- Anthropology, Embodiment, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Australian Indigenous Studies, Warlpiri, Monsters and Monster Theory, and 27 moreNeocolonialism, Everyday Life Studies, Emotion, Sleep, Boredom, Anthropology of the Night, Anthropology of the Body, Anthropology of space, Anthropology of Death, Geographies of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations, colonialism, and Indigenous self-determination, Inter-civilization contact and conflict, Colonialism, Monsters and the Monstrous, Monsters, Ghosts, Haunting, Phenomenology of the body, Anthropology of the Senses, History of the Senses, Animal Studies, Dogs, Human-Animal Relations, Olfaction (Human Sciences and the Humanities), Canine Cultural Studies, Embodied knowledge, Settler Colonial Studies, Fear, Laughter, and Darknessedit
For every generic type of monster—ghost, demon, vampire, dragon—there are countless locally specific manifestations, with their own names, traits, and appearances. Such monsters populate all corners of the globe haunting their humans... more
For every generic type of monster—ghost, demon, vampire, dragon—there are countless locally specific manifestations, with their own names, traits, and appearances. Such monsters populate all corners of the globe haunting their humans wherever they live. Living with Monsters is a collection of fourteen short pieces of ethnographic fiction (and a more academically inclined introduction and afterword) presenting a playful, spirited, and engaging look at how people live with their respective monsters around the world. They focus on the nitty-gritty dos and don’ts of how to placate spirits in India; how to domesticate Georgian goblins, how to live with aliens, how to avoid being taken by Anito in Taiwan, while simultaneously illuminating the politics of monster–human relations.
In this collection, anthropologists working in fieldsites as diverse as the urban Ghana, the rural US, remote Aboriginal Australia, and the internet present imaginative accounts that demonstrate how thinking with monsters encourages people to contemplate difference, to understand inequality, and to see the world from new angles. Combine monsters with experimental ethnography, and the result is a volume that crackles with creative energy, flouts traditions of ethnographic writing, and pushes anthropology into new terrains.
In this collection, anthropologists working in fieldsites as diverse as the urban Ghana, the rural US, remote Aboriginal Australia, and the internet present imaginative accounts that demonstrate how thinking with monsters encourages people to contemplate difference, to understand inequality, and to see the world from new angles. Combine monsters with experimental ethnography, and the result is a volume that crackles with creative energy, flouts traditions of ethnographic writing, and pushes anthropology into new terrains.
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Monsters are culturally meaningful across the world. Starting from this key premise, this book tackles monsters in the context of social change. Writing in a time of violent upheaval, when technological innovation brings forth new... more
Monsters are culturally meaningful across the world. Starting from this key premise, this book tackles monsters in the context of social change. Writing in a time of violent upheaval, when technological innovation brings forth new monsters while others perish as part of the widespread extinctions that signify the Anthropocene, contributors argue that putting monsters at the center of social analysis opens up new perspectives on change and social transformation. Through a series of ethnographically grounded analyses they capture monsters that herald, drive, experience, enjoy, and suffer the transformations of the worlds they beleaguer. Topics examined include the evil skulking new roads in Ancient Greece, terror in post-socialist Laos’s territorial cults, a horrific flying head that augurs catastrophe in the rain forest of Borneo, benign spirits that accompany people through the mist in Iceland, flesh-eating giants marching through neo-colonial central Australia, and ghosts lingering in Pacific villages in the aftermath of environmental disasters. By taking the proposition that monsters and the humans they haunt are intricately and intimately entangled seriously, this book offers unique, cross-cultural perspectives on how people perceive the world and their place within it. It also shows how these experiences of belonging are mediated by our relationships with the other-than-human.
