https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7129 2026-06-10T06:42:23Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/28312 The child everyone has inside: anthropology and the labor theory of value Angosto-Ferrández , Luis F. This paper revisits the debate on the relevance of the labor theory of value for the anthropological task. It argues that the labor theory of value can creatively inform and reformulate in critical ways a variety of social issues addressed through anthropological lenses. The argument is sustained by two main exercises: first, a critical overview of the foundations of the labor theory of value outlines the reasons why it opened new grounds for anthropological and, more generally, for social-scientific enquiries. Second, a discussion of the key points of friction between scholarship that attempts to develop an "anthropological" theory of value as an end in itself and anthropological scholarship that resorts to the (labor) theory of value to critically inform research. 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26526 Emotional and financial health during COVID_19: The role of housework, employment and childcare in Australia and the United States Ruppanner, Leah; Tan, Xiao; Carson, Andrea; Ratcliff, Shaun During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world witnessed major economic, school, and daycare closures. We sampled respondents in Australia and the US during the height of the first restrictions to understand how the first quarantine structured their emotional strain and financial worry (825 Australians and 835 Americans aged between 18 and 65; May 2-3, 2020; source YouGov). We apply structural equation modeling to demonstrate that the emotional well-being impacts of COVID-19 are not only gendered but also vary between childless people and parents. Specifically, we show that compared to Australians, Americans were more impacted by changes in their financial circumstances. Further, while the financial worry and emotional strain impacts were similar between childless people and parents in Australia, significant differences existed between the two groups in the United States. In particular, we identify American mothers as the most disadvantaged group-feeling the most anxious and financially worried about both employment and domestic changes under COVID-19. Policy wise, we argue that COVID-19 is exacerbating gender inequality in emotional health. To slow down this trend, more adequate mental health supports are needed, particularly for mothers. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23483 The compensation page: News narratives of public kinship in Papua New Guinea print journalism Schram, Ryan In Papua New Guinea (PNG), news media frequently report on events in which groups exchange gifts as compensation for alleged harms. In news narratives of this type, compensation is a metaphor for the contact between liberal and relational social orders. In this way, news media in PNG produces knowledge of what it means to be a citizen in a society defined by vast and profound diversity. Different versions of the basic formula for a compensation story each offer different models for how liberal and relational orders should interact, one stressing the logic of reciprocal debt and interdependence, and the other emphasizing the gift as a dematerialized symbol of commitment to civil order. Yet each variant implicates the other, and hence the status of the indigenous subject as a citizen of a postcolonial nation remains fundamentally ambiguous. Stories of a new type of compensation in national newspapers reveal that PNG and society and its media continue to work through the dilemmas of ethnographic citizenship in ever newer ways. 2020-09-25T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/20760 Yuendumu Dog Tales Musharbash, Yasmine For every Warlpiri myth, fable, or folktale about a child left in camp by its parents while they go hunting, a child who then gets adopted by dingoes, who treat it as one of their own, there is a myth, fable, or folktale about a dingo pup left behind in camp by its parents, who are off hunting, a pup who then gets adopted by Yapa (Warlpiri people), who treat it as one of their own. These stories beautifully reveal the close bonds between Yapa and dingoes (and later, dogs). As Eunice, a senior Warlpiri woman, puts it, “Dogs look after you, they are family, warlalja. They get upset, they cry when someone passes away, they are like people in that way, they grieve. They worry for their humans, and they are happy when you are happy, they are relatives for you. They make us happy like family.” 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/20309 Predicaments of Proximity: Revising Relatedness in a Warlpiri Town Musharbash, Yasmine Relatedness has been a fundamental notion in recent studies of Aboriginal personhood. My research asks how people who ‘form a mob' decide with whom to do this and for how long. The concept of relatedness—while useful—distracts the ethnographic gaze away from those relations not captured by relatedness—away from considering non-realisations, and different ways of relating to others (e.g., Aboriginal ways of relating to non-Indigenous people). Three case studies illustrate that we need clearer understanding of relatedness and its non-realization. The first two are concerned with non-relating between kin and the ensuing emotional burden carried by all involved. The last case study, about relations between Aboriginal camps and non-Indigenous neighbours, offers a glimpse into non-relating without toxicity, and shows why this template does not work in the intra-Aboriginal domain. