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Tunnel Vision: Part Two—Explaining Australian anthropology's conservatism
Author(s) -
Cowlishaw Gillian
Publication year - 2018
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/taja.12259
Subject(s) - conservatism , colonialism , classicism , indigenous , ethnography , resistance (ecology) , politics , sociology , scope (computer science) , history , law , anthropology , political science , ecology , programming language , biology , computer science , art history
Part One of Tunnel Vision discussed the limited scope of ethnographic attention in Australia in the late 20th century, and the discipline's reluctance to take up post‐colonial ideas that were influential elsewhere. In Part Two I examine the challenges faced by apolitical classicism since the 1970s, and the continuing resistance of historical and political perspectives in Indigenist anthropology, despite some individual attempts to blaze new trails. Demands for specialised work related to land rights and native title has meant the survival of anthropological classicism and a failure to explore basic questions concerning Indigenous conditions in Australia.