Aboriginal Family and the State

Sally Babidge is a Lecturer in Anthropology at The University of Queensland, Australia.

’It is rare to find an account of Aboriginal experience through time that integrates regional history, indigenous family life, and a critical treatment of the state so convincingly. This study of contemporary indigenous lives is striking both for its intimate accounts of belonging and for its decisive analysis of Australian race relations. The book is beautifully written and draws the reader in.’ Diane Austin-Broos, University of Sydney, Australia 'Babidge makes a substantial contribution to an important body of Australian ethnographic scholarship that interrogates the operation of state power in relation to Indigenous communities and histories... An intelligent, thought-provoking and analytical study, Aboriginal Family and the State will be useful not only for anthropologists and other academic scholars. It should also be read by all who engage with native title issues, as Babidge's insights in this regard are particularly pertinent and meaningful.' Anthropological Forum ’Babidge’s insight is to see those occasions in which both state and Aboriginal cultural formations equally elicit their own forms of recognition out of engagement with each other. In sum, this is a richly detailed and astutely analysed piece of research into the current forms of Aboriginal cultural and social action in rural Australia.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

• Contents: Preface: kinship, process and history, Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart: Fieldwork, fishing and funerals; Knowledge and control, violence and protection; Under the Act; Family affairs: relations and relatedness; Home, family, polity; Meetings: social practice and the construction of identity; Elders and 'old people'; The sociality of death and funerals; Aboriginal family and the Australian state; Appendix; References; Index