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/20002 Monster Anthropology in Australasia and Beyond Musharbash, Yasmine; Geir, Presterudstuen Offering a dialogue between anthropology and literature, culture, and media, this book presents fine-grained ethnographic vignettes of monsters dwelling in the contemporary world. These monsters hail from Aboriginal Australia, the Pacific, Asia, and Europe, and their presence is inextricably intertwined with the lives of those they haunt. 2014-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19991 A story in and on signs: Making resistance and acquiescence legible as forms of resilience Musharbash, Yasmine In 2007, the federal Australian government announced and began to implement the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER, locally called ‘The Intervention’), a sweeping and often-times draconian policy ostensibly addressing disadvantage in Aboriginal communities across the Northern Territory. Warlpiri people living in and around the central Australian Tanami Desert overwhelmingly oppose the Intervention and the resultant legal and political standardisations in process of being implemented in their home settlements. In this paper, I discuss Warlpiri attitudes of resistance, resilience, and acquiescence through analysing local reactions to signs – road signs erected by the NTER, billboards announcing policy, and signs erected by Warlpiri people, or in response to Warlpiri requests. My case studies include so-called ‘Intervention Signs’, erected across the Northern Territory at every location where a public road enters Aboriginal Land and announcing alcohol and pornography prohibitions; signs erected by Indigenous and non-indigenous locals as a response to ‘Intervention Signs’, and the erection of signs requested by Warlpiri people from the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority to signal entry restrictions to sacred sites. I take signs as sites of struggle of authority and control over local lives and land, but also show how the local erection of signs is a mimetic strategy. The latter reveals aspects of an easily unnoticed kind of transformation of local socio-cultural structures and practices. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19981 Introduction: Monsters, Anthropology, and Monster Studies Musharbash, Yasmine Every field-site has monsters—spooky, menacing, terrifying beings—who lurk in the shadows and the dark, under beds, in caves and lakes, beyond the line of sight, and in the imagination. Some cause mischief, others protect, a great number of them instill fear, many terrorize, and a few may even kill; all provide substance for conversation and, importantly, for action. Monsters are bloodcurdlingly potent of meaning and anthropology has engaged with them since its inception.1 Yet, and curiously, anthropology has not substantially joined in with the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of monster studies. This is a relatively young field; Cohen’s (1996) Monster Culture (Seven Theses), while by no means the first endeavor, constitutes something of a foundation to the concerted interdisciplinary effort of studying monsters. Over the last decade or so, monster studies has mushroomed as a cornucopia of recent articles, edited volumes, journals, and books about monsters attests (including two new compendia, see Mittman and Dendle 2012; Picart and Browning 2012b; and an encyclopedia, see Weinstock 2014).2 2014-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19979 Telling Warlpiri Dog Stories Musharbash, Yasmine Ostensibly about dingoes and dogs, this paper explores aspects of the contemporary social world of Warlpiri people in the camps of the central Australian settlement of Yuendumu (Northern Territory) through canines. Analyses of dog socialisation, kinds of domestication, and the roles that camp dogs perform (such as protector, family, and witness) provide insights into Warlpiri notions of moral personhood and are employed to reflect about the ethical foundations of how the oppositional categories of Yapa (self, Indigenous, Black, colonised) and Kardiya (other, non-Indigenous, ‘whitefella’, coloniser) are conceptualised. 