Geoffrey Gray | The University of Queensland, Australia (original) (raw)
Papers by Geoffrey Gray
Humanities research, Jul 1, 2009
Review(s) of: Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert, by Bob Reece, Canberra, National Library of ... more Review(s) of: Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert, by Bob Reece, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 2007. 204 pp. RRP $24.95. ISBN 9780642276544.
Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2009
Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2009
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humi... more Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of influential anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humi... more Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of influential anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.
Peter Lang AG, Apr 25, 2019
Australian Indigenous people were not citizens, but were ultimately drawn, willingly and unwillin... more Australian Indigenous people were not citizens, but were ultimately drawn, willingly and unwillingly, into the general war effort in a variety of ways. This chapter considers the work that was auxiliary to the main defense forces: the attitudes of government officials; the conditions under which Indigenous labourers were employed; and the impact this wartime labour had on the wider conditions of employment for Indigenous workers.
New Guinea had been opened to colonial rule, first under Germany, and from 1914 Australian milita... more New Guinea had been opened to colonial rule, first under Germany, and from 1914 Australian military rule until 1922 when it was formally handed over to Australian civilian rule. Australia was an inexperienced colonial nation, and sought advise from outside. On the surface E. W. P Chinnery was the embodiment of the modern colonial administrator: experienced in dealing with colonised peoples, and trained in anthropology by the Cambridge anthropologist, Alfred Cort Haddon. He was government anthropologist in the Australian administered colony of New Guinea between 1924 and 1937; the Australian government recognized his expertise on colonized people when he was appointed Commonwealth Advisor on Native Affairs. It was a conflicted role, however: on one hand he was acting as an agent of change, leading to the civilizing of “backward” peoples, on the other supporting the use of these same people in the colonial economy as labourers, working on plantations and doing other menial tasks. This paper discusses Chinnery’s work and the limitations of the anthropological expert, charged with protecting the welfare and advancement of colonized people.Colonie allemande jusqu’en 1914, la Nouvelle‑Guinée fut placée après la Première Guerre mondiale sous gouvernement australien, militaire jusqu’en 1922, puis civil. L’Australie était une nation coloniale inexpérimentée qui chercha des conseils extérieurs. E. W. P Chinnery était l’incarnation de l’administrateur colonial moderne : il avait l’expérience des populations colonisées, et avait été formé en anthropologie à Cambridge, par Alfred Cort Haddon. Il fut l’anthropologue du gouvernement dans la colonie australienne de Nouvelle‑Guinée de 1924 à 1937. Son expertise sur les populations coloniales fut reconnue avec sa nomination comme Conseiller aux affaires indigènes du Commonwealth. Il s’agissait d’un rôle complexe : d’un côté, il servait d’agent du changement, « civilisant » des populations « arriérées », d’un autre il soutenait l’utilisation de ces mêmes populations au sein de l’économie coloniale comme mains d’œuvre, travaillant dans des plantations ou accomplissant d’autres tâches serviles. Dans cet article, je discute l’œuvre d’un expert colonial et ses limites : les populations dont il veut protéger le bien-être et encourager le progrès vivent sous domination coloniale
Queensland Review, 1999
When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was st... more When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was struck by the people in it — their whiteness and their white (British) names — Marge and Dave, Doug and Betty, Sylvia and Alistair and their children Alex and Kate, Michelle and her daughter Chelsea and so on. It was not that it came as a surprise; rather it was the recognition of a normalising of white culture firmly based in British traditions and heritage. Here was ‘white’ presented as homogeneous (we are all white), which denies the degrees of whiteness referred to by writers on whiteness. It caused me to reflect on John Howard's understanding of Australia, his view of Australia's past. His focus on a British white heritage is mirrored by his focus on Aboriginality. This is the key to understanding what the government sponsored advertisements reveal, either consciously or unconsciously, and the particularity of their representation of ‘white’ society. I argue that the implicit ...
