Diane Austin-Broos - Böcker

People and Change in Indigenous Australia arose from a conviction that more needs to be done in anthropology to give a fuller sense of the changing lives and circumstances of Australian indigenous communities and people. Much anthropological and public discussion remains embedded in traditionalizing views of indigenous people, and in accounts that seem to underline essential and apparently timeless difference. In this volume the editors and contributors assume that "the person" is socially defined and reconfigured as contexts change, both immediate and historical.Essays in this collection are grounded in Australian locales commonly termed "remote". These indigenous communities were largely established as residential concentrations by Australian governments, some first as missions, most in areas that many of the indigenous people involved consider their homelands. A number of these settlements were located in proximity to settler industries - pastoralism, market-gardening, and mining - locales that many non-indigenous Australians think of as the homes of the most traditional indigenous communities and people. The contributors discuss the changing circumstances of indigenous people who originate from such places, revealing a diversity of experiences and histories that involve major dynamics of disembedding from country and home locales, re-embedding in new contexts, and reconfigurations of relatedness.The essays explore dimensions of change and continuity in childhood experience and socialization in a desert community; the influence of Christianity in fostering both individuation and relatedness in northeast Arnhem Land; the diaspora of Central Australian Warlpiri people to cities and the forms of life and livelihood they make there; adolescent experiences of schooling away from home communities; youth in kin-based heavy metal gangs configuring new identities, and indigenous people of southeast Australia reflecting on whether an "Aboriginal way" can be sustained.By taking a step toward understanding the relation between changing circumstances and changing lives of indigenous Australians, the volume provides a sense of the quality and feel of those lives.

People and Change in Australia arose from a conviction that more needs to be done in anthropology to give a fuller sense of the changing lives and circumstances of Australian indigenous communities and people. Much anthropological and public discussion remains embedded in traditionalizing views of indigenous people, and in accounts that seem to underline essential and apparently timeless difference. In this volume the editors and contributors assume that “the person” is socially defined and reconfigured as contexts change, both immediate and historical.Essays in this collection are grounded in Australian locales commonly termed “remote.” These indigenous communities were largely established as residential concentrations by Australian governments, some first as missions, most in areas that many of the indigenous people involved consider their homelands. A number of these settlements were located in proximity to settler industries including pastoralism, market-gardening, and mining.These are the locales that many non-indigenous Australians think of as the homes of the most traditional indigenous communities and people. The contributors discuss the changing circumstances of indigenous people who originate from such places. Some remain, while others travel far afield. The accounts reveal a diversity of experiences and histories that involve major dynamics of disembedding from country and home locales, and re-embedding in new contexts, and reconfigurations of relatedness. The essays explore dimensions of change and continuity in childhood experience and socialization in a desert community; the influence of Christianity in fostering both individuation and relatedness in northeast Arnhem Land; the diaspora of Central Australian Warlpiri people to cities and the forms of life and livelihood they make there; adolescent experiences of schooling away from home communities; youth in kin-based heavy metal gangs configuring new identities, and indigenous people of southeast Australia reflecting on whether an “Aboriginal way” can be sustained. The volume takes a step toward understanding the relation between changing circumstances and changing lives of indigenous Australians today and provides a sense of the quality and the feel of those lives.

This book, first published in 1984, recounts the daily life, the politics, religion and leisure pursuits of Jamaicans in working- and middle-class Kingston. The study is based upon the author’s observations of life in Selton Town and Vermount, two neighborhoods of Kingston, between 1971 and 1982. The author analyses the local social conflicts and ideologies, thereby, demonstrating how larger issues of class domination and cultural hegemony pervade neighbourhood life. The study provides a detailed contextual account of the significance of belonging to different classes. It provides a different perspective of Caribbean anthropology combining the techniques of ethnography and political economy.

This book, first published in 1984, recounts the daily life, the politics, religion and leisure pursuits of Jamaicans in working- and middle-class Kingston. The study is based upon the author’s observations of life in Selton Town and Vermount, two neighborhoods of Kingston, between 1971 and 1982. The author analyses the local social conflicts and ideologies, thereby, demonstrating how larger issues of class domination and cultural hegemony pervade neighbourhood life. The study provides a detailed contextual account of the significance of belonging to different classes. It provides a different perspective of Caribbean anthropology combining the techniques of ethnography and political economy.

Jamaica is most well-known for its popular culture, crime and violence. Government, the state, is viewed as a malign force. In Politics in an Island State noted anthropologist Diane Austin-Broos brings an alternative view of Jamaica, its culture and governance. This history of Jamaica, and more pointedly, the history of politics in Jamaica, is brilliantly told through the biography of Wills O. Isaacs. Never the leader of his party – the People’s National Party – Wills was active in politics from the 1930s and was nonetheless a prominent and notorious figure.Informative and entertaining, this biography of a “second-tier” political leader departs from the usual heroic style and addresses the challenges of a fledgling social democracy in the mid-twentieth century. Decolonization and the decline of sugar, the Great Depression and two world wars frame the challenges of the time. Flanked by rural-to-urban migration, unemployment and industrialization, Jamaica’s struggles into the twenty-first century and the conduct of government – the successes, failures and foibles – are presented and viewed through a more nuanced lens.Leaders shape history, though they seldom dictate its direction. Viewing history through their eyes affords a dynamic account of the structures and events that underpin a society’s development. Politics in an Island State will find a ready audience with readers generally interested in the Caribbean, but even more so with sages – both academic and unconventional – of anthropology, history, foreign affairs, sociology, political science, development studies and political economy.