An Appreciation of Difference: W.E.H Stanner and Aboriginal Australia.

An Appreciation of Difference: W.E.H Stanner and Aboriginal Australia. An Appreciation of Difference: W.E.H Stanner and Aboriginal Australia. Edited by Melinda Hinkson and Jeremy Beckett. Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. 2008. xviii, 293 pp, Maps, Illustrations, Index. Price; $39.95 (paper) W.E.H. Stanner (1905-1981) was and is a true intellectual giantboth as a humanist and as a social anthropologist. Over four decades,his role was critical in the development of Aboriginal Studies and inregards to his concern that past and current political issues simplycannot be set aside from anthropology in particular and the plight ofindigenous people in general. For those who knew him at the AustralianNational University where he taught and wrote, he was one of the mostgiving individuals one will ever encounter. More on this will be setforth later in this essay. This volume is based on the ANU/Stanner conference which was heldin November, 2005 in Canberra. It is fortunate that Mrs. Stanner andtheir two sons were at the festivities. On the other side, it isunfortunate that Dr. Diane Barwick, who worked closely with Bill Stannerthroughout her life, died in 1986 at a young age and did not enjoy theintellectual content of the conference and all of what Bill Stannerstood for in his life time. Given the limitations on the length of this review, it is difficultto deal with each of the essays separately, but it also must be notedthat the intellectual content of each of the essays is of the highestorder. Each piece was done specifically for the conference and forStanner, as opposed to manuscripts that are filed away over the decades.The essays cover many facets of Stanner's work and writings, hisapproach to Aboriginal Land Rights and self-determination, to hiswritings on local organization, Aboriginal religious thought, and hisgeneral papers which re-think certain aspects of British socialanthropology as it related to understanding and interpreting AustralianAboriginal ritual and myth. In the Foreword, Professor Mick Dodson sets forth with creativeclarity the various temporal issues which emerged before and duringStanner's total conviction with land rights and indigenous peopleas a central concern of the Australian nation. It goes without sayingthat Stanner's early statements and his total moral conviction toAboriginal issues and rights moved from the local level and eventuallywas a nation-wide issue. What should be noted, is that Stanner was theestablishment in academia and when his total commitment was expressed infuture writings and in his 1968 Boyer Lecture: After the dreaming, noone would dare accuse him and his moral position as being the result ofleft-wing political leanings, commies and/or even Trotskyites. In fact,the whole movement took off by Stanner's total conviction as anexpression of the Establishment. He was hardly a leftie in any sense. Beckett and Hinkson provide a critical piece which initiates thetotality of Stanner's life and his legacy. Their essay is followedby seventeen critical pieces dealing with the diverse fields whichStanner encountered throughout his life--both academic andanthropological. This total pursuit covers what is labelled TranscendentValue, his writings on land and organization, and finally as a publicintellectual. Each of these pieces must be read and I can hardly dojustice to them in this short review. What is clear, especially in theessay by Beckett and Hinkson is how the idea of 'High Culture'was developed by Stanner and by those who followed his tradition. In order to explicate what is meant by Transcendent Value, we mustdeal with Stanner's use of 'High Culture'. In one sense,High Culture are those features of Aboriginal Australian philosophy,metaphysics, and religion which simply cannot be reduced to behavior perse. In this sense, they are within the intrinsic realm of thought as amental category which exists apart from what is done. What is criticalhere is to note that these theoretical and empirical questions emergequite early in Stanner's work and are partly expressed in his ownfieldwork among the Murinbata, but also in his gradual rejection ofcertain basic tenets in the writings of Durkheim and in the socialanthropological perspectives of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. To critically appraise both sides of Stanner's arguments, itis essential to deal with them separately though they have a mutualinfluence on each other. The foundations of early British socialanthropological theory go back to Durkheim and Freud. From Durkheim andhis work on religion we have a total intellectual commitment to theconviction that the social level of society always dominates thesymbolic, they are inter-connected but of more importance is that thesymbolic is the dependent variable to the social. Thus, any change orshift in the social must bring forth a corresponding change in thesymbolic realm. This sociological axiom is thoroughly Durkheim and onewhich Stanner rejected as he moved away from the Radcliffe-Brownperspective which coupled ritual and myth as a binding unity in thatmyth could not be interpreted without reference to the social and inthis, case ritual. In his major volume on religion, one of Stanner's mostcritical re-appraisals of the Durkheimian and Radcliffe-Brownian dogmais his analysis and insistence that among Aboriginal societies, thecritical feature is that most rites are mythless and most myths areriteless. Once this uncoupling of ritual and myth occured, boththeoretically and empirically, it permitted Stanner to deal withsubjects such as axiology, ontology, the importance of the metaphysicalin ethical and aesthetic questions, the role of inversion in myth, thevarious expressions of mystery and the mystical in myth and philosophy,and how the idea of ground is emblemized in the metaphysical. Many ofthe essays, especially by Beckett, Hinkson, Sutton, Keen, Morphy andFurlan, in this volume touch on the subjects mentioned above asdeveloped by Stanner. And above all, most of the essays go further thanStanner did and he would have been proud of their accomplishments. I will end this piece on some personal matters. As ananthropologist from the University of Michigan, I first met Bill Stannerin his office in 1966 and later in 1967 and at various times in theearly 1970s. In 1966, I was planning to work on language questions amongthe Pitjantjatjara and Stanner was very gracious with his time. He knewthat my areal specialization was and still is Southeast Asia, thePhilippines, and that my mentors were Fred Eggan, also a student ofRadcliffe-Brown, and J.B. Birdsell. I had read some of Stanner'swork when I arrived and we talked on many of the subjects which I havedeveloped above. In the States, I have taught Stanner's writings in classes onreligion, aboriginal cultures and in various lectures for differentcourses. And in many cases I have assigned his writings but access tothem, especially the early ones is most difficult. What I wouldrecommend is that the Aboriginal Institute reprint and re-issue all ofhis writings which will make them more accessible since Stanner wrote indifferent and diverse places. And above all, On aboriginal religionshould be reissued as a separate volume. It is not available in thiscountry * and it is as critical to the study of religion as is Weber andDurkheim. Over the past decades, I have heard Australian scholars say thatmost American anthropologists do not know of their work and nor is itread. I suspect that this has some truth except for anthropologists whowork among Aboriginal cultures. But let me add a short note on this. Inthe early 1970s while at Michigan, the anthropology department atHarvard University asked me to give a lecture and a seminar on myfieldwork among the Pitjantjatjara. In my lectures I made lengthyreferences to Stanner's work. The first comment during the questionperiod was from someone who vociferously stated that if anyone in theaudience was working on religion and comparative religion in general andnot only Aboriginal religion, it was imperative that they should readStanner first and foremost, followed by Weber and Durkheim. That evening I asked my host who was the individual in the audiencewho made the comments on Stanner. I was told that it was the sociologistTalcott Parsons. And in 1990 I was interviewed by the Dean of the SocialSciences at the University of California/Davis for a position in theanthropology department. I had heard that the Dean was a sociologist. Helooked at my vita, saw that I had done field work in Australia and hisfirst question was if I knew Stanner's writings on religion. I gavehim a five minute lecture and he was satisfied. He also was a student ofParsons at Harvard and it was all W.E.H Stanner. * (eds' note) In Australia, we are luckier. See advertisementon p 224. See also next review. Aram A. Yengoyan The University of California, Davis