The Politics of Difference and Equality: Remote A boriginal Communities, Public Discourse, and A ustralian Anthropology

The growth of a network of remote communities in A ustralia's N orthern T erritory followed the success of an A boriginal land rights movement in the 1970s. In the course of the past two decades, there have been increasing reports of distress in these communities interpreted differently by anthropologists and opinion writers in the national press, some of the latter of a neo‐liberal bent. This article examines critically the position of anthropologists and the relations between a politics of difference and equality as they bear on the position of remote A boriginal A ustralians.