Displacing history, shifting paradigms

Erasing Aboriginal antiquity from Australian anthropology

Bibliographic Data

ID9344836
AuthorsAmy K Way (0000-0001-8085-0352, The Australian National University, Australia, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume19
Issue4
Pages710-730
Publication date2022-05-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory Australia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1449-0854 • E-ISSN: 1833-4881
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14490854.2022.2064313
OpenAlexW4280586276
LanguageEN
Citations received2

This article traces the formalisation of anthropology in Australia from 1880 to 1920, during which time the ‘discipline’ shifted from a framework of developmental evolution to one of structural functionalism. It argues that this paradigm shift necessitated an elimination of anthropology’s once-foundational logic of Aboriginal antiquity: severed, first, from a paired notion of human primitivity, then removed altogether. While historians acknowledge functionalist anthropology’s rationale of ‘time-less’ Aboriginality, this article unpacks how it was uniquely created, tracing antiquity’s erasure across the texts central to anthropology’s formalisation in Australia. Doing so reveals that the elimination of Aboriginal antiquity was not just part of anthropology’s development in Australia but a crucial functioning aspect of it

Anthropology of art · Art history · Contemporary art · Cultural anthropology · Epistemology · Four field approach · Functionalism (philosophy of mind · History of anthropology · Sociocultural anthropology · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · History · Philosophy

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