-based) and consequence-based issues. However, at times there can be a disconnect between the requirements of deontological issues and the cultural sensitivity required when research is set in cultural contexts and settings etic to the HREC. This poses a challenge for health promotion researchers who must negotiate between meeting both the requirements of the HREC and the needs of the community with whom the research is being conducted. Drawing on two case studies, this paper discusses examples from cross-cultural health promotion research in Australian and international settings where disconnect arose and negotiation was required to appropriately meet the needs of all parties. The examples relate to issues of participant recruitment and informed consent, participants under the Australian legal age of consent, participant withdrawal when this seemingly occurs in an ad hoc rather than a formal manner and reciprocity. Although these approaches are context specific, they highlight issues for consideration to advance more culturally appropriate practice in research ethics and suggest ways a stronger anthropological lens can be applied to research ethics to overcome these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contains a discussion of an unpublished essay by TGH Strehlow concerning the historic wax cylinder recordings of songs from Central Australia made by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in 1901. The manuscript, written by Strehlow in 1968, begins with an explanation of the historical context of the song recordings, and the distribution of song and dance traditions across the Australian inland. Strehlow elucidates the content via information imparted to him by a number of Arrernte and Luritja men, who first heard these recordings over 50 years after they were made, in 1960. Their explanation of these songs reveals further information on the diffusion of song verses across vast regions in Central Australia (including Warumungu, Anmatyerr, Arrernte, and Warlpiri country), and the incorporation of European words and themes within altharte (public) songs in which men sing and dance. I have expanded Strehlow's information on Spencer's recordings further with additional information from other ethno-historical sources and my own contemporary fieldwork. Combined, this research deepens the anthropological understanding of some of the earliest ethnographic sound recordings ever made in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to locate and discuss the production of ethnographic knowledge in the intercultural field of Indigenous Australia. While issues of personhood and relatedness, identity and exchange, have been well documented, they have rarely been considered from an intercultural and relational perspective where individuals (including the researcher) are the outcome rather than the premise of relationships. I describe the site of ethnographic research as a field of relational possibilities and discuss naming practices that occur during fieldwork. I argue, in the light of the relationship developed with an Aboriginal grassroots organisation, that the constitution of the researcher himself and his description of a social reality as an objective system are but two aspects of the same process of ethnographic knowledge production. I attempt to draw the epistemological and ethical consequences of such a relational paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the continent of the Australian Aborigines was colonised, most commentary on the ‘natives’ was in terms of being child-like and that the state of being of the native personified the basic elements of nature. Over the twentieth century—while attempting simultaneously to preserve and extinguish the ‘tangible form’ and the ‘true nature’ of the Aborigine—much effort was directed towards biologically and socially transmuting the substance of the native into a mimicry of whiteness through the application of science and the employment of Christianity. The following is an explanatory treatise discussing a noteworthy grouping of interactions between a number of bureaucrats, politicians, missionaries and anthropologists who—although dedicated to constructing a new (white) existence for Aboriginal people—could never quite disengage from simplistic characterisations of the people for whom they were advocating. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents glimpses of the life and fieldwork of Grant Evans, the foremost anthropologist and historian to work on Laos in recent decades. It explores his youth in rural Australia, his tumultuous student years, and the challenges he faced as a professional scholar negotiating the Lao PDR bureaucracy. It draws insights from some of his early writing for alternative publications in Australia, as well as extensive discussions and correspondence with family, friends, professional counterparts and former students. It identifies factors in Grant's early life that were instrumental in his ability to research the Lao PDR. Ultimately, Grant possessed wide‐ranging academic and non‐academic interests. He was highly respected as a scholar and was a very decent human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia is a 'young' nation with a population that is one of the most polyethnic in the world. Australia's 'older' Anglo-Celtic identity developed, it can be argued, out of a mythological relationship to the natural environment. This older form of cultural nationalism continues to be played out and contested in the contradictory denunciation of colonial attitudes and actions, and in the naturalisation of their resulting legacy. A key theme of Australian environmental texts is the idea that temporally and spatially, nature is simultaneously a place where settler Australians may find themselves and a place where they do not belong, precisely because they cannot yet imagine themselves as indigenous. The focus of this article is the historical co-development of Australian environmentalism and nationalism (eco-nationalism). Drawing on an eclectic range of sources including: environmental history texts; texts concerning the origins of nationalism; literature addressing the 'national character'; educational resources produced by conservation