TOC
List of FiguresAcknowledgementsContributor biographies
Introduction: Monsters and Change, Yasmine Musharbash and Geir Henning Presterudstuen
1. Monsters and Fear of Highway Travel in Ancient Greece and Rome, Debbie Felton
2. Gods as Monsters: Insatiable Appetites, Exceeding Interpretations and A Surfeit of Life, Indira Arumugam
3. Pangkarlangu, Wonder, Extinction, Yasmine Musharbash
4. Decline and Resilience of Eastern Penan Monsters, Mikael Rothstein
5. Monster Mash: What Happens When Aboriginal Monsters are Co-Opted into the Mainstream, Christine Judith Nicholls
6. Margt býr í þokunni – What Dwells in the Mist? Helena Onnudottir and Mary Hawkins
7. Bird/Monsters and Contemporary Social Fears in the Central Desert of Australia, Georgia Curran
8. The Nine-Night Siege: Kurdaitcha at the Interface of Warlpiri/Non-Indigenous Relations, Joanne Thurman
9. Monsters, Place, and Murderous Winds in Fiji, Geir Henning Presterudstuen
10. Terror and the Territory Cults: Pregnancy and Power in Monsoon Asia, Holly High
11. Drawing in the Margins: My Son’s Arsenal of Monsters – (Autistic) Imagination and the Cultural Capital of Childhood, Rozanna Lilley
Afterword: Scenes from the Monsterbiome, Michael Dylan FosterBibliography Index
TOC
List of FiguresAcknowledgementsContributor biographies
Introduction: Monsters and Change, Yasmine Musharbash and Geir Henning Presterudstuen
1. Monsters and Fear of Highway Travel in Ancient Greece and Rome, Debbie Felton
2. Gods as Monsters: Insatiable Appetites, Exceeding Interpretations and A Surfeit of Life, Indira Arumugam
3. Pangkarlangu, Wonder, Extinction, Yasmine Musharbash
4. Decline and Resilience of Eastern Penan Monsters, Mikael Rothstein
5. Monster Mash: What Happens When Aboriginal Monsters are Co-Opted into the Mainstream, Christine Judith Nicholls
6. Margt býr í þokunni – What Dwells in the Mist? Helena Onnudottir and Mary Hawkins
7. Bird/Monsters and Contemporary Social Fears in the Central Desert of Australia, Georgia Curran
8. The Nine-Night Siege: Kurdaitcha at the Interface of Warlpiri/Non-Indigenous Relations, Joanne Thurman
9. Monsters, Place, and Murderous Winds in Fiji, Geir Henning Presterudstuen
10. Terror and the Territory Cults: Pregnancy and Power in Monsoon Asia, Holly High
11. Drawing in the Margins: My Son’s Arsenal of Monsters – (Autistic) Imagination and the Cultural Capital of Childhood, Rozanna Lilley
Afterword: Scenes from the Monsterbiome, Michael Dylan FosterBibliography Index
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The monsters that anthropologists encounter in their field sites differ significantly from those portrayed and analyzed in the thriving interdisciplinary literature—anthropology's monsters haunt off the pages of books and screens of... more
The monsters that anthropologists encounter in their field sites differ significantly from those portrayed and analyzed in the thriving interdisciplinary literature—anthropology's monsters haunt off the pages of books and screens of televisions. These monsters come in all sorts of (non-gothic) guises, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt. Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, media, and cultural studies, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world, from Aboriginal Australia in the Pacific to Asia and Europe.
