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Women, Productive Roles, and Monetisation of the ‘Service Mode’ in Aboriginal Australia: Perspectives from Katherine, Northern Territory
Author(s) -
Merlan Francesca
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1991.tb00141.x
Subject(s) - value (mathematics) , perspective (graphical) , service (business) , welfare , sociology , cash , object (grammar) , economy , political science , economics , law , art , linguistics , philosophy , machine learning , computer science , visual arts , macroeconomics
Anthropological discussions of the creation of social value have tended to be exchange‐ and object‐centered. Recently, however, some Australianists have been trying to develop ethnographically more appropriate formulations of ‘value’ among Australian Aboriginal people. This paper suggests that part of what is required is a critical and comparative perspective on the status of valued ‘things’ compared to other forms of value. It suggests a ‘service’ framework for understanding value in certain Australian Aboriginal contexts (see Sansom 1988), one in which being for, doing and giving are valued as ‘help’. There follows examination of aspects of this ‘service’ mode among Aboriginal people of the town camps of Katherine in the Northern Territory; of its transformation over the long term, following these people's recent, definitive entry into a welfare‐based cash economy, and implications of this transformation especially for women.