Text and context : some issues in Warlpiri ethnography

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the way in which particular aspects of Warlpiri ethnography have been inescapably contextualised by intellectual, institutional and political conditions of anthropological practice. Recent literature has opened up new perspectives on the relation between ethnography and its subjects. These concerns do not, however, address the broader political implications of anthropological representation, nor the means by which one form or style of ethnographic writing and analysis rather than another becomes dominant and accepted as valid. Certain conventions developed internationally were decisive in constraining the means by which anthropological knowledge could be constructed and communicated. This situation went largely unrecognised by anthropologists, participating as they were within unquestioned historically and politically determined parameters "authorised" by the Anglophone interpretive community. The dominance of this paradigm was transferred to Australia, where national considerations too shaped the acceptable canons of ethnographic writing.