Unit convenor and teaching staff |
Unit convenor and teaching staff
Unit Convenor
Eve Vincent
Contact via Via email
W6A, 611
Monday 12pm-1pm
Tutor
Drew Anderson
Contact via Via email
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Credit points |
Credit points
3
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Prerequisites |
Prerequisites
39cp or admission to GDipArts
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Corequisites |
Corequisites
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Co-badged status |
Co-badged status
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Unit description |
Unit description
This unit introduces and explores the anthropology of contemporary Indigenous Australia. The contemporary conditions in both 'remote' Aboriginal Australia, and in rural, urban and suburban communities, cannot be understood without knowledge of pre-colonial and early colonial cultural, economic and social forms. The unit explores current issues against the background of the deep historical perspective of human presence in Australia. A second underlying theme of the unit is that neither Indigenous nor settler Australian societies can be understood without a recognition of their profound historical interrelation. Lectures explore how forms of Australian settlement and governmental practice have transformed Aboriginal Australia in some unexpected ways, and also how Aboriginal perspectives and forms of active social engagement continue to shape broader Australian cultural concerns. Specific topics to be covered include: life perspectives and practices of hunters and gatherers; the land-people connection (cosmology, totemism and territorial organisation); first contacts and the impact of European settlement; urban Aboriginal cultures; the role of the law, police and prisons in contemporary Indigenous Australia; and painting, music, and historically dynamic Indigenous expressive practices.
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Information about important academic dates including deadlines for withdrawing from units are available at https://www.mq.edu.au/study/calendar-of-dates
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
You must attempt all assessment tasks to pass this unit. Late work will be penalised: 5 per cent per day will be deducted for late written work.
Name | Weighting | Due |
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Tutorial participation | 10% | Weekly |
Tutorial facilitation/summary | 20% | Weeks allocated in Week 1 |
Research Essay | 40% | Friday May 13 |
Take Home Exam | 30% | Friday June 17 |
Due: Weekly
Weighting: 10%
Brief Description: Tutorials offer the opportunity for informed, open discussion of the weekly topics and readings. Each week, you must prepare for the tutorial discussion by completing the assigned readings. You should arrive at class willing to engage in respectful discussion of the readings’ key points and arguments. You are expected both to make contributions to class discussions, and to listen to others' contributions.
You are expected to attend at least 80 per cent of tutorials over the course of the semester. You will need to provide documentation if you miss more than 20 per cent of tutorials. Please notify your tutor if you are going to be absent from a tutorial.
The final mark for your participation will be based on a combined assessment of the following three criteria (providing you have met the minimum attendance requirement): preparedness; appropriate communication; listening skills.
Due: Weeks allocated in Week 1
Weighting: 20%
In addition to weekly reading, students are also required to prepare three questions to lead class discussion of one of the tutorial topics. Do not present a summary of the readings - assume that your classmates have also read it! Instead you should bring three questions arising from the readings. These questions might: seek to clarify something you found confusing; draw the readings together; point out a disagreement evident within the weekly readings; or stimulate deeper understanding of the weekly topic. You should consult with the other student/s also preparing to lead this week's discussion.
One week after you lead discussion, you should submit a 1000 word critical summary of the weekly topic to your tutor. Summarise the overall theme of the week, as well as the allocated readings. You may also refer to the tutorial discussion to tackle key points arising from the readings.
Due: Friday May 13
Weighting: 40%
A list of essay questions and detailed marking criteria will be distributed in Week 4, prior to the Easter break. While the readings listed in this unit guide will provide the basis for your essay, students are expected to engage with literature specific to their chosen topic, beyond that listed on the outline. Your lecturer and/or tutor is available to help you identify relevant sources to consult. Alternatively, you may develop your own topic subject to your lecturer’s approval. This topic must be approved two weeks prior to the due date.
Word length: 2,500 words
Due: Friday June 17
Weighting: 30%
The exam will be essay based and will cover the films, lectures and tutorial readings in the course. The exam is 1,500 words in length.