Research Interests: Anthropology, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Ethnography, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ghosts, and 18 moreMonster Theory, Taiwan Studies, Sagas of Icelanders, Aboriginal History in Australia, Monsters and Monster Theory, Icelandic Sagas, Haunting and Spectrality, Aboriginal Australia, West Papua, Georgian Studies, Monsters, Monsters, Ghosts, Haunting, Demons, Australian Aboriginal History, Fiji Tradition, Hare Krishna, Monsters and the Monstrous, and Relations between spirits and humans
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his is an introduction in three parts. In the first part, I introduce this Special Issue, the briefs that led to its realisation, some of the key themes the contributors wrestle with, and the contributions them-selves. The second part is... more
his is an introduction in three parts. In the first part, I introduce this Special Issue, the briefs that led to its realisation, some of the key themes the contributors wrestle with, and the contributions them-selves. The second part is more of a personal introduction; namely, an ethnographic narrative of my own experience of the first hours and days following the shooting. My aim here is to take the reader into the field at the beginning of the events that unfolded from a Yuendumu view (inherently different from the perspective presented by the media and the courts). In the third introductory perspective, I look at the nature of fear. In a series of short ethnographic vignettes, I explore how police and Warlpiri people's fears differed and overwrote each other. I contextualise Warlpiri fears by situating the shoot-ng in an historical timeline with frontier massacres. The main thrust of my enquiry is to lay bare the opposition between Warlpiri people's views and those of the settler colony, and to analyse the power of the settler colony to legitimise its fears and make Warlpiri fears illegible. I conclude by pondering the continuing looming threat of settler-colonial violence in Warlpiri lives from the vantage point of the ‘Red House’, the place where the shooting occurred
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Monsters are not only key protagonists in myths, legends, fairy tales, fiction, and films; they also haunt cellars, cyberspace, and crossroads. Based on encounters with monsters in their fieldsites, anthropologists define monsters as... more
Monsters are not only key protagonists in myths, legends, fairy tales, fiction, and films; they also haunt cellars, cyberspace, and crossroads. Based on encounters with monsters in their fieldsites, anthropologists define monsters as inherently social entities but with a defiant relationship to order. This entry showcases that monsters haunt humans in culturally distinct ways. Emphasising the comparative potential of monsters, it highlights the ways in which their study reveals much about what monsters are, about society, and about time and space. Anthropology has made key contributions to the study of monsters: from the meticulous documentation of local monsters in early ethnographies, via regional theoretical frameworks and a gradual increase in singular works concerned with individual types of monsters, to recent comparative monster anthropology. Anthropology continues to have much to offer to those interested in monsters, especially in these times of planetary crises, disasters, catastrophes, ruination, and their accompanying rise of monsters.
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The last 100 years have seen Warlpiri people experience drastic changes in ways of being in the world, from a hunting and gathering past, followed by violent frontier days and ensuing institutionalized sedentization in government... more
The last 100 years have seen Warlpiri people experience drastic changes in ways of being in the world, from a hunting and gathering past, followed by violent frontier days and ensuing institutionalized sedentization in government settlements, to community life in the era of self-determination, and on to contemporary times of intensive policy intervention. In this chapter, the author explores some of these changes by focusing on one aspect of them, Warlpiri experiences of home. She examines these in turn by contrasting three different examples across time: 1) Warlpiri notions of home as country during the hunting and gathering past; 2) Warlpiri experiences of home in houses of the Yuendumu community during the time of self-determination; and 3) the experiences of the here and now of intense policy intervention. On the one hand, these examples illustrate an easily assumed progression of life ‘outside’ in the desert, via the yards of colonial houses, to the ‘inside’ of contemporary suburban-style housing. On the other hand, the author shows how the inside/outside dichotomy veils other values crucial to understanding Warlpiri notions of home. Keywords: sleep, domestic space, home, phenomenology of space, Aboriginal Australia
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Based on research with Warlpiri people at the Aboriginal town of Yuendumu in Central Australia, this chapter provides ethnographic material on and analysis of an Aboriginal extended family group’s nightly play sessions, focusing on three... more
Based on research with Warlpiri people at the Aboriginal town of Yuendumu in Central Australia, this chapter provides ethnographic material on and analysis of an Aboriginal extended family group’s nightly play sessions, focusing on three toddlers (between 2 and 2.5 years old). These sessions happen after dinner and before the toddlers fall asleep, when family members spend the evening in the camp, socialising. All action focused on the toddlers during this time has to do with inducing and relieving fear. I relate these sessions to others described in the anthropology of Aboriginal Australia and read them as part of larger processes of social learning through which Warlpiri children acquire understanding of their world and how they fit into it
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Relatedness has been a fundamental notion in recent studies of Aboriginal personhood. My research asks how people who ‘form a mob' decide with whom to do this and for how long. The concept of relatedness—while useful—distracts the... more
Relatedness has been a fundamental notion in recent studies of Aboriginal personhood. My research asks how people who ‘form a mob' decide with whom to do this and for how long. The concept of relatedness—while useful—distracts the ethnographic gaze away from those relations not captured by relatedness—away from considering non-realisations, and different ways of relating to others (e.g., Aboriginal ways of relating to non-Indigenous people). Three case studies illustrate that we need clearer understanding of relatedness and its non-realization. The first two are concerned with non-relating between kin and the ensuing emotional burden carried by all involved. The last case study, about relations between Aboriginal camps and non-Indigenous neighbours, offers a glimpse into non-relating without toxicity, and shows why this template does not work in the intra-Aboriginal domain.