agencies; natural science journals; newspaper reports; weekly news magazines, websites and other anthropological writing on environmentalism this paper charts the historical trajectory of nature, native and nation in the Australian imaginary with particular reference to the ecological debate concerning ideas about what belongs (and what does not belong) in the past and present Australian landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: For young people with refugee backgrounds, establishing a sense of belonging to their family and community, and to their country of resettlement is essential for wellbeing. This paper describes the psychosocial factors associated with subjective health and wellbeing outcomes among a cohort of 97 refugee youth (aged 11–19) during their first three years in Melbourne, Australia. The findings reported here are drawn from the Good Starts Study, a longitudinal investigation of settlement and wellbeing among refugee youth conducted between 2004 and 2008. The overall aim of Good Starts was to identify the psychosocial factors that assist youth with refugee backgrounds in making a good start in their new country. A particular focus was on key transitions: from pre-arrival to Australia, from the language school to mainstream school, and from mainstream school to higher education or to the workforce. Good Starts used a mix of both method and theory from anthropology and social epidemiology. Using standardized measures of wellbeing and generalised estimating equations to model the predictors of wellbeing over time, this paper reports that key factors strongly associated with wellbeing outcomes are those that can be described as indicators of belonging – the most important being subjective social status in the broader Australian community, perceived discrimination and bullying. We argue that settlement specific policies and programs can ultimately be effective if embedded within a broader socially inclusive society – one that offers real opportunities for youth with refugee backgrounds to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Museum, Sydney, is Australia's oldest museum, internationally recognised for its longstanding scientific contributions. Less well-known is the Museum's fine collection of monographs and journals relating to natural history and anthropology, which has been used to support the work of Museum staff and external enquirers since the late 1840s. This paper discusses the library's collection up to 1883, the date of its first published catalogue. The author urges library history researchers to make those who are responsible for Australia's book heritage in similar institutions aware of the significance of their collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a reduction sequence model for north Australian points from the eastern Victoria River region, and identifies a single continuum linking unifacial and bifacial point forms, with some divergence from this single reduction trajectory dependent upon artefact size. Chronological changes in reduction intensity between 5,000BP and the present are found to coincide with typological variation in points as well as changing emphasis on the extendibility of point reduction. It is suggested that changes in the extendibility of point reduction can be linked to intensified ENSO-driven climatic variability in the late Holocene that likely increased economic risk and warranted a substantial technological response, including the use of retouched toolkits with potential for longer use-lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports new dates for mid to late Holocene occupation of the lower Adelaide River in northern Australia. Earth mounds located on the margins of the floodplains provide a series of radiocarbon determinations that suggest continuous settlement from at least 4000 years BP until recently. During that time the floodplains have undergone a dramatic environmental evolution from extensive mangrove swamps in the mid Holocene, through a variable mosaic of estuarine and freshwater conditions c.3000 years ago, to the freshwater floodplains extant since 2000 BP. These results have implications for the chronology of earth mounds elsewhere in northern Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World War II had unexpected consequences for the development of anthropology in Australia; it led to a breaking of the hegemonic control exercised by the Sydney department by the creation of, first, the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) and second, the establishment of the Australian National University (ANU). Both institutions affected the way anthropology was practised and theorised, as well as removing the training of colonial field officers to the ASOPA, the original raison d'etre for the Sydney department. While the institutional consequences of the war are relatively well known, the work of anthropologists during the war and how their work contributed to the changes is less well known. This paper examines and discusses the work of Australian anthropologists in World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue for the importance of theorising citizenship as an independent axis of social inequality in the contemporary world. As a foil, I take two intertwined tendencies within anthropological writings on migration. First is the historical trend of anthropology as a discipline to theorise against the grain of the nation-state. Second is the tendency within anthropological studies of transnationalism and migration to theorise their subject in terms of Marxian understandings of class and exploitation or in terms of the intersecting dimensions of race, class and gender (but not citizenship). The result of these approaches is to elide the role of national boundaries and citizenship as significant theoretical objects in themselves. To build my approach, I contrast the production of migrant 'illegality' in three national contexts: the United States, China and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides a preview into the contents of the November 2002 issue of the periodical 'Anthropological Forum.' Focus on kinship in Indigenous Australia; Kinship and change in Australianist anthropology; Overview of articles in the issue.