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 1996
Abrogating Responsibility: Anthropology, Vesteys and the future of Aboriginal people., 2015
During the Second World War the cattle industry in northern Australia was under stress. It was a ... more During the Second World War the cattle industry in northern Australia was under stress. It was a boom time for business, in particular for the large international firms like Vesteys, selling beef to the allied armed forces. At the same time they lost stockmen, especially Aboriginal labourers to the defence forces, where Aborigines were paid proper wages.
In this crisis of labour shortage Vesteys, resistant to pressure by government to improve working conditions, took an unprecedented measure. They engaged two young anthropologists – Ronald and Catherine Berndt – as liaison and welfare officers to tackle the labour problem. The Berndts were to assist in increasing the Aboriginal workforce by investigating, so they believed, on ways to improve the treatment and working conditions of Aboriginal pastoral workers. Vesteys, however, as it gradually transpired, had different priorities.
Abrogating Responsibility analyses the complex political and personal relations between representatives of the cattle industry, northern territory and commonwealth governments, anthropologists and Aboriginal people. With the exception of A.S. Bingle, General manager of the Australian Investment Agency (the Australian subsidiary of the British based Vestey Brothers) each of the main protagonists – A.P. Elkin, professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney, E.W.P. Chinnery, director of the Northern Territory Native Affairs Branch, and the Berndts – were possessed of the best intentions and actively sought ways to ameliorate and advance the position of Aboriginal people. As the Berndts’ survey drew to an end the director of the Natives Affairs Branch in the Northern Territory wondered:
‘Is it a practical proposition to employ two anthropologists to observe conditions on your stations with a view to suggest improvements, and then to treat any comments, impressions and suggestions they make as negligible?’
Abrogating Responsibility seeks answers to the question: how was it possible, with so much knowledge about the horrendous conditions Aboriginal people labored and lived in, and so many well-intentioned agencies and individuals, that nothing changed? Ensuing the laying of blame the book’s careful and detailed analysis opens up new insights into a system that placed Aborigines at the end of the line in a series of relationships on a local, state, and national level
Institués au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale, les mandats de la Société des Nations illustr... more Institués au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale, les mandats de la Société des Nations illustrent les implications de l’arrivée des experts dans les Suds dès les années 1920. Ils constituent pour cette raison un angle d’attaque privilégié pour réfléchir aux liens entre expertise et colonisation comme aux dynamiques qui accompagnent les experts. S’ils ont été l’objet de discussions intenses, les mandats ne peuvent guère être considérés comme l’objet d’un champ d’expertise bien délimité avec ses méthodes uniformisées, son corps de savoirs systématisés et ses procédures formalisées de certification. Les discours institutionnels d’experts sur les mandats, divers et dénués de cohérence, dissimulaient souvent les modalités habituelles du gouvernement colonial. Cependant, les temps changeaient. La pluralité des cadres institutionnels où l’on discutait des mandats (Commission permanente des mandats, autres organes de la SDN) sapait le monopole supposé des États coloniaux sur la prise de décision informée. L’intérêt des organisations privées et caritatives était également d’importance, dans la mesure où certaines investirent massivement dans des projets exploratoires de développement à fort coefficient d’expertise. Ajoutées les unes aux autres, ces circonstances institutionnelles attiraient des experts potentiels vers les mandats, d’où l’on peut observer et les tensions d’empire qui marquaient l’ère coloniale finissante et les prémisses de politiques publiques fortement consommatrices d’expertise qui se diffusent dans les Suds après 1945.Expertise in the colonial world can be characterized, more perhaps than in any other context, by the tension between