Browsing Research Publications and Outputs by title
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Anthropology and Smoke: Editors’ Introduction to the Smoke Special Issue
Published 2018-03-27In 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 ...Open AccessArticle -
The child everyone has inside: anthropology and the labor theory of value
Published 2022This 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 ...Article -
The compensation page: News narratives of public kinship in Papua New Guinea print journalism
Published 2020-09-25In 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 ...Open AccessArticle -
'Country', 'community' and 'growth town': Three spatio-temporal snapshots of Warlpiri experiences of home
Published 2017-01-01The 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 ...Open AccessBook chapter -
Emotional and financial health during COVID_19: The role of housework, employment and childcare in Australia and the United States
Published 2021During 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 ...Article -
Evening Play: Acquainting Toddlers with Dangers and Fear at Yuendumu, Northern Territory
Published 2016-01-01Based 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, ...Open AccessBook chapter -
Introduction: Monsters, Anthropology, and Monster Studies
Published 2014-01-01Every 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, ...Open AccessBook chapter -
Monster Anthropology in Australasia and Beyond
Published 2014-01-01Offering 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 ...Book -
Monstrous Transformations: A Case Study from Central Australia
Published 2014-01-01My 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 ...Open AccessBook chapter -
Predicaments of Proximity: Revising Relatedness in a Warlpiri Town
Published 2017-01-01Relatedness 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 ...Open AccessBook chapter -
A Short Essay on Monsters, Birds, and Sounds of the Uncanny
Published 2016-01-01The 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 ...Open AccessArticle -
A story in and on signs: Making resistance and acquiescence legible as forms of resilience
Published 2019-01-01In 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 ...Open AccessBook chapter -
Telling Warlpiri Dog Stories
Published 2017-03-01Ostensibly 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 ...Open AccessArticle -
The Triangle: A Narrative Portrait of Place-Gathered Monstrousness
Published 2016-01-01In 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 ...Open AccessBook chapter -
Yuendumu Dog Tales
Published 2018-01-01For 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 ...Book chapter -
Yulyurdu: Smoke in the Desert
Published 2018-01-17I 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. ...Open AccessArticle