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In the red: substances and materials in the Australian Western Desert
Author(s) -
Young Diana
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.13248
Subject(s) - materiality (auditing) , affordance , scholarship , desert (philosophy) , analogy , diversity (politics) , sociology , dominance (genetics) , history , geography , ethnology , aesthetics , anthropology , political science , art , psychology , epistemology , law , chemistry , philosophy , biochemistry , cognitive psychology , gene
This article discusses the diversity, distribution, and qualities of materials and substances categorized as red among Pitjantjatjara‐ and Yankunytjatjara‐speaking Western Desert Aboriginal people: A n angu. Valued red materials and substances include elements of the encultured landscape – country – such as ochre, timber, food, blood, and fire, alongside cloth and other industrially produced materials. Previous scholarship defines reds among central Australian Aboriginal cultures only in static symbolic terms as representing blood. Based on long‐term fieldwork, this article discusses how A n angu employ a system of analogy across domains which connects together red materials and substances with particular affordances. I argue that A n angu conceptualize these red materials and substances as making visible kurunpa /spirit. This has implications for concepts of health and for constructing the local cultural value of consumer goods and substances found in country. Reds connect the mental and the material. The article contributes to studies of how contemporary A n angu mediate relationships between kin and country and participate in a wider market economy. It addresses anthropological knowledge about, and the importance of, the materiality of colours and the role of coloured materials and substances in shaping local ontologies and epistemologies.