abstract knowledge and acquaintance with the field as inspirations for decision making. The League of Nations mandates instituted after World War I should not be understood as a laboratory of expertise in the colonial world, but as an early instance of the implications of bringing experts to the global South. Not only does colonial expertise combine the distance of the expert to their objects and the overbearing position inherent to the colonizer’s gaze: the international organizations of the League of Nations system created further institution distance to colonial realities. Yet is the point of involving expertise in the administration of the mandates not to counter the discredited image of brutal colonial, counter-insurrectional rule, by inserting skilled and knowledgeable actors in the decision process? Intensely discussed though they were, the mandates can hardly be said to have become the object of a well-defined field of expertise, complete with unified methods, systematized bodies of knowledge and formalized procedures of certification for its experts. Institutional expert discourses on the mandates, diverse and lacking cohesion as they were, were often smokescreen for colonial rule as usual. Yet the times were changing, and because international organizations relied on the formalization (through comparison and quantification) and publicity of information, it opened a space where would‑be experts coming from different corners could present alternative views on colonial rule.من حقبة الاستعمار مرورا بعصر السياسات العامة الدولية في الجنوب، لعب مفهوم الخبرة دورا متنامياً في النظام الدولي خلال القرن العشرين. يشمل هذا المفهوم المتناقض والمعروف كوسيلة للأخبار وتحسين الفعل العام، حيزا من الوسائط المتناقضة للمعرفة وطرق التعبير والافصاح. بتموضعها بين المعرفة التجريبية والمعرفة التجريدية الشاملة من جهة وبين البحث والسلطة من جهة أخرى، تثير الخبرة الاهتمام لدراستها في إطار النظام الأول للمنظمات الدولية والأزمة المصاحبة للإمبراطوريات الاستعمارية. لقد أصبحت المناطق الخاضعة للانتداب إحدى النقاط الرئيسية لتقارب المسائل المتعلقة بالانتشار العالمي للمعايير من خلال الهيئات الدولية. يتم قراءة الخبرة باعتبارها واحدة من علامات الاستعمار المتأخر، المشفّر والواقع تحت النظرات المتقاربة بين العلماء والدول والرأي العام. من خلال وصاية عصبة الأمم (NDS) ، يدرس هذا الكتاب بروز الحيز الدولي كإطار لصنع القرار بين الدول، وكإطار مفتوح وإجرائي يشمل عالم من العلاقات والتدفقات والبنى المتداخلة على عدة مستويات. يعمل الكتاب على رسم شخصيات الخبراء ويوضح اللعبة المعقدة التي تنشأ بين هؤلاء الخبراء والمؤسسات الانتدابية من أجل تعريف المعايير والخبرة. يلقي الكتاب أخيرا الضوء على التحديات الناتجة من الجدلية غير المتكافئة بين الخبراء والخبراء المناوئين، وبين السكان المحليين وسلطات الانتداب.De l’ère coloniale à celle des politiques publiques internationales dans les Suds, l’expertise a joué un rôle croissant dans l’ordre international au vingtième siècle. Notion paradoxale, réputée instrumentale en vue de l’information et de l’amélioration de l’action publique, elle englobe tout un champ de modalités opposées du savoir et de son énonciation. L’expertise se situe entre le savoir d’expérience et le savoir nomothétique abstrait, la recherche et l’autorité, elle est intéressante à étudier dans le cadre du premier système d’organisations internationales et de la crise concomitante des empires coloniaux. Les…
The issue of ownership of cultural objects collected by fieldworkers sponsored by the Australian ... more The issue of ownership of cultural objects collected by fieldworkers sponsored by the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) between 1926 and 1955, when the ANRC was replaced by the Academy of Science, is now in a sense passé, as these collections have been broken up, and now reside in diverse centres both nationally and internationally. This does not mean that we should not revisit the issue of how the ANRC collection was made, the way it was broken up and distributed, the circumstances around its distribution and the question of ownership — does it reside with the collector, the institution housing the collection, or the funding body? This paper traces Ronald Berndt’s attempts to assert ownership over part of the collection housed at the University of Sydney, at the two moments of its redistribution, 1957 and 1980. Wooden sculpture of a human male collected by Berndt, 1946–7 by Leigerang Dalawongu people, north-east Arnhem Land courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre National Mu...
