Introduction: People and Change in Indigenous Australia

Abstract

This set of essays originated in a panel on “personhood” in Aboriginal Australia held at the annual meetings of the Australian Anthropological Society in 2013. We note this to make clear our intention to consolidate, and reflect upon, writing by anthropologists about indigenous personhood in Australia. It is also our aim to support new thinking in this area. We have been motivated by a belief that still not enough has been done in anthropology to give a fuller sense of the changing lives and being and the variable circumstances of Australian indigenous communities. Indeed, much anthropological discussion remains embedded in traditionalizing views of indigenous people. These views often come in the form of accounts that seem to underline essential and apparently timeless difference. Show more