Dynamics of Difference in Australia
Описание книги
In Dynamics of Difference in Australia , Francesca Merlan examines relations between indigenous and nonindigenous people from the events of early exploration and colonial endeavors to the present day. From face-to-face interactions to national and geopolitical affairs, the book illuminates the dimensions of difference that are revealed by these encounters: what indigenous and nonindigenous people pay attention to, what they value, what preconceived notions each possesses, and what their responses are to the Other. Basing her analysis on her extensive fieldwork in northern Australia, Merlan highlights the asymmetries in the exchanges between the settler majority and the indigenous minority, looking at everything from forms of violence and material transactions, to indigenous involvement in resource development, to governmental intervention in indigenous affairs. Merlan frames the book within the current debate in Australian society concerning the constitutional recognition of indigenous people by the nation-state. Surveying the precursors to this question and its continuing and unresolved nature, she chronicles the ways in which an indigenous minority can remain culturally different while simultaneously experiencing the transformative forces of domination, constraint, and inequality. Conducting an investigation of long-term change against the backdrop of a highly salient and timely public debate surrounding indigenous issues, Dynamics of Difference has far-reaching implications both for public policy and for current theoretical debates about the nature of sociocultural continuity and change.
Отрывок из книги
Dynamics of Difference in Australia
Indigenous Past and Present in a Settler Country
.....
Sometimes, outsiders’ forms of power become structuring conditions of indigenous people’s lives, without their necessarily focusing on how that has come about and without these conditions being directly taken account of in their forms of action. However, when indigenous families seek to avoid the police or regularly occupy town spaces so as to minimize interaction with whites and with other indigenous people, we see people dealing knowingly with structures of power. It is more difficult, but important, to render account of how forms of power and influence operate when social landscapes, sound-scapes, money transactions, and many other kinds of events and actions penetrate people’s lives in new ways.
We need a general term for a form of life that persists in difference, having and recognizing qualities of its own, while it is lived in the shadow of potentially dominant power and hegemonic cultural influences, whether the latter come in the form of foods, labor, music, visual culture and technology, welfare, or churches. Neither “autonomy” nor “subordination” describes this form of life. I have sometimes referred to this general condition as “intercultural” (Merlan 1998, 2005) with reference to relations between indigenous people and communities and wider Australian society, but that deliberately leaves such a space open to be specified more closely. To do so is difficult. It is important to recognize forms of indigenous difference, both continuous and innovative, in people’s lives, but without resorting to holistic concepts of continuous cultural logics that fail to account for change and conditions.
.....