Maybe, in the end, even the lies we tell define us. And better, some of them, than our most earne... more Maybe, in the end, even the lies we tell define us. And better, some of them, than our most earnest attempts at the truth. 1 Ronald Berndt has always averred that a person's career has a lot to do with both family background and the opportunities provided to pursue particular interests. 2 ONALD MURRAY BERNDT (1916-90) 3 and Catherine Helen Berndt (1918-94) had highly successful careers in anthropology that extended over fifty years among Australian Aborigines and briefly in the New Guinea Highlands. They were a private and at times secretive couple. What is not realised is that Ronald Berndt fabricated a seamless story about his schooling and university attendance in order to establish himself in the discipline of anthropology. It is a narrative of destiny: a precocious boy, his interests not fully appreciated, keen to advance, forced by circumstance (and his father) to undertake accounting, but finally finding his vocation and success. It was a fabrication that was widely accepted and promulgated by colleagues and acolytes alike. It was designed to deceive. Why he persisted with such an elaborate and elegant deception is the subject of this paper. R
Anthropological Forum, 2018
On 3 September 1939, Australia followed the United Kingdom in declaring war on Germany. Soon afte... more On 3 September 1939, Australia followed the United Kingdom in declaring war on Germany. Soon afterwards a number of German nationals including Australians of German descent were placed in internment camps. For those German enemy aliens and Australians of German heritage not interned, suspicion was never far from the surface. In the case of the anthropologist Ronald Murray Berndt, what initially put him under suspicion was not his political affiliations or actions, but his German name and some of his utterances on the war which were interpreted as being pro-German. Linked to this was a concern by Australian military and government authorities that Indigenous people were potentially disloyal, and anthropologists who worked with Indigenous Australians were, by the very nature of their relationship with them, considered potential subversives. However, although Ronald Berndt always worked with his wife Catherine, only Ronald was considered a security risk. Catherine was simply seen as his wife, part of a team, about whom nothing adverse was known. This article analyses the early career of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, and the restrictions and blocks they faced in accessing field sites during WWII. An easy answer to such impairments that was made at the time and later, was that Ronald was caught during WWII in a surveillance dragnet that focused on Germanness. The reality that emerges from the archival record, however, is far more complex, and shows amongst others, the exploitation of surveillance by local establishment gatekeepers.
Humanities research, Jul 1, 2009
Review(s) of: Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert, by Bob Reece, Canberra, National Library of ... more Review(s) of: Daisy Bates: Grand Dame of the Desert, by Bob Reece, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 2007. 204 pp. RRP $24.95. ISBN 9780642276544.
Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2009
Australian Aboriginal Studies, 2009
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humi... more Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of influential anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humi... more Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors’ reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of influential anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.
Peter Lang AG, Apr 25, 2019
Australian Indigenous people were not citizens, but were ultimately drawn, willingly and unwillin... more Australian Indigenous people were not citizens, but were ultimately drawn, willingly and unwillingly, into the general war effort in a variety of ways. This chapter considers the work that was auxiliary to the main defense forces: the attitudes of government officials; the conditions under which Indigenous labourers were employed; and the impact this wartime labour had on the wider conditions of employment for Indigenous workers.