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this is the final pre-publication version .... n this chapter, I aim to consider resilience within the neo-colonial circumstances that Warlpiri people, the Australian Indigenous people I have been conducting research with since the... more
this is the final pre-publication version .... n this chapter, I aim to consider resilience within the neo-colonial circumstances that Warlpiri people, the Australian Indigenous people I have been conducting research with since the mid-1990s, find themselves in today. I am interested in the meanings of resilience in Warlpiri people’s lives, what forms it may take, and whether and how it may be recognized by the anthropologist as well as by those against whom it may be practiced. Clearly, these are questions of considerable proportions and in order to keep focused, I will explore them here through one single case study: local responses (Warlpiri, non-Indigenous and wider...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvw04bg3
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvw04bg3
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This is a proof page ....
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Research Interests: Social Change, Anthropology, Autism, Postcolonial Studies, Climate Change Adaptation, and 15 moreColonialism, Ghosts, Monster Theory, Post-Human, Monsters and Monster Theory, Settler Colonial Studies, Aboriginal Australia, Others, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Extinction, Emplacement, Monsters and the Monstrous, Cultural appropriation, Ancient and Roman Roads, and Anthropology of Territoriality
In this introductory paper, we contemplate both a variety of anthropological approaches to smoke and how analyses of smoke – as object, material, phenomenon, practice, or political fact – might contribute to anthropological knowledge. We... more
In this introductory paper, we contemplate both a variety of anthropological approaches to smoke and how analyses of smoke – as object, material, phenomenon, practice, or political fact – might contribute to anthropological knowledge. We consider these questions in and through the themes cross-cutting this collection, including: the sensuous aspects of smoke (especially in the olfactory, visual and haptic relations it occasions, entails and denies); the politics of smoke (in particular regard to climate change, public health, and Indigenous knowledge); smoke’s temporal dimensions (from the human mastery of fire via industrial chimneys to vaping e-cigarettes); and its ritual functions (encapsulating transition par excellence, curing ills, placating spirits, and marking time). We conclude by pondering smoke’s inherent capacity to escape the bounds we might set for it, including the imposition of highly politicised spatial, temporal, and intellectual constraints.
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I begin this paperwith a nod to ‘the beginning’ by linking smoke to fire, and fire to humankind. Bound up in this deep history of smoke and humanity is a dichotomy cleaving humans from animals and the west from the rest. Taking smoke at... more
I begin this paperwith a nod to ‘the beginning’ by linking smoke to fire,
and fire to humankind. Bound up in this deep history of smoke and
humanity is a dichotomy cleaving humans from animals and the west
from the rest. Taking smoke at Yuendumu, a Warlpiri community in
central Australia as my subject, I aim to destabilise some of the
certainties entrenched in this dichotomy. Smoke, of course, is nigh
impossible to pin down, literally as well as conceptually. So rather
than trying to immobilise it, I follow in smoke’s own fashion and waft
across different kinds of fires and different kinds of analytical
approaches. Ethnographically, I draw a narrative picture of the
different ways in which smoke at Yuendumu permeates everyday life
by considering the smoke of breakfast fires, signalling fires, cooking
fires during storms, caring-for-country fires, and the scent of cold
smoke on blankets, clothes, and bodies. Analytically, I move from
smoke and how it relates to embodied Warlpiri ways of being in the
world, to smoke and childhood socialisation, including baby smoking
rituals. From there I shift to the smoke of caring-for-country fires, and
on to smoke, memory, odourphilia, and odourphobia. I conclude by
pondering the potential of a smoke-like approach.
