A Cautious Silence: The Politics of Australian Anthropology by Geoffrey Gray

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with no external stickers. Stamps and stickers on inside pages. Stamp on right foredge. Wear to book corners and edges. Body text and binding are still very good.

This is the first exploration of modern Australian social anthropology which examines the forces that helped shaped its formation. Geoffrey Gray reveals the struggle to establish and consolidate anthropology in Australia as an academic discipline. He argues that to do so, anthropologists had to demonstrate that their discipline was the predominant interpreter of Indigenous life. Thus, they were able, and were called on, to assist government in the control, development, and advancement of Indigenous peoples.

Gray aims to help us understand the present organisational structures, and assist in the formulation of anthropology's future role in Australia; to provide a wider political and social context for Australian social anthropology, and to consider the importance of anthropology as a past definer of Indigenous people. (back cover)