[Anthropgrad] Reminder - Seminar by Bree Blakeman: 'Getting the taste, giving the feeling: morality and social exchange on the Yolngu Homelands'

[John White]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series. Semester 1, 2009. Milgate Room, AD
Hope. Friday, 5th June, 3pm.

 

Seminar by Bree Blakeman: 'Getting the taste, giving the feeling:
morality and social exchange on the Yolngu Homelands'.

 

 

Fred Myers' views on 'autonomy and relatedness' as two poles of
indigenous sociality have probably been the most influential model of
social relations in Australianist anthropology since the publication of
his 1986 ethnography Pintupi country, Pintupi Self. However, the idea of
social action as a 'push and pull' between autonomy and relatedness
didn't seem to 'fit' much of what I experienced and observed with Yolngu
family on the Homelands in NE Arnhem Land.   I'll suggest the reason for
this is because local Yolngu theories of sociality implicate quite
different conceptions of persons and morality in social exchange,
conceptions that, to some extent, subvert our ideas about the notion of
'autonomy' and skew its relationship to 'relatedness', and visa versa.
In order to explain why this is so, this seminar will begin with a brief
overview of the prevailing model of autonomy and relatedness and will
then present a few case studies representative of those that puzzled me
when attempting to understand them in these terms.  Following this, I'll
outline something of what I came to see as the Yolngu theory of social
exchange. This is simply a cluster of associative cultural concepts
that, in any culture, describe qualities of persons and action in social
relations, those that are most commonly invoked when interpreting and
expressing the morality of certain persons and certain acts in social
exchange.  This material, I think, suggests that social action has
meaning and value relative to ideas about 'open' and 'closed' persons
and action rather than ideas about 'autonomy and relatedness'.  I'll
conclude the seminar pointing to the potential implications of the
Yolngu material as it pertains to the prevailing model of Indigenous
sociality, to theories of autonomy, to ideas about meaning and value in
intercultural exchange, and exchange more generally.  I hope this format
will maximize opportunity for feedback and advice on what are still
working ideas. 

 

 

All welcome!