The book review

This book discusses the relationship between Europeans and the people of Central Australia (Arrernte). In the beginning, the author Austin-Broos, Diane J. reveals that the Arrernte people of Central Australia met Europeans for the first time in the 1860s. The Europeans were only pastoralists and explorers. Furthermore, some of them were Arrernte laborers and missionaries who conquered their homeland. Clearly, the author uses this analysis to discuss Arrernte's current state. Austin-Broos decides to record the immense sociocultural changes as a result. This book further notes that the people of central Australia were the subject of curiosity during that time. Moreover, the earliest accounts of the beliefs lives, as well as the traditions of the Arrernte have become a seminal influence on the primitive notions of the Europeans.

Not surprisingly, this book is a topical commentary on the uncertainty and perplexity's period. A national emergency was declared by the Howard government in the Indigenous Affairs of the Northern Territory. This scenario has made the makers of the policy to still come to terms with the valuing indigenous difference and autonomy's dilemma. At the same time, they seek to close the gap between the standards of living in the wider population of Australia and those of the indigenous community. Moreover, the author of this book produces a vital ethnohistory work. This work helps in contextualizing the indigenous central Australian communities’ present conditions in a wider socio-cultural changes’ history.

The author of the book, Austin-Broos appears not to be content in painting a broad-brush invasion picture, structural, and the dispossession processes which relate with the institutionalization, welfares, as well as the outstanding movement. The author somewhat develops the “ontological shift” concept for providing an analysis of the manner in which being of the Western Arrernte and the world has been changing since the pastoralists and the explorers’ arrival in the 1860s. Practically, the book does not merely describe a circumstance change but develops the notion of the Heidegger that life of the material is defined by a specific act that some people normally take for granted about value as well as taking shape as the value’s rational orders. Furthermore, the author argues that in case there is a disruption of such order, by either following forms or invasion, both strategies and things will be losing their sense (p.5).

The employment of the approach of the theory known as the “subject phenomenology” and drawing on the ethnographic research and extensive archival, the two significant periods of change are marked by the author, Austin-Broos, as the “ontological shift” of the change moments. The initial invasion by the white pastoralists is the first of such periods. After being isolated from the land, they used to know as theirs. On page 3 of the book, the Arrernte’s people from the west “fell back to the mission of the Hermannsburg”. As a consequence, the social, as well as the economic order, made them develop a sedentary way of life. Furthermore, the land rights in addition to the movement of outstanding were associated with the second period of change in which the Arrernte of the west were involved in the cash economy. At the same time, they remained marginalized in addition to being peripheral to the Australian organization.

The author divides this book into a total of three parts. Each of these parts/sections consists of three chapters. In each of these chapters the author deals does not deal with the material chronologically, but rather, she deals with them thematically. Fieldwork is drawn mainly on the part one of the book. The author conducted this kind of fieldwork in the 1990s in which the memories of the western Arrernte of the mission of the Hermannsburg are joined with the ethnographic and the archival material that describes the initial years of the missionary and the settler contact.

The focus on the contemporary of every life of the day is then shifted in part two of the book. In this position, the author of the book concludes that the wrenching shifts of structures resulted in the violence marking the community of Arrernte. Also, Austin-Broos attempts to bring to light imagination ways for helping in the understanding of what the Arrernte people were going through. In particular, such imaginations sustained the sense of community of the identity of Arrernte. Moreover, the author talks of the declaration of the national emergency.

The second moment of change is carefully examined in part three by the author. In this position, the missionaries decided to withdraw from the Hermannsburg with the intention of being replaced by the so-called “the return that is state sponsored to tradition”. Also, it was the people of Arrernte’ modernity medium as reported on page 177 of the book. At this point, the author, Austin-Broos, plays a significant role in providing the factionalism’s thought-provoking investigation which resulted from the outstation movement. Basically, this movement made people modify their lives. In particular, the life on the mission resulted in the production of the self-determination of new intra-community loyalties’ new forms along the functional lines that the white politics entrenched.

Through this discussion courses, the author suggests that the state placed a burden of expectations that are not resolvable on the outstations. This kind of scenario is also another evidence that the book is also an essential ethnohistory work that helps in contextualizing the present conditions within the communities in the indigenous central Australia in a wider socio-cultural change's broader history. The author of the book, Austin-Broos, appears not to be content in painting a broad-brush invasion picture, structural, and the dispossession processes that relate with the institutionalization, welfares, and the outstanding movement. Form this position; she develops a concept for providing an analysis of the manner in which being of the Western Arrernte and the world has been changing since the pastoralists and the explorers’ arrival.

In summary, the author of this book played an important role in writing an insightful story. She has carefully captured the way the Europeans were first encountered by the Central Australia Arrernte people in the 1860s as groups of pastoralists, missionaries, as well as the explorers. Austin-Broos goes ahead to note that their land was being invaded by laborers. Apparently, the author draws from the concept of Taylor of the “modern social imaginaries”. Austin-Broos uses this concept for describing the difference between the hopes of the western Arrernte for changing the policies and outstation life of the state of bureaucracy. The author manages to describe three social imaginaries of the western Arrernte throughout the book. Notably, the “ontological shift” is what resulted in the development of such imaginaries.

The first imaginary revolved around the sociality and tracks on the relatedness and place. In this case, there were analogs daily practice in the region before the white settlement. The second imaginary relates to the Lutheran missionaries’ arrival. As a result, people elaborate and central imaginary in an authoritarian regime. Finally, Austin-Broos suggests an “imaginary” that is still unsettled in the context of the present day. It involves the “modernity of Arrernte on the country”. The author brings up a contradiction between the Western Arrernte social imaginary and that of the market individual.

The reader of the book is left to wonder whether there can be an experience of modernity on the western Arrernte in case such imaginaries collide. However, the author is quick to note that there has been a substantial engagement of the Arrernte with the “work” either through CDEP or wage labor. Besides, she argues that social imaginaries for grafting work onto various networks are maintained by people. Precisely, such emplaced significantly contributes in the setting of the social identities and relations that are sought by the state for separating out from the economy for communities living in remote areas to be viable in a modernity that drives the market.





Reference

Austin-Broos, D. (2009). Arrernte present, Arrernte past. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.