and fire to humankind. Bound up in this deep history of smoke and
humanity is a dichotomy cleaving humans from animals and the west
from the rest. Taking smoke at Yuendumu, a Warlpiri community in
central Australia as my subject, I aim to destabilise some of the
certainties entrenched in this dichotomy. Smoke, of course, is nigh
impossible to pin down, literally as well as conceptually. So rather
than trying to immobilise it, I follow in smoke’s own fashion and waft
across different kinds of fires and different kinds of analytical
approaches. Ethnographically, I draw a narrative picture of the
different ways in which smoke at Yuendumu permeates everyday life
by considering the smoke of breakfast fires, signalling fires, cooking
fires during storms, caring-for-country fires, and the scent of cold
smoke on blankets, clothes, and bodies. Analytically, I move from
smoke and how it relates to embodied Warlpiri ways of being in the
world, to smoke and childhood socialisation, including baby smoking
rituals. From there I shift to the smoke of caring-for-country fires, and
on to smoke, memory, odourphilia, and odourphobia. I conclude by
pondering the potential of a smoke-like approach.
Research Interests:
Ostensibly about dogs and dingoes, this paper explores aspects of the contemporary social world of Warlpiri people in the camps of the central Australian settlement of Yuendumu (Northern Territory) through canines. Analyses of dog... more
Ostensibly about dogs and dingoes, this paper explores aspects of the contemporary social world of Warlpiri people in the camps of the central Australian settlement of Yuendumu (Northern Territory) through canines. Analyses of dog socialisation, kinds of domestication, and the roles that camp dogs perform (such as protector, family, and witness) provide insights into Warlpiri notions of moral personhood and are employed to reflect about how the oppositional categories of Yapa (self, Indigenous, Black, colonised) and Kardiya (other, non-indigenous, 'whitefella', coloniser) are conceptualised.
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Abstract: the crux of this essay is that birdsong—something generally thought of a pleasing and enjoyable—can function, in certain contexts, as an indexical sign of the presence of evil in the world. I narratively contrast notions of the... more
Abstract: the crux of this essay is that birdsong—something generally thought of a pleasing and enjoyable—can function, in certain contexts, as an indexical sign of the presence of evil in the world. I narratively contrast notions of the unknown as eerie with the uncanny at home, while simultaneously extending the notion of home to the world though ethnographic examples from fieldwork with Warlpiri people in central Australia. I explore the links between sounds and the uncanny, putting forward that what constitutes the uncanny is culturally specific, and highlight this point through contextualising and contrasting the central Australian case with examples from elsewhere: the Middle Ages, colonial Australia, Horror movies, and so on.
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In this chapter, I consider notions of the sentient landscape from a philosophically inspired anthropological perspective, specifically, Edward Casey’s postulation that places ‘gather’. I provide a narrative portrait of the subject of my... more
In this chapter, I consider notions of the sentient landscape from a philosophically inspired anthropological perspective, specifically, Edward Casey’s postulation that places ‘gather’. I provide a narrative portrait of the subject of my analysis: a triangular valley in central Australia bordered by ranges on two sides and a storm water drain at its base, crisscrossed by paths and tracks, vegetated by prickles, grasses, and small bushes, and inhabited by insects, small reptiles including poisonous snakes, birds, rock wallabies, and the occasional kangaroo and dingo. To the south, The Triangle is directly bordered by the affluent Alice Springs suburb of Eastside. To its north lies ‘the bush’, stretching for well over a thousand kilometres to the sea. I focus on how The Triangle ‘gathers’ in regards to the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic, and relate this through three case studies: (1) Nature and culture: The Triangle is all that stands between Eastside and ‘the bush’, and its body (‘scarred’ by paths and weed poising, exuding seeds, snakes, and sand) literally constitutes the threshold between the built environment and a perceived untamed nature. (2) Wildness and domestication: During recent drought-like conditions, dingoes flocked to the triangle and began killing the pets of Eastsiders. Critically, the latter often are part-dingo ‘camp dogs’ from Aboriginal communities, adopted by Eastsiders employed in the ‘Aboriginal Industry’. (3) Interwoven history: The Triangle’s neocolonial Indigenous/non-Indigenous entanglements are layered on top of its heritage WW2 site history, and its past as an Arrernte camping and hunting ground adjacent to a major sacred site. The central aim of my chapter is to develop a Triangle-centric narrative from which to consider questions pertinent to the relationship between monstrousness and geography: Can the Triangle express or experience monstrousness, or is monstrousness inscribed on and through it?