New Guinea had been opened to colonial rule, first under Germany, and from 1914 Australian milita... more New Guinea had been opened to colonial rule, first under Germany, and from 1914 Australian military rule until 1922 when it was formally handed over to Australian civilian rule. Australia was an inexperienced colonial nation, and sought advise from outside. On the surface E. W. P Chinnery was the embodiment of the modern colonial administrator: experienced in dealing with colonised peoples, and trained in anthropology by the Cambridge anthropologist, Alfred Cort Haddon. He was government anthropologist in the Australian administered colony of New Guinea between 1924 and 1937; the Australian government recognized his expertise on colonized people when he was appointed Commonwealth Advisor on Native Affairs. It was a conflicted role, however: on one hand he was acting as an agent of change, leading to the civilizing of “backward” peoples, on the other supporting the use of these same people in the colonial economy as labourers, working on plantations and doing other menial tasks. This paper discusses Chinnery’s work and the limitations of the anthropological expert, charged with protecting the welfare and advancement of colonized people.Colonie allemande jusqu’en 1914, la Nouvelle‑Guinée fut placée après la Première Guerre mondiale sous gouvernement australien, militaire jusqu’en 1922, puis civil. L’Australie était une nation coloniale inexpérimentée qui chercha des conseils extérieurs. E. W. P Chinnery était l’incarnation de l’administrateur colonial moderne : il avait l’expérience des populations colonisées, et avait été formé en anthropologie à Cambridge, par Alfred Cort Haddon. Il fut l’anthropologue du gouvernement dans la colonie australienne de Nouvelle‑Guinée de 1924 à 1937. Son expertise sur les populations coloniales fut reconnue avec sa nomination comme Conseiller aux affaires indigènes du Commonwealth. Il s’agissait d’un rôle complexe : d’un côté, il servait d’agent du changement, « civilisant » des populations « arriérées », d’un autre il soutenait l’utilisation de ces mêmes populations au sein de l’économie coloniale comme mains d’œuvre, travaillant dans des plantations ou accomplissant d’autres tâches serviles. Dans cet article, je discute l’œuvre d’un expert colonial et ses limites : les populations dont il veut protéger le bien-être et encourager le progrès vivent sous domination coloniale
Queensland Review, 1999
When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was st... more When I first saw the newspaper advertisementsfor the Coalition's proposed tax reform I was struck by the people in it — their whiteness and their white (British) names — Marge and Dave, Doug and Betty, Sylvia and Alistair and their children Alex and Kate, Michelle and her daughter Chelsea and so on. It was not that it came as a surprise; rather it was the recognition of a normalising of white culture firmly based in British traditions and heritage. Here was ‘white’ presented as homogeneous (we are all white), which denies the degrees of whiteness referred to by writers on whiteness. It caused me to reflect on John Howard's understanding of Australia, his view of Australia's past. His focus on a British white heritage is mirrored by his focus on Aboriginality. This is the key to understanding what the government sponsored advertisements reveal, either consciously or unconsciously, and the particularity of their representation of ‘white’ society. I argue that the implicit ...
The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 1996
Abrogating Responsibility: Anthropology, Vesteys and the future of Aboriginal people., 2015
During the Second World War the cattle industry in northern Australia was under stress. It was a ... more During the Second World War the cattle industry in northern Australia was under stress. It was a boom time for business, in particular for the large international firms like Vesteys, selling beef to the allied armed forces. At the same time they lost stockmen, especially Aboriginal labourers to the defence forces, where Aborigines were paid proper wages.
In this crisis of labour shortage Vesteys, resistant to pressure by government to improve working conditions, took an unprecedented measure. They engaged two young anthropologists – Ronald and Catherine Berndt – as liaison and welfare officers to tackle the labour problem. The Berndts were to assist in increasing the Aboriginal workforce by investigating, so they believed, on ways to improve the treatment and working conditions of Aboriginal pastoral workers. Vesteys, however, as it gradually transpired, had different priorities.
Abrogating Responsibility analyses the complex political and personal relations between representatives of the cattle industry, northern territory and commonwealth governments, anthropologists and Aboriginal people. With the exception of A.S. Bingle, General manager of the Australian Investment Agency (the Australian subsidiary of the British based Vestey Brothers) each of the main protagonists – A.P. Elkin, professor of anthropology at the University of Sydney, E.W.P. Chinnery, director of the Northern Territory Native Affairs Branch, and the Berndts – were possessed of the best intentions and actively sought ways to ameliorate and advance the position of Aboriginal people. As the Berndts’ survey drew to an end the director of the Natives Affairs Branch in the Northern Territory wondered:
‘Is it a practical proposition to employ two anthropologists to observe conditions on your stations with a view to suggest improvements, and then to treat any comments, impressions and suggestions they make as negligible?’
