Women, Productive Roles, and Monetisation of the ‘Service Mode’ in Aboriginal Australia: Perspectives from Katherine, Northern Territory

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Merlan, Francesca (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 1991
In: The Australian journal of anthropology
Year: 1991, Volume: 2, Issue: 3, Pages: 259-292
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1757-6547
Contains:Enthalten in: The Australian journal of anthropology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1991.tb00141.x