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On many a night, Yuendumu, a central Australian Aboriginal town, and the location of the case studies in this chapter, is haunted by Kurdaitcha. They are a type of monster endogamous to the Tanami Desert, who are said to... more
On many a night, Yuendumu, a central Australian Aboriginal town, and the location of the case studies in this chapter, is haunted by Kurdaitcha. They are a type of monster
endogamous to the Tanami Desert, who are said to intimidate, threaten and sometimes kill local Warlpiri people. Kurdaitcha are on the prowl at night, lurking in Yuendumu’s shadows, on the margins of camps, behind trees, just outside the glow of firelight. This chapter is concerned with the fact that Kurdaitcha attacks, sightings, and reports are on the rise and
examines the implications this has to understanding the nature of contemporary Aboriginal life in central Australia. At the centre of the chapter stand the historical, political and socio-cultural implications of a particular kind of spatial configuration, namely Aboriginal settlements in central Australia’s Tanami Desert. Yuendumu (for example) was set up in 1946 as a government ration station, and constitutes the first orchestrated step of the sedentisation of formerly hunting and gathering Warlpiri people. It is located 300 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs (central Australia’s major service town), with a current population of 400-800 highly mobile
Warlpiri people, and roughly one hundred non-Indigenous service providers. Yuendumu, and other Aboriginal settlements like it, are icons embodying 21st century neo-colonialism through daily lived and starkly segregated inequalities. Indigenous Warlpiri people, locally called
Blackfellas, and non- Indigenous service providers, locally called Whitefellas, live side by side but their lives could not be more different. The chapter approaches these realities by reading the monstrous on the margins as a threatening emergent force expressing not only racial and political
tensions, but as literally embodying the threats of neo-colonial
life to Warlpiri sociality, personhood, and space.
endogamous to the Tanami Desert, who are said to intimidate, threaten and sometimes kill local Warlpiri people. Kurdaitcha are on the prowl at night, lurking in Yuendumu’s shadows, on the margins of camps, behind trees, just outside the glow of firelight. This chapter is concerned with the fact that Kurdaitcha attacks, sightings, and reports are on the rise and
examines the implications this has to understanding the nature of contemporary Aboriginal life in central Australia. At the centre of the chapter stand the historical, political and socio-cultural implications of a particular kind of spatial configuration, namely Aboriginal settlements in central Australia’s Tanami Desert. Yuendumu (for example) was set up in 1946 as a government ration station, and constitutes the first orchestrated step of the sedentisation of formerly hunting and gathering Warlpiri people. It is located 300 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs (central Australia’s major service town), with a current population of 400-800 highly mobile
Warlpiri people, and roughly one hundred non-Indigenous service providers. Yuendumu, and other Aboriginal settlements like it, are icons embodying 21st century neo-colonialism through daily lived and starkly segregated inequalities. Indigenous Warlpiri people, locally called
Blackfellas, and non- Indigenous service providers, locally called Whitefellas, live side by side but their lives could not be more different. The chapter approaches these realities by reading the monstrous on the margins as a threatening emergent force expressing not only racial and political
tensions, but as literally embodying the threats of neo-colonial
life to Warlpiri sociality, personhood, and space.