Abrogating Responsibility seeks answers to the question: how was it possible, with so much knowledge about the horrendous conditions Aboriginal people labored and lived in, and so many well-intentioned agencies and individuals, that nothing changed? Ensuing the laying of blame the book’s careful and detailed analysis opens up new insights into a system that placed Aborigines at the end of the line in a series of relationships on a local, state, and national level
Institués au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale, les mandats de la Société des Nations illustr... more Institués au sortir de la Première Guerre mondiale, les mandats de la Société des Nations illustrent les implications de l’arrivée des experts dans les Suds dès les années 1920. Ils constituent pour cette raison un angle d’attaque privilégié pour réfléchir aux liens entre expertise et colonisation comme aux dynamiques qui accompagnent les experts. S’ils ont été l’objet de discussions intenses, les mandats ne peuvent guère être considérés comme l’objet d’un champ d’expertise bien délimité avec ses méthodes uniformisées, son corps de savoirs systématisés et ses procédures formalisées de certification. Les discours institutionnels d’experts sur les mandats, divers et dénués de cohérence, dissimulaient souvent les modalités habituelles du gouvernement colonial. Cependant, les temps changeaient. La pluralité des cadres institutionnels où l’on discutait des mandats (Commission permanente des mandats, autres organes de la SDN) sapait le monopole supposé des États coloniaux sur la prise de décision informée. L’intérêt des organisations privées et caritatives était également d’importance, dans la mesure où certaines investirent massivement dans des projets exploratoires de développement à fort coefficient d’expertise. Ajoutées les unes aux autres, ces circonstances institutionnelles attiraient des experts potentiels vers les mandats, d’où l’on peut observer et les tensions d’empire qui marquaient l’ère coloniale finissante et les prémisses de politiques publiques fortement consommatrices d’expertise qui se diffusent dans les Suds après 1945.Expertise in the colonial world can be characterized, more perhaps than in any other context, by the tension between abstract knowledge and acquaintance with the field as inspirations for decision making. The League of Nations mandates instituted after World War I should not be understood as a laboratory of expertise in the colonial world, but as an early instance of the implications of bringing experts to the global South. Not only does colonial expertise combine the distance of the expert to their objects and the overbearing position inherent to the colonizer’s gaze: the international organizations of the League of Nations system created further institution distance to colonial realities. Yet is the point of involving expertise in the administration of the mandates not to counter the discredited image of brutal colonial, counter-insurrectional rule, by inserting skilled and knowledgeable actors in the decision process? Intensely discussed though they were, the mandates can hardly be said to have become the object of a well-defined field of expertise, complete with unified methods, systematized bodies of knowledge and formalized procedures of certification for its experts. Institutional expert discourses on the mandates, diverse and lacking cohesion as they were, were often smokescreen for colonial rule as usual. Yet the times were changing, and because international organizations relied on the formalization (through comparison and quantification) and publicity of information, it opened a space where would‑be experts coming from different corners could present alternative views on colonial rule.من حقبة الاستعمار مرورا بعصر السياسات العامة الدولية في الجنوب، لعب مفهوم الخبرة دورا متنامياً في النظام الدولي خلال القرن العشرين. يشمل هذا المفهوم المتناقض والمعروف كوسيلة للأخبار وتحسين الفعل العام، حيزا من الوسائط المتناقضة للمعرفة وطرق التعبير والافصاح. بتموضعها بين المعرفة التجريبية والمعرفة التجريدية الشاملة من جهة وبين البحث والسلطة من جهة أخرى، تثير الخبرة الاهتمام لدراستها في إطار النظام الأول للمنظمات الدولية والأزمة المصاحبة للإمبراطوريات الاستعمارية. لقد أصبحت المناطق الخاضعة للانتداب إحدى النقاط الرئيسية لتقارب المسائل المتعلقة بالانتشار العالمي للمعايير من خلال الهيئات الدولية. يتم قراءة الخبرة باعتبارها واحدة من علامات الاستعمار المتأخر، المشفّر والواقع تحت النظرات المتقاربة بين العلماء والدول والرأي العام. من خلال وصاية عصبة الأمم (NDS) ، يدرس هذا الكتاب بروز الحيز الدولي كإطار لصنع القرار بين الدول، وكإطار مفتوح وإجرائي يشمل عالم من العلاقات والتدفقات والبنى المتداخلة على عدة مستويات. يعمل الكتاب على رسم شخصيات الخبراء ويوضح اللعبة المعقدة التي تنشأ بين هؤلاء الخبراء والمؤسسات الانتدابية من أجل تعريف المعايير والخبرة. يلقي الكتاب أخيرا