Abstract
In this paper I provide an interpretative reading Spencer and Gillen. What is read depends in part on what one is looking for, on the purposes for which it is being read, and, what is there to be read depends partly on the audiences that the author has in. I provide a critique of social Darwinist and post-colonial readings of their work. I employ the concept of a motivating theme, which can be applied to segments of the text, which share a common purpose. The themes reflect the ways in which different scholars — historians and anthropologists — have read into the text. I will consider three categories of motivating themes: general contextualisations, ethnographic descriptions, and explanations of data. My discussion of their explanatory approach is centred on their analysis of ritual performances. The accounts of the rituals are not just unanalysed ethnography but are ordered by relating ritual event to social organisation. The centrality of ritual to Aboriginal society has contributed to the lasting impact of their work.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See for example the chapter on ‘The Great Toa Hoax’ in Jones and Sutton’s 1986 book, Art and Land.
Kuklick (2006:561 ff.)) develops a relevant argument when she argues that many of Spencer and Gillen’s key questions were addressed to countering presuppositions of settler-colonial Australian’s as to the innate inferiority of Aboriginal people in racial terms.
See for example Diane Austin-Broos’ review of My Dear Spencer (Austin-Broos 1999).
The aim of the anthropologist is to try to gain ‘access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can in some extended sense of the term, converse with them’ (Geertz 1975: 24).
Kuklick (2006) develops a parallel argument to mine and concludes with reference to Spencer and Gillen: ‘Frazer deduced a variant of the “Whig” narrative of British history, imputing to all of humankind a trajectory of progress that led upward from the baseline of its existence. Malinowski pronounced that the degree to which any given social order operated effectively had to be measured by its own standards. Goldenweiser found justification for an American pluralist vision. Schmidt judged modern society spiritually corrupt. Durkheim identified a civic morality, an analogue to the liberal, secular ideology he had been advocating for France since the 1880s. Although these anthropologists disagreed on many matters, all of them had evidently read the same work’.
References
Austin-Broos, D. J. (1999). Review article: bringing Spencer and Gillen home. Oceania, 69(3), 209–216.
Barthes, R. (1971). S/Z. New York: Hill and Wang.
Charlesworth, M. (2005). Introduction. In M. Charlesworth, F. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: an anthology of recent writings (pp. 1–27). Aldershot: Ashgate.
Geertz, C. (1975). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Hartland, E. S. (1909). Primitive paternity: the myth of supernatural birth in relation to the history of the family. London: David Nutt.
Hiatt, L. R. (1996). Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the evolution of social anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hill, B. (1996). Through Larapinta land: Baldwin Spencer’s glass case. In S. R. Morton & D. J. Mulvaney (Eds.), Exploring central Australia: society, the environment and the 1994 horn expedition (pp. 31–41). Chipping Norton: Surrey Beatty and Sons.
Hodgen, M. (1936). The doctrine of survivals: a chapter in the history of science. London: Allenson.
Jones, P., & Sutton, P. (1986). Art and land: Aboriginal sculptures of the lake Eyre region. Adelaide: Wakefield Press.
Kuklick, H. (2006). “Humanity in the Chrysalis stage”: indigenous Australians in the anthropological imagination, 1899-1926. The British Journal for the History of Science, 39(4), 535–68.
Leach, E. (1967). The structural study of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock Publications.
Macgregor, R. (1997). Imagined destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the doomed race theory, 1880-1939. Carlton: Melbourne University Press.
McLennan, J. F. (1865). Primitive marriage: an inquiry into the origin of the form of capture in marriage ceremonies. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.
Morgan, L. H. (1870). Systems of consanguinity and affinity of the human family. Smithsonian Institution: Washington D.C.
Morphy, H. (1991). Ancestral connections: Art and an Aboriginal system of knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morphy, H. (1996). More than mere facts: Repositioning Spencer and Gillen in the history of anthropology. In S. R. Morton & D. J. Mulvaney (Eds.), Exploring central Australia: society, the environment and the 1894 Horn Expedition (pp. 135–49). Sydney: Surrey Beatty and Sons.
Morphy, H. (1997). Gillen – man of science. In J. Mulvaney, H. Morphy, & A. Petch (Eds.), My Dear Spencer: the letters of F.J Gillen to Baldwin Spencer (pp. 23–51). Melbourne: Hyland House.
Morphy, H. (1998). Spencer and Gillen in Durkheim: The theoretical construction of ethnography. In N. J. Allen, W. S. F. Pickering, & W. Watts Miller (Eds.), On Durkheim’s elementary forms of religious life (pp. 13–28). London: Routledge.
Roth, W. E. (1908). Marriages ceremonies and infant life. North Queensland Ethnography Bulletin, 10, Records of the Australian Museum, 7(1), 1–17.
Rowse, T. (1996). Rationing the inexplicable. In S. R. Morton & D. J. Mulvaney (Eds.), Exploring Central Australia: society, the environment and the 1994 Horn expedition (pp. 104–13). Chipping Norton: Surrey Beatty and Sons.
Spencer, W. B., & Gillen, F. J. (1899). The native tribes of central Australia. London: MacMillan.
Spencer, W. B., & Gillen, F. J. (1904). The Northern tribes of central Australia. London: MacMillan.
Stirling, E. C., & Waite, E. R. (1919). Description of the toas: or Australian Aboriginal direction signs. Records of the South Australian Museum, 1, 101–55.
Stocking, G. W. (1965). On the limits of ‘presentism’ and ‘historicism’ in the historiography of the behavioural sciences. Journal of the History of Behavioural Sciences, 1(3), 211–18.
Stocking, G. W. (1996). After Tylor: British social anthropology, 1888-1951. London: Athlone.
Volosinov, V. N. (1986). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Westermarck, E. (1901). The history of human marriage, 3rd ed., London: Macmillan (originally published: London: Macmillan, 1891).
Wolfe, P. (1999). Settler colonialism and the transformation of anthropology: the politics and poetics of an ethnographic event. London: Cassel.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Morphy, H. Reading Spencer and Gillen. SOPHIA 51, 545–560 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0291-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0291-z