You are required to purchase a small booklet to read in Week 2, Nguly Gu Yadoo Mai (Our Good Food). This booklet will be available for purchase at the first lecture, or from Eve's office at a pre-arranged time. This book costs $10, and all proceeds go straight to the authors - two Senior Aboriginal women from the far west coast of South Australia.
All other readings are available through your iLearn site.
This course entails both lectures and tutorials. It is expected that you attend both. All lectures (not films) will be recorded on echo360 and made available on the iLearn site to assist with review of course material (audio recording only). This should not be considered a substitute for lecture attendance.
Lecture slides will also be available on the iLearn site for review.
Week 1: Beginnings. Introduction to Indigenous Australia
Monday February 29
This lecture will provide an introduction to the unit, its scope and aim, and an explanation of requirements and student assessment. We will discuss the readings, some conceptual and representational problems we will face, and the history of research in Australianist Anthropology and Indigenous Studies. We will also begin our discussion of the history of human inhabitation of the continent, and of mobile hunter-gatherer resource use. There are no tutorials in Week 1.
Required reading:
Further reading:
Week 2: The concept of ‘country’: dreamings, ritual and people-land relations
Monday March 7
We will finalise our discussion of the economic basis of hunter-gatherer life begun in the previous week. We then turn towards the Aboriginal worldview or cosmology, and its embodiment and objectification in ritual and social relations. As anthropologists have long identified and Aboriginal people strongly assert, the living land and waters, or country, created by ancestral beings is the cornerstone of traditional Aboriginal life. Anthropologists speak of a totemic system or the Dreaming. What exactly is meant by the terms ‘totemism’, 'country’ and ‘Dreaming’? How do these concepts help us to understand different understandings of emplacement, belonging, and social relations?
Required reading:
Further reading:
Week 3: Relatedness: What does it mean to be kin?
Monday March 14
Guest lecturer: Dr Belinda Burbidge
This week we shift the focus from people-land relations to people’s relationships to each other. We will learn that social relations can best be understood, using Myers, when we consider people’s rights and relationships to objects. Further, we will explore the way kinship concepts are activated in urban and regional settings today as we ask: What does it mean to be family?
Required reading:
Further Reading:
Week 4: First Contacts: early colonial relations, early anthropological concerns
Monday March 21
This week we discuss early colonial relations, questions of conquest and ownership, and begin to explore the great shift from early colonial assumptions of terra nullius to later acknowledgment of distinctively Indigenous relations to land. We discuss 'settler colonialism' and the centrality of land to this particular form of colonial capitalism. We ask, how did Aboriginal people experience first contact? Why did European soldiers and colonists imagine that the land was ‘unowned’? How did colonial relations begin to shape the experience of country and place for both Indigenous people and settlers? And what drove early anthropological inquiries into Aboriginal cultural forms?
Required reading:
Further reading:
Week 5: No class (Easter Monday)
This Easter, I encourage you to read about Aboriginal contact with Christianity, and the history of missions in Australia.
Suggested readings:
Week 6: Civil Rights and the Bark Petition
Monday April 4
This week our attention shifts to the twentieth century, and particularly to changing Indigenous political and cultural aspirations in the post-war period. Our focus is on how Indigenous-land relations articulate with the broader settler colonial society and state. We track the emergence of a cultural politics at this time, and consider how ‘traditional’ meanings and messages are conveyed to new audiences. Our focus will be on the 'politics of difference', land, and earlier calls for equality.
Required reading:
Further reading:
April 11-22: mid-semester recess, no lectures or tutorials
Week 7: No class (ANZAC Day)
We miss another class this week. I would like you all to read this article about 'black diggers', and to read some of the background research drawn upon here.
Suggested reading:
Week 8: Land and the politics of recognition
Monday May 2
As we have seen, from the early 1970s until the early 1990s, Aboriginal efforts to secure recognition of their prior occupation and status as land owners made strides at state, territory, and national levels, most prominently in light of the Land Rights Act, NT (1976). This week we also discuss the Mabo ruling that led to Native Title legislation. The lecture and readings introduce critical perspectives on the politics of recognition, the notion of cultural difference, and what it has come to stand for. Why are land rights and sacred sites legislation so important to Aboriginal people? Do you think that Mabo fostered European understanding of Aboriginal land tenure? Does native title offer a way for European and Aboriginal reconciliation? What are some ways we might think of the unintended consequences of native title legislation for Indigenous identities and senses of belonging?