Research Interests:
In this introduction, Musharbash provides a concise overview over what interdisciplinary monster studies and anthropology, respectively, can gain from engaging with each other. First delineating the meanings of the term “monster”, she... more
In this introduction, Musharbash provides a concise overview over what interdisciplinary monster studies and anthropology, respectively, can gain from engaging with each other. First delineating the meanings of the term “monster”, she proposes anthropology embrace the term. She makes her case by relating the ethnographic chapters contained in this volume to four interdependent themes: (1) the indeterminacy of monster realities highlighted by the manifold ways in which anthropology’s subjects understand, relate to, and fear monsters; (2) the particularities of the monstrous body as socio-culturally constructed and understood; (3) how specific monsters are contingent on the humans they haunt; and (4) how to combine interdisciplinary and anthropological understandings of the mechanisms of monsters and historical change.
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Based on deep ethnography from central Australia, Musharbash analyses the meanings that flow from the transformation of Jarnpa, a monster that haunted pre-contact Warlpiri people, into Kurdaitcha, who terrorize contemporary Warlpiri... more
Based on deep ethnography from central Australia, Musharbash analyses the meanings that flow from the transformation of Jarnpa, a monster that haunted pre-contact Warlpiri people, into Kurdaitcha, who terrorize contemporary Warlpiri people living in settlements across the Tanami Desert. By detailing the dramatic and tumultuous changes experienced as well as embodied by both the monsters and their human victims, Musharbash presents a cross-culturally comparative case of monstrous transformation akin to but different from that argued by Auerbach for vampires. Musharbash concludes by refracting the monster-Warlpiri case material against the third party present in central Australia—non-Indigenous Australians—and situates monstrous transformation squarely within the terrifying realities of neocolonial Australia.
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Drawing on data from participant observation with Warlpiri people at Yuendumu, an Aboriginal settlement in central Australia, I present three ethnographic vignettes of Warlpiri sleeping arrangements. Employing Mauss’s concept of body... more
Drawing on data from participant observation with Warlpiri people at Yuendumu, an Aboriginal settlement in central Australia, I present three ethnographic vignettes of Warlpiri sleeping arrangements. Employing Mauss’s concept of body techniques, I approach sleep in these case studies as a ‘physio-psycho-sociological assemblage of action’, paying particular attention to sleep’s habitual elements on the one hand, and to the meanings that the sleeping (Warlpiri) body encodes on the other. I interpret sleeping arrangements as culturally readable expressions of the current state of social relations and as expressive of personal states of being. Out of a host of possibilities, in this paper, I focus on sleep and anger, compassion, and melancholy respectively. Through these readings, I demonstrate how analysis of sleep is productive in affording insights into the Warlpiri lifeworld.
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Sleeping leaves those asleep ‘blind’ and hence oblivious to potential or real danger. Such dangers are heightened further and more feared at night, the main time for sleep. In this paper, I link ideas about sleep and nighttime social... more
Sleeping leaves those asleep ‘blind’ and hence oblivious to potential or real danger. Such dangers are heightened further and more feared at night, the main time for sleep. In this paper, I link ideas about sleep and nighttime social practices with questions about vision. My aim is to tease out some of the meanings implied in cross-culturally distinct solutions to the protection of sleepers at night. I proceed by contrasting ethnographic data from the remote Aboriginal settlement of Yuendumu, Northern Territory with select elements of the cultural history of Euro-American sleep. Through ethnographic vignettes, I illuminate how at Yuendumu, people commonly arrange themselves in yunta, or, rows of sleepers, at night, and how some sleepers awake regularly during the night to ensure the others’ safety. I contrast this with Euro-American ways of providing a sense of safety to the sleeper through practices of domestic fortification. My comparison revolves around the notion of sight, which in the Euro-American West is clearly linked to ideas of knowledge, and at Yuendumu, as I demonstrate, imbued with a sense of care. I conclude by relating the gained insights to participant observation as anthropological method.