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Australian Aboriginal Kinship
An introductory handbook with particular emphasis on the Western Desert

Laurent Dousset

Les manuels du Credo

ISBN : 9781463740412

disponible sur amazon.com

 

 

 

 

Since the very early years of anthropology, Australian Aboriginal kinship has fascinated
researchers in the field as well as theorists. Its complexity is considerable and, as some
have remarked, its mechanical and logical beauty is astonishing. This complexity has
however discouraged many scholars, students and people working in Aboriginal communities from actively and intellectually engaging with indigenous ways of conceiving and producing relationships based on kinship, despite the fact that it is a domain deeply embedded in everyday life and interaction.
This handbook attempts to bring the principles of kinship in general, and Australian Aboriginal kinship in particular, closer to the reader in an understandable and pedagogic way. Aimed at Aboriginal people themselves, students in the social sciences and humanities or, in fact, any other person eager to learn more about Aboriginal Australia, while also discussing some issues of interest to even accomplished anthropologists, the book is divided into four general parts each tackling specific questions. Part 1 deals with the historical and ethnographic background against which the discussions on kinship are framed in later sections. Important concepts in anthropology such as ‘culture’ or ‘hunter-gatherer societies’ are looked at. Part 2 develops the basic tools and concepts needed to understand kinship. It discusses its main domains, such as terminology, marriage, descent and filiation. Part 3 applies the material considered up to this point to actual ethnographic examples from the Australian Western Desert and elaborates on other important concepts such as ‘family’, ‘household’ and ‘domestic group’. Part 4 explains social organisation and, in particular, generational moieties, patri- and matrimoieties, sections and subsections, all of which are central to Aboriginal peoples’ ways of interacting. Finally, the concluding chapter discusses in a more critical fashion the concept of kinship itself and elaborates on the idea of relatedness as a meaningful expansion of formal kinship studies.

 

Les dynamiques religieuses dans le Pacifique
Formes et figures contemporaines de la spiritualité océanienne

Religious Dynamics in the Pacific
Contemporary Forms and Key Figures of Oceanian Spirituality

sous la direction de
Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon et Gabriele Weichart

Cahiers du Credo

ISBN : 978-2-9537485-0-5

disponible sur amazon.com

Christianized from the nineteenth century onwards, Oceania is today the scene of extremely diverse religious phenomena. This raises two sets of questions. The first concerns the reasons, forms and effects of the major transformation represented by the local peoples’ conversion to Christianity. The second is about the nature of the cultural change involved in conversion: is this a more or less homogenous, more or less stable mixing of two religious systems or, on the contrary, a brutal and deep break with former society? Or is it another type of reconstitution involving two systems of interpreting the world whose methods need to be understood and analysed?
Here we have the additional problem of deciding in which analytical framework to study conversion and, therefore, the relationship these peoples still have with their past. Should this be placed in a society's supposed continuity or, on the contrary, would it not be more pertinent to query such a perspective, too often considered as self-evident? However, if we directly postulate the discontinuity of the relationship with the past and dispense with the autochthonous discourse, do we not run the risk of missing what these peoples say and do when they turn the discontinuities of their own history into continuities?
Finally, given the extreme diversity of Christianity's forms of imposition and appropriation and of the modes of autochthonous religious change, what analytical model (s) can we use in order to understand the transformations occasioned by these phenomena?
These are the issues facing the authors of the texts collected here. Whether anthropologists or historians, they have all conducted field research, sometimes over several decades, among the Oceanian societies today undergoing radical changes.

Christianisée à partir du XIXe siècle, l’Océanie est aujourd’hui le théâtre de phénomènes religieux d’une extrême diversité, ce qui soulève deux séries d’interrogations. La première porte sur les raisons, les formes et les effets de cette transformation majeure que fut la conversion au christianisme des populations locales. La seconde concerne la nature du changement culturel impliqué dans la conversion: s’agit-il d’un mélange, plus ou moins homogène, plus ou moins stable, de deux systèmes religieux ou, au contraire, d’une rupture brutale et profonde avec la société précédente ? Ou encore d’un autre type de recomposition entre deux systèmes d’interprétation du monde, dont il convient de comprendre et d’analyser les modalités ?
S’y ajoute le problème du cadre d’analyse dans lequel étudier la conversion et donc le rapport que ces populations entretiennent avec leur passé. Celui-ci doit-il être placé dans la continuité supposée d’une société ou, au contraire, n’est-il pas plus pertinent de questionner une telle perspective, trop souvent considérée comme allant de soi ? Cependant, si l’on postule d’emblée la discontinuité du rapport au passé et si l’on fait l’économie du discours autochtone sur la permanence culturelle, ne risque-t-on pas de passer à côté de ce que pensent, disent et font les populations lorsqu’elles transforment en continuités les discontinuités de leur propre histoire ?
Enfin, étant donné l’extrême diversité des formes d’imposition et d’appropriation du christianisme et des modes de mutation religieuse autochtone, quel(s) modèle(s) d’analyse peut-on mettre en oeuvre pour comprendre l’ensemble des transformations induites par ces phénomènes ? C’est à ces problématiques que se confrontent les auteurs des textes réunis ici. Anthropologues ou historiens, ils ont tous, et parfois depuis plusieurs décennies, accompli des recherches de terrain au sein des sociétés océaniennes, aujourd’hui en pleine mutation.