الضوء على التحديات الناتجة من الجدلية غير المتكافئة بين الخبراء والخبراء المناوئين، وبين السكان المحليين وسلطات الانتداب.De l’ère coloniale à celle des politiques publiques internationales dans les Suds, l’expertise a joué un rôle croissant dans l’ordre international au vingtième siècle. Notion paradoxale, réputée instrumentale en vue de l’information et de l’amélioration de l’action publique, elle englobe tout un champ de modalités opposées du savoir et de son énonciation. L’expertise se situe entre le savoir d’expérience et le savoir nomothétique abstrait, la recherche et l’autorité, elle est intéressante à étudier dans le cadre du premier système d’organisations internationales et de la crise concomitante des empires coloniaux. Les…
The issue of ownership of cultural objects collected by fieldworkers sponsored by the Australian ... more The issue of ownership of cultural objects collected by fieldworkers sponsored by the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) between 1926 and 1955, when the ANRC was replaced by the Academy of Science, is now in a sense passé, as these collections have been broken up, and now reside in diverse centres both nationally and internationally. This does not mean that we should not revisit the issue of how the ANRC collection was made, the way it was broken up and distributed, the circumstances around its distribution and the question of ownership — does it reside with the collector, the institution housing the collection, or the funding body? This paper traces Ronald Berndt’s attempts to assert ownership over part of the collection housed at the University of Sydney, at the two moments of its redistribution, 1957 and 1980. Wooden sculpture of a human male collected by Berndt, 1946–7 by Leigerang Dalawongu people, north-east Arnhem Land courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre National Mu...
Maybe, in the end, even the lies we tell define us. And better, some of them, than our most earne... more Maybe, in the end, even the lies we tell define us. And better, some of them, than our most earnest attempts at the truth. 1 Ronald Berndt has always averred that a person's career has a lot to do with both family background and the opportunities provided to pursue particular interests. 2 ONALD MURRAY BERNDT (1916-90) 3 and Catherine Helen Berndt (1918-94) had highly successful careers in anthropology that extended over fifty years among Australian Aborigines and briefly in the New Guinea Highlands. They were a private and at times secretive couple. What is not realised is that Ronald Berndt fabricated a seamless story about his schooling and university attendance in order to establish himself in the discipline of anthropology. It is a narrative of destiny: a precocious boy, his interests not fully appreciated, keen to advance, forced by circumstance (and his father) to undertake accounting, but finally finding his vocation and success. It was a fabrication that was widely accepted and promulgated by colleagues and acolytes alike. It was designed to deceive. Why he persisted with such an elaborate and elegant deception is the subject of this paper. R
Anthropological Forum, 2018
On 3 September 1939, Australia followed the United Kingdom in declaring war on Germany. Soon afte... more On 3 September 1939, Australia followed the United Kingdom in declaring war on Germany. Soon afterwards a number of German nationals including Australians of German descent were placed in internment camps. For those German enemy aliens and Australians of German heritage not interned, suspicion was never far from the surface. In the case of the anthropologist Ronald Murray Berndt, what initially put him under suspicion was not his political affiliations or actions, but his German name and some of his utterances on the war which were interpreted as being pro-German. Linked to this was a concern by Australian military and government authorities that Indigenous people were potentially disloyal, and anthropologists who worked with Indigenous Australians were, by the very nature of their relationship with them, considered potential subversives. However, although Ronald Berndt always worked with his wife Catherine, only Ronald was considered a security risk. Catherine was simply seen as his wife, part of a team, about whom nothing adverse was known. This article analyses the early career of Ronald and Catherine Berndt, and the restrictions and blocks they faced in accessing field sites during WWII. An easy answer to such impairments that was made at the time and later, was that Ronald was caught during WWII in a surveillance dragnet that focused on Germanness. The reality that emerges from the archival record, however, is far more complex, and shows amongst others, the exploitation of surveillance by local establishment gatekeepers.