Required reading:
Further reading:
Week 9: Contemporary Aboriginal worlds, part 1: Koori Sydney
Monday May 9
Over the next two weeks we will use detailed ethnographic work and films to grasp a crucial point of this course: the specificity of different Indigenous realities and contemporary conditions. We'll begin here in Sydney, and then move to north-western Western Australia next week.
Film: Redfern Now Blackfella Films
Week 10: Contemporary Aboriginal worlds, part 2: Mardu Lives
Monday May 16
Required reading:
Film: Contact Screen Australia and Contact Films
Week 11: Bringing the State into View
Monday May 9
We have been circling around the question of the state’s role in Indigenous lives, a question brought into focus with the 2007 Northern Territory National Emergency Response ('the intervention). This week, we focus our attention firmly on the state. We ask: What might an anthropology of the state, ‘state effects’ and state practices look like? Where and what is ‘the state’? How does the state constitute and govern contemporary Aboriginal subjects? How do Aboriginal people meet the state?
Required reading:
Further reading:
Week 12: Crime, Police and Imprisonment: Indigenous people and the Law
Monday May 23
We often hear media stories that tell of Indigenous rates of imprisonment. In Western Australia, for example, the rate of incarceration for Indigenous Australians is 20 times higher than for non-Indigenous. From the Australian Bureau of Statistics we can learn that rates of incarceration continuing to rise markedly between 2002 and 2012. How do anthropological analyses help us make sense of this statistical picture? What historical, political and cultural frames shed light on the relationship between Indigenous people, the criminal justice system and correctional institutions?
Required reading:
Further reading:
Week 13: Indigenous-environmentalist relations
We close by considering the relationship between Indigenous people and environmentalist visions. This relationship has come under sustained scrutiny in recent years, as Professor Marcia Langton and others argue that conservationists impede Indigenous people's opportunities to benefit from participation in the mining industry, for example. We will listen to some of Langton's 2012 Boyer lectures as part of the lecture.
Monday June 9
Required reading:
Further reading:
Macquarie University policies and procedures are accessible from Policy Central. Students should be aware of the following policies in particular with regard to Learning and Teaching:
Academic Honesty Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/academic_honesty/policy.html
New Assessment Policy in effect from Session 2 2016 http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/policy_2016.html. For more information visit http://students.mq.edu.au/events/2016/07/19/new_assessment_policy_in_place_from_session_2/
Assessment Policy prior to Session 2 2016 http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/assessment/policy.html
Grading Policy prior to Session 2 2016 http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/grading/policy.html
Grade Appeal Policy http://mq.edu.au/policy/docs/gradeappeal/policy.html
Complaint Management Procedure for Students and Members of the Public http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/complaint_management/procedure.html
Disruption to Studies Policy http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/docs/disruption_studies/policy.html The Disruption to Studies Policy is effective from March 3 2014 and replaces the Special Consideration Policy.
In addition, a number of other policies can be found in the Learning and Teaching Category of Policy Central.
Macquarie University students have a responsibility to be familiar with the Student Code of Conduct: https://students.mq.edu.au/support/student_conduct/
Results shown in iLearn, or released directly by your Unit Convenor, are not confirmed as they are subject to final approval by the University. Once approved, final results will be sent to your student email address and will be made available in eStudent. For more information visit ask.mq.edu.au.
Macquarie University provides a range of support services for students. For details, visit http://students.mq.edu.au/support/
Learning Skills (mq.edu.au/learningskills) provides academic writing resources and study strategies to improve your marks and take control of your study.
Students with a disability are encouraged to contact the Disability Service who can provide appropriate help with any issues that arise during their studies.
For all student enquiries, visit Student Connect at ask.mq.edu.au
For help with University computer systems and technology, visit http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/offices_and_units/information_technology/help/.
When using the University's IT, you must adhere to the Acceptable Use of IT Resources Policy. The policy applies to all who connect to the MQ network including students.
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