About the book
Aboriginal Economy and Society reconstructs and compares the precolonial economy and society of peoples from seven contrasting regions of Australia, as they appear to have been at the threshold of British colonisation.
The main motivation for doing the research and writing the book was to get a systematic picture of the kind and degree of variation in Aboriginal economy and society. It is of course possible to gain an impression of variation simply be reading ethnographies of different regions. The sources are very piecemeal for some regions, however, especially the southeast the southwest of the continent. Moreover, the older material requires sorting and reinterpreting to render it comparable with more recent anthropological writings which use a very different technical language. Aboriginal Economy and Society interprets ethnographic sources from the 1830s to the present within a common analytical framework.
The book draws on a wide variety of sources including early colonial writings, amateur and professional anthropology, linguistics and archaeology about the following peoples and regions:
• Kûnai (Kurnai, Gunnai) people of Gippsland, eastern Victoria;
• Yuwaaliyaay people and their neighbours of the Darling/Barwon River in northern New South Wales;
• Pitjantjatjara people and their neighbours of the Western Desert;
• Wiil (or Wiilman) and Minong people of the south coast of the Southwest region of Western Australia;
• Northern ‘Sandbeach’ people (speakers of Umpila and related languages) of eastern Cape York Peninsula people;
• Ngarinyin and their neighbours (Worrorra, Wunambal, Gamberre) of the northwest Kimberley;
• Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land.
The seven case studies sample wide variation in environments, from the temperate wet forests of the southeast to the arid zone, and the tropical north. They also sample wide variation in institutional forms and belief-systems, from organised elopement and doctrines about sky beings of Kûnai people, to the complex arranged marriages and intersecting ancestral tracks of the Yolngu region. And they sample a variety of Pama-Nyungan and non-Pama-Nyungan languages.
The focus on the economy makes it possible to be concise yet bring in a wide range of institutional forms, all of which have a bearing on the economy – identities, kinship and marriage, cosmologies and governance. It examines the implications of differences in environments and resources, technologies and institutional fields for the organisation of production distribution, exchange and ‘trade’. Not only does the book examine variation in each of these domains, but in the concluding chapter compares and contrasts the regions as wholes. The text is complemented by tables, diagrams, photographs and prints from a number of national and state archives and collections.
The chapters
After an Introduction, the chapters of Part I of the book, on ‘Ecology’, outline features of the environments of the seven regions, the food resources available and their seasonality, technologies of the seven regions, population, and settlement and mobility. The very mobile Western Desert groups contrast with the rather sedentary coastal peoples, especially Sandbeach groups. And the strongly seasonal movement of peoples of the tropical north contrasts with the response of Western Desert peoples to their more variable and unpredictable resources.
Part II on ‘institutional fields’ includes chapters on modes of identity (language, locality, totemism), kinship and marriage, cosmologies and governance. Each begins with an introduction that outlines the basics of that particular field, such as language-identities, subsections, modes and kin classification, ‘promise’ marriage, and totemism. The body of each chapter documents the forms prevalent in each region, with similarities and differences summarised at the end.
The chapters of Part III are concerned with the organisation of production, the control of productive means, distribution and consumption, exchange and ‘trade’. Each considers the implications of the institutional fields outlined in Part II for the organisation of the economy. The chapters document the size and gender composition of work teams, the gender division of labour, patterns of land ownership and use rights, the prohibitions and obligations governing distribution, and wider patterns of exchange and what has been called ‘trade’. The chapter on exchange and trade draws on recent discussions of ‘inalienable possessions’ by Annette Weiner and Maurice Godelier.
The concluding chapter brings together variation in each institutional field and aspect of economy, summarised in comprehensive tables. It considers the extent to which variation in one domain such as kinship and marriage, is related to others such as environment and resources, and the structure of groups, and considers explanations for some of the variation.
The findings
The main finding of the book is that in spite of considerable variation in environments, resources, technologies, population density, modes of settlement and patterns of mobility, the organisation of production and patterns of distribution were rather similar across the seven regions. The gender division of labour, the distribution of women’s product (vegetable foods, small game fish and crustacea) to the woman’s camp (hearth group) and certain other relatives, and the wider division of men’s product (large and small game, fish) to the wider residence group, were common patterns. The supply of meat by a man to his actual or future wife’s parents was also a common feature.