The neoliberal turn has had significant impacts across Australian universities and First Nations communities, especially since the emergence of the global pandemic. These developments have highlighted the inherent flaws of the consultation process in developing programs and policies. Here, the weaknesses of the consultation process are analyzed using an anti‐politics framework together with two comparative case studies. The first case study concerns the consultation process that Australian universities conducted after the global pandemic, and the second case study pertains to consultation processes commonly experienced by First Nation communities with mining companies and museums. The weaknesses of these processes have been understood by First Nations communities for generations, but they are only recently coming to light in mainstream thinking. It is time to recognize consultation as a failed system and to start calling for collaboration and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereign Citizen rhetoric is a security issue in Australia, linked to the incitement of violent extremism. Amplifiers of Sovereign Citizen rhetoric argue that government institutions are illegitimate, and individuals are not subject to the law. This article seeks to frame a question for further research in relation to the Sovereign Citizen security threat: can Sovereign Citizen rhetoric be understood as weaponised strategic narrative? If Sovereign Citizen rhetoric is weaponised strategic narrative, should governments of liberal democracies, such as Australia, frame policy responses on a narrative warfare platform? It is argued that anthropological analysis can be applied to address these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hungarian immigrant community in Australia is struggling with cultural survival. The diaspora has experienced a general decline in community participation as a result of the aging of the émigré population and the rapid assimilation of subsequent generations. Using data derived from the series of annual community-organised conferences called Megmaradásunk Konferenciák, this article compares the different discourses articulated by community leaders in Australia seeking to preserve and strengthen the diaspora community. I examine how newly emerged narratives of 'diaspora death' and cultural survival are debated and how possibilities of strengthened connections with Hungary have impacted these discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archival research into episodes of frontier violence in the Kimberley region of Western Australia indicate that the bodies of Aboriginal victims of massacres were frequently incinerated following the event. This paper presents the results of a scientific investigation of a reported massacre at Sturt Creek where burnt bone fragments were identified in two adjacent sites and documents the archaeological signatures associated with the sites. The methodology used to undertake the project brought together three systems of knowledge: the oral testimonies of the descent group originating from a sole adult survivor of the massacre; archival, historical and scientific research. An archaeological survey defined the two distinct sites containing hundreds of fragile bone fragments; a third site was found to be highly disturbed. Scientific investigations included macroscopic and microscopic examination of selected bone fragments by an anatomical pathologist and a zooarchaeologist and X-ray diffraction analysis of sixteen bone fragments. The anatomical pathologist and zooarchaeologist undertook macroscopic and microscopic examinations of selected bone samples to identify morphological evidence for human origin. It was concluded that three bone fragments examined may have been human, and two of the fragments may have been from the vault of a skull. It was concluded that the likelihood of them being human would be strengthened if it was found that the three samples had been subjected to high temperatures. X-ray diffraction analysis of 16 bone fragments provided this evidence. All fragments showed sharp hydroxylapatite peaks (crystallite sizes 9882nm and 597nm respectively) and all had been subjected to extreme temperatures of either 600°C for more than 80h, 650°C for more than 20h, 700°C for more than 4h or 800°C for more than 1h. XRD analyses were also done on bone samples collected from three cooking hearths at three different archaeological sites. It was found that two of the three samples had been exposed to substantially lower temperatures for a short time period. It was concluded that there was strong pathological and archaeological evidence that the bone fragments were human in origin, but that the evidence was not conclusive. This research also identified archaeological signatures for the identification of massacre sites in similar Australian environments and circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Directions in schooling for tribal Aborigines in Australia have long been influenced by psychological and anthropological perspectives. This paper argues that these are inadequate and cannot account for the frequent failure of school to meet community expectations. It is argued that there is a need for new directions based on analysis of the social relations of Aboriginal education. The possibilities opened up by such an analysis are discussed with reference to recent Aboriginal initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1939 an Australian anthropologist, W.E.H. Stanner, believed that the nation needed to examine the question of biological and cultural preservation of the Aboriginal peoples. In an attempt to address the issue a range of proposals were suggested, most concentrating on the provision of adequate nutrition, proper medical supervision, good conditions of employment, appropriately trained field staff with sufficient financial resources, and the creation of inviolable reserves. This paper is a case study of a northwest Northern Territory cattle station, Wave Hill, where a survey conducted by two anthropologists aimed to reveal the causes of population decline on Vestey owned cattle stations. Could these anthropologists devise a way that would see an increase in station labour without having to seek new labour from marginal areas--'bush' people as they were called? Could they provide an answer to the wider challenge of stemming population decline through improving Aboriginal health? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formal study of kinship was introduced to the South Pacific Islands and the Australian colonies by Methodist missionary Lorimer Fison who distributed schedules and collected kinship data from around the region in collaboration with the founder of Anthropology in America, Lewis Henry Morgan. This article is a sequel to H. Gardner, 2008 'The origins of kinship in Oceania', Oceania, 78:2, 137-150. It traces Lorimer Fison's return to the Australian colonies from his mission post in Fiji and the subsequent spread of kinship schedules to settlers, missionaries and administrators around Australia. Based on unpublished correspondence, the article investigates Fison's gradual disillusionment with Morgan's evolutionist hypothesis of the development of the human family and his disdain for the speculation of much metropolitan anthropology in the 1870s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To study the symbolism of community as understood and practised in a mental health Crisis and Assessment Service in an Australian city. Theoretical approaches: The paper draws on anthropological theories of symbolism and boundary work. Method: Ethnographic fieldwork techniques were employed for data collection. Ethnographic analysis was then applied to these data. Results: In mental health practice, community is primarily defined in contradistinction to hospital. Narratives about community, including an orthodox version and a sceptical counter-narrative, revolve around this community–hospital boundary. Conclusions: This analysis identifies a key symbol, which we have designated community, and enumerates the social values that comprise it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]