Diane Bell – författare

Virtually all anthropologists undertaking fieldwork experience emotional difficulties in relating their own personal culture to the field culture. The issue of gender arises because ethnographers do fieldwork by establishing relationships, and this is done as a person of a particular age, sexual orientation, belief, educational background, ethnic identity and class. In particular it is done as men and women. Gendered Fields examines and explores the progress of feminist anthropology, the gendered nature of fieldwork itself, and the articulation of gender with other aspects of the self of the ethnographer.

An outstanding study of Aboriginal women's lives. Living in the community, developing friendships which spanned decades, Diane Bell shines a light on the importance of women's role in Australian Aboriginal desert culture. As maintainers of land, ritual and culture, indigenous women of central Australia share the patterns of their lives in this remarkable and enduring book. Diane Bell was controversial in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and remains so today. Not everyone agrees with her but she demands to be read.

When the Ngarrindjeri women of South Australia asked Diane Bell if she would work with them in the running of some workshops to develop a booklet about culture and governance, none of them realised quite where it would take them. This book is the result. It has developed from a booklet to a book that outlines their visions for the future. A future in which their culture is respected, their stories heard, their laws carried out.