2017-03-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19980 Anthropology and Smoke: Editors’ Introduction to the Smoke Special Issue Dennis, Simone; Musharbash, Yasmine In this introductory paper, we contemplate both a variety of anthropological approaches to smoke and how analyses of smoke – as object, material, phenomenon, practice, or political fact – might contribute to anthropological knowledge. We consider these questions in and through the themes cross-cutting this collection, including: the sensuous aspects of smoke (especially in the olfactory, visual and haptic relations it occasions, entails and denies); the politics of smoke (in particular regard to climate change, public health, and Indigenous knowledge); smoke’s temporal dimensions (from the human mastery of fire via industrial chimneys to vaping e-cigarettes); and its ritual functions (encapsulating transition par excellence, curing ills, placating spirits, and marking time). We conclude by pondering smoke’s inherent capacity to escape the bounds we might set for it, including the imposition of highly politicised spatial, temporal, and intellectual constraints. 2018-03-27T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19975 Yulyurdu: Smoke in the Desert Musharbash, Yasmine I begin this paper with a nod to ‘the beginning’ by linking smoke to fire, and fire to humankind. Bound up in this deep history of smoke and humanity is a dichotomy cleaving humans from animals and the west from the rest. Taking smoke at Yuendumu, a Warlpiri community in central Australia as my subject, I aim to destabilise some of the certainties entrenched in this dichotomy. Smoke, of course, is nigh impossible to pin down, literally as well as conceptually. So rather than trying to immobilise it, I follow in smoke’s own fashion and waft across different kinds of fires and different kinds of analytical approaches. Ethnographically, I draw a narrative picture of the different ways in which smoke at Yuendumu permeates everyday life by considering the smoke of breakfast fires, signalling fires, cooking fires during storms, caring-for-country fires, and the scent of cold smoke on blankets, clothes, and bodies. Analytically, I move from smoke and how it relates to embodied Warlpiri ways of being in the world, to smoke and childhood socialisation, including baby smoking rituals. From there I shift to the smoke of caring-for-country fires, and on to smoke, memory, odourphilia, and odourphobia. I conclude by pondering the potential of a smoke-like approach. 2018-01-17T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19969 Monstrous Transformations: A Case Study from Central Australia Musharbash, Yasmine My chapter is ethnographically situated in the Tanami Desert, the home of Warlpiri people and the monsters that haunt, terrorize, and sometimes kill them. Located to the northwest of the center of Australia, first contact came relatively late in this region, and over the past century the Tanami and its human and monstrous inhabitants have experienced dramatic and tumultuous changes. I explore how one particular monster, called Kurdaitcha or Jarnpa, transformed with these changes, and the meanings that flow from this reality 2014-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19966 The Triangle: A Narrative Portrait of Place-Gathered Monstrousness Musharbash, Yasmine In this chapter, I consider notions of the sentient landscape from a philosophicallyinspired anthropological perspective, specifically, Edward Casey’s postulation that places ‘gather’. I provide a narrative portrait of the subject of my analysis: a triangular valley in central Australia bordered by ranges on two sides and a storm water drain at its base, crisscrossed by paths and tracks, vegetated by prickles, grasses, and small bushes, and inhabited by insects, small reptiles including poisonous snakes, birds, rock wallabies, and the occasional kangaroo and dingo. To the south, The Triangle is directly bordered by the affluent Alice Springs suburb of Eastside. To its north lies ‘the bush’, stretching for well over a thousand kilometres to the sea. I focus on how The Triangle ‘gathers’ in regards to the relationship between the monstrous and the geographic, and relate this through three case studies: (1) Nature and culture: The Triangle is all that stands between Eastside and ‘the bush’, and its body (‘scarred’ by paths and weed poising, exuding seeds, snakes, and sand) literally constitutes the threshold between the built environment and a perceived untamed nature. (2) Wildness and domestication: During recent drought-like conditions, dingoes flocked to the triangle and began killing the pets of Eastsiders. Critically, the latter often are part-dingo ‘camp dogs’ from Aboriginal communities, adopted by Eastsiders employed in the ‘Aboriginal Industry’. (3) Interwoven history: The Triangle’s neocolonial Indigenous/non-Indigenous entanglements are layered on top of its heritage WW2 site history, and its past as an Arrernte camping and hunting ground adjacent to a major sacred site. The central aim of my chapter is to develop a Triangle-centric narrative from which to consider questions pertinent to the relationship between monstrousness and geography: Can the Triangle express or experience monstrousness, or is monstrousness inscribed on and through it? 