Chicanery. Senior academic appointments in the Antipodes, 2023
Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humi... more Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues’ intellectual abilities, their body of work, capacity as a scholar and fieldworker, effectiveness as a departmental administrator, qualities of leadership, the extent of their collegiality and so on. Rarely do such events bring to the fore disputation and disagreement over theoretical orientation or empirical approaches. That is left to debates and disputes within the university department or faculty and other academic venues, such as conferences and scholarly journals.
Scholars at War is the first scholarly publication to examine the effect World War II had on the ... more Scholars at War is the first scholarly publication to examine the effect World War II had on the careers of Australasian social scientists. It links a group of scholars through geography, transnational, national and personal scholarly networks, and shared intellectual traditions, explores their use, and contextualizes their experiences and contributions within wider examinations of the role of intellectuals in war.
‘Is racism un-Australian?’ is an early draft of The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson and the ... more ‘Is racism un-Australian?’ is an early draft of
The Resurgence of Racism: Howard, Hanson and the Race Debate
, Geoffrey Gray and Christine Winter (eds.), Clayton: Monash Publications in History, no. 24, 1997. The chapters are transcripts or re-written for the edited volume, including two chapters which were not published in
The Resurgence of Racism
. The Symposium, ‘Is racism un-Australian? The revitalisation of Australian discourses of race and pain’, was held at the ANU in February 1997.
Cold War History, 2019
Security services in the Cold War introduced an ethos of secrecy, where state persecution of acad... more Security services in the Cold War introduced an ethos of secrecy, where state persecution of
academics without due process could be justified by the imputation of communism.
Australian security services viewed the work of social anthropologists as providing a perfect
cover for subversive activities among undeveloped peoples. This applied especially to
anthropologists seeking to conduct research in the Australian colony of Papua New Guinea.
Australian security services surveillance of suspected subversives was assisted by
information from MI5 and security services in the African colonies.
The theme of Australian anthropology to collect data on Aboriginal people ‘before it is too late’... more The theme of Australian anthropology to collect data on Aboriginal people ‘before it is too late’ was unfortunately not applied to the discipline itself although AP Elkin, the professor of anthropology from 1934 to 1956, wrote a number of articles about the development of social anthropology in the Sydney department. There is little record of how pre World War II social anthropologists associated with the department of Anthropology in the University of Sydney thought about their discipline and their times; similarly in South Australia, particularly those who worked in the Museum of South Australia and undertook combined anthropological expeditions with the University of Adelaide Board for Anthropological Research. Not to repeat this when it comes to the immediate post-war period is the rationale for this collection. I conducted a symposium in April 1997 focussing on anthropologists who worked in Australia between 1950 to 1970. I asked Ruth Latukefu (nee Fink), Jeremy Beckett, Les Hiatt and John Barnes to discuss their work in this period. Jane Goodale arrived in Canberra soon after: I took the opportunity to invite her to make a contribution. She pleasantly agreed but asked that I would need to be patient as she had other pressing commitments. The wait was worthwhile.
AWM conference paper, 2000
Australian authorities at the start of the war were concerned firstly about the loyalty of its su... more Australian authorities at the start of the war were concerned firstly about the loyalty of its subject peoples and secondly with how colonised people could serve the interests of Australian rule. The Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) was charged with overseeing the war effort in the territories of Papua and New Guinea; part of this charge was the recruitment of native labour for the war effort. In this process New Guineans were often promised a number of things about the future – usually the making of a post-war new order – which had consequences for their relations with a post-war Australian and colonial rule: ‘thousands of labourers, servicemen and villagers listened to speeches, sometimes in languages that they half understood, and heard themselves praised, thanked and promised a richer life in the future.’
ANGAU was often described, both at the time and later, as a harsh employer with the interests of the army put ahead of those of New Guineans. The burdenå of the war was heavier for New Guineans than for Australians on the mainland, especially in terms of the disruption to their lives and the consequences that had for village life. It was a war in which they had little control and were put at the service of either the white ‘masta’ or the incoming Japanese.
This paper examines, briefly, the experiences of New Guineans in the context of these promises, and what it meant for post-war Papua and New Guinea; it discusses some aspects and consequences of labour recruitment. Central to the paper is the question whether Australia had any right to impose such a burden on their colonial subjects.