Luritja Management of the State
M. Hinkson and B. Smith, Figuring the Intercultural in Aboriginal Australia Special Edition, Oceania Vol 75, No 3, Pp 222-233, 2005
Posted: 27 Mar 2013
Date Written: 2005
Abstract
In the Central Australian community of Amunturrngu the Luritja management of the State is not only subversive to the development of representative democracy and a capitalist economy, but this discourse of (dis)engagement empowers community members. Thus, offering an autonomy, albeit marginal, from the mainstream. The ‘problem of the cultural’ emerges in this engagement and the production of meaning requires enunciating the ‘third space’: the ambivalent space of the cultural interface. Within this post-settlement space certain modalities have been reformulated to structure a complex locality that defies the reification of social structures that anthropology so readily draws. How do people operate in this space and what type of person is most active here? The theoretical tools for this examination of Amunturrngu's engagement with the State are taken from political anthropology and post-colonial theory.
Keywords: post colonialism, the state, Aboriginal Australia
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