Mythologising culture
Part 1: Desiring Aboriginality in the suburbs 1
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19010449 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Gillian Cowlishaw (The University of Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 208-227 |
| Publication date | 2010-08-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Australian Journal of Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1035-8811 • E-ISSN: 1757-6547 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1757-6547.2010.00079.x |
| OpenAlex | W2044286028 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
| References cited | 17 |
In western Sydney, I found an extreme version of what I propose is a national Aboriginal mythopoeia, that is, a powerful system of beliefs and practices in relation to Aboriginal people and culture. A reified Aboriginal culture is promoted at institutional sites and in reconciliation discourses that evokes the presence of something precious and mysterious that must be re‐read into local Aboriginal people, but which assiduously avoids their actual circumstances and subjectivities. The awkward relationships and avoidances evident in a western Sydney reconciliation group are posited as a benign example of this mythology, born of a ‘sentimental politics’ of regret and reparation at work in Australia. Unity between the state and civil society is evident here, thus requiring an analysis that goes beyond a critique of government policies and programmes as intentional and rational, and grasps the nature of the widespread desire for Aboriginality. Through ethnographic attention to the actual relationships of Indigenous people and others, anthropologists can avoid being complicit in this regressive, separatist construction
Aesthetics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Government (linguistics) · Indigenous · Mythology · Political science · Politics · Regret · Relation (database) · Sociology · State (computer science) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Law · Philosophy
Establishing the John of God Movement in Australia
Mining, indigeneity, alterity
On stone tools and the ‘prehistoric’
Managing ‘Aboriginal selves’ in South‐Western Sydney 1
La rêverie comme agent thérapeutique chez les Aborigènes de Sydney
Aboriginal cultural awareness training for mine employees
On the land gathering
Australian alternative spiritualities and a feeling for land
The Social Geographies of Indigenous Population and Housing in Australia's Regional Urban Centres
Navigating cultural intimacy in Tasmanian Aboriginal public culture
Tasmanian Aboriginal Material Culture, Compensation, Belonging
Culture and the absurd
What Tradition Affords
Intimacy and Distance
Real People
From Dreaming Ancestors to Human Ancestors? Post-Classical Indigenous Beliefs about Human Ancestral Spirits and Human Ancestral Remains
Palawa Kaniand the Value of Language in Aboriginal Tasmania
Photos in Wiradjuri Biscuit Tins
The Systematisation of Tradition
Welcome to Country … Not
Art, Culture and Ambiguity in Wilcannia, New South Wales
We Have Never Been Modern
Reconciliation, Assimilation, and the Indigenous Peoples of Australia
Defacement
The Cunning of Recognition
The Cunning of Recognition
Blurred Boundaries
Forgetting Aborigines
African Modes of Self-Writing
Anti-social anthropology? Objectivity, objection, and the ethnography of public policy and professional communities
Theory in Furs
| Citations per year | 1.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2025 (15) |
| Highly cited | No |