Variation in institutional forms was considerable, however, and these had implications for the economy, especially for exchange. Most dramatic among these were the marriage systems of Ngarinyin and their neighbours, and of Yolngu people. Asymmetrical kin terminologies were associated with high and very high levels of polygyny, giving rise to fast-growing and fast-declined patrilineal groups. Highly polygynous males stood at the nodes of extensive exchange networks and were leaders of growing patri-groups. The asymmetrical marriages (of women of one group to men of another, but not vice versa) created ‘paths’ of exchange relation across wide regions, formalised in the wurnan exchange system of the Kimberley (Ngarinyin and their neighbours).
The concluding chapter suggests that relatively high population densities were required to sustain these high levels of polygyny, which occurred on the tropical coast and large habitable islands of the north. But certain institutional means were also necessary, especially asymmetrical cross-cousin marriage (FMBSD marriage among Ngarinyin and their neighbours, MBD/MMBDD marriage among Yolngu people).
Cosmologies
varied greatly as well, from the sky beings of Kûnai and Yuwaaliyaay
people and their neighbours, to the extended ancestral tracks of the
Western Desert with their rather terrestrial focus and long connections,
and to the very localised totemic sites of Sandbeach people. Western
Desert people, Ngarinyin people and their neighbours and Sandbeach people
practiced rites to increase the availability of food species and water,
as well as enhance human fertility. Sandbeach and Yolngu people used
ancestral sites aggressively to attack enemies. Kûnai people were
unusual among the case studies in the presence of shamans ( birraark)
who invoked spirits of the recently dead in séances.
Most regions, but not among Yolngu people, had a specialised role incorporating
sorcerer, magician, healer and rain-maker, complementing leaders of ancestral
totemic rites and sites. The analysis also suggests that there was variation
in the character of gender relations, with Kûnai people at the more egalitarian
end, with male dominance greatest among Yolngu people.
The concluding chapter suggests that the limited productivity of Aboriginal ecologies and economies imposed constraints on social differentiation. In particular, the limited, fluctuating, and vulnerable nature of resources precluded exclusive ownership and enduring hierarchies. The book ends by suggesting that the differences may have implications for colonial history – it may be that their particular customs affected the ways in which people interacted with outsiders, such as the ability to organise resistance, or the willingness to engage in relations of exchange of particular kinds.
What the book has to offer
While valuable in many ways, existing textbooks such as the Berndts’ The World of the First Australians and Ken Maddock’s Australian Aborigines: A Portrait of their Society document variation in a piecemeal way, without showing the overall character of particular regions or how they differed from one another as wholes. They also rather neglect the material base – food resources, technology and the organisation of production. Aboriginal Economy and Society offers a systematic comparison of economy and society of seven regions, and integrates information on environment, resources, technology, population, settlement and mobility, institutional fields and the organisation of economy. It brings recent anthropological insights into such matters as group structure and identity to bear on interpretations of the older material.
The book also makes the older ethnographies of the southeast and the southwest more accessible to modern readers, by reinterpreting and collating the sources. The Kûnai case study (Gippsland, Victoria), for example, draws for the most part on AW Howitt’s and J Bulmer’s writings, some of it in the form of letters and notes in the archives. The case study on Yuwaaliyaay people and their neighbours of northern New South Wales draws primarily on K Langloh Parker’s The Euahlayi Tribe, in conjunction with other contemporary reports, later surveys and recent linguistic, archaeological and anthropological reconstructions. The Wiil and Minong case study (south coast of the southwest and its hinterland) draws on writings of Capt. Collet Barker, Isaac Nind, Ethel Hassell, Daisy Bates (edited by Isobel White) and others, aided by a number of recent theses.
Publication Details
Published by Oxford Univesity Press: Melbourne, Oxford, New York
436pp. Bibliography, Index
ISBN 0 19 550766 5
$55 AUS