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19967 A Short Essay on Monsters, Birds, and Sounds of the Uncanny Musharbash, Yasmine The crux of this essay is that birdsong—something generally thought of a pleasing and enjoyable—can function, in certain contexts, as an indexical sign of the presence of evil in the world. I narratively contrast notions of the unknown as eerie with the uncanny at home, while simultaneously extending the notion of home to the world though ethnographic examples from fieldwork with Warlpiri people in central Australia. I explore the links between sounds and the uncanny, putting forward that what constitutes the uncanny is culturally specific, and highlight this point through contextualising and contrasting the central Australian case with examples from elsewhere: the Middle Ages, colonial Australia, Horror movies, and so on. 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19968 Evening Play: Acquainting Toddlers with Dangers and Fear at Yuendumu, Northern Territory Musharbash, Yasmine Based on research with Warlpiri people at the Aboriginal town of Yuendumu in Central Australia, this chapter provides ethnographic material on and analysis of an Aboriginal extended family group’s nightly play sessions, focusing on three toddlers (between 2 and 2.5 years old). These sessions happen after dinner and before the toddlers fall asleep, when family members spend the evening in the camp, socialising. All action focused on the toddlers during this time has to do with inducing and relieving fear. I relate these sessions to others described in the anthropology of Aboriginal Australia and read them as part of larger processes of social learning through which Warlpiri children acquire understanding of their world and how they fit into it. 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/19965 'Country', 'community' and 'growth town': Three spatio-temporal snapshots of Warlpiri experiences of home Musharbash, Yasmine The last 100 years have seen Warlpiri people experience drastic changes in ways of being in the world, from a hunting and gathering past, followed by violent frontier days and ensuing institutionalized sedentization in government settlements, to community life in the era of self-determination, and on to contemporary times of intensive policy intervention. In this paper, I explore some of these changes by focussing on one aspect of them, Warlpiri experiences of home. These in turn I examine by contrasting three different examples across time: (1) Warlpiri notions of home as country during the hunting and gathering past, (2) Warlpiri experiences of home in houses of Yuendumu community during the time of self-determination, and (3) in the here and now of intense policy intervention. On the one hand, these examples illustrate an easily assumed progression of life ‘outside’ in the desert, via the yards of colonial houses, to the ‘inside’ of contemporary suburban style housing. On the other hand, I show how the inside/outside dichotomy veils other values crucial to understanding Warlpiri notions of home. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/7209 No Place for Self: Rethinking Indigenous malaise in Neo-liberal Political Economy Murphy, Breda There are widespread crises in Aboriginal society, evidenced by dysfunctional communities trapped in a paralysing malaise. The reasons cannot be adequately explained by legacies of colonisation, government neglect, misguided policies, or prevailing attitudes within Australia‟s mainstream society. Although past government policies of assimilation and faux‟ self-determination, as well as enduring community prejudices, have stymied Indigenous prospects and ensured the marginalisation of many Indigenous people consigned to chronic socio-economic disadvantage, these do not adequately account for what is occurring in contemporary Indigenous Australia. Numerous anthropologists and other social scientists have focused on the confounding effects of government policy, historical legacy, and the conditions of modernity, but there is no unanimous agreement as to what is causing the acuteness of the social malaise. There is validity in distinguishing the variations of opportunity and lifestyles associated with geographic locality but, broadly speaking, Indigenous communities Australia-wide have, over the past three decades, experienced an escalating deterioration in community and individual well-being that has similar expressions and, I will argue, similar origins. The complex and compounding effects of the contributing external drivers, combined with the interplay of coping responses and cultural determinates within Indigenous cultures, means that clearly identifying singular causal links is not an adequate way to advance understandings of what exactly is going on. What is, however, common to all Indigenous communities is the political economy of which they are part. Though there is no shortage of discussion and community angst, little attention has been paid to the political economy of which Aboriginal people are a part, even by anthropologists directly examining the present social malaise. I take the position that distinctive characteristics of the neo-liberal order that currently characterises Australia‟s political economy, which has influenced policy direction and governance, has contributed to a major dislocation in the ways Indigenous people reproduce meaningful social identities and practices. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z