Anatomies of Relatedness: Considering Personhood in Aboriginal Australia

• Published in: American anthropologist Vol. 114; no. 2; pp. 297 - 308
• Main Author: Glaskin, Katie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Wiley Periodicals, Inc 01-06-2012; Blackwell Publishing Inc; American Anthropological Association; Wiley; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Aboriginal Australians; Aborigines; Anthropological research; Anthropologists; Anthropology; Australia; Autonomy; Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore; Cultural anthropology; Cultural identity; Cultural Values; Embodiment; Ethnography; Ethnology; Humans; Identity; Indigenous culture; Indigenous populations; Interpersonal relations; Kinship; Magic; National identity; Ontology; Personhood; Pintupi; Realism; Relational sociology; Sorcery; Sovereignty; Space and Time; Symbolic anthropology. Traditional thought, symbolism; Women; Australia; Kimberley; Oceania; Notion of the person; Aborigine; Ontology; Embodiment; Personhood conception; Relationship
• ISSN: 0002-7294; 1548-1433
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01426.x

Anthropologists have described Aboriginal Australian personhood in various ways, in 1986, Myers spoke about the tension between autonomy and relatedness that he identified as intrinsic aspects of Pintupi identity. More recently, Keen (2006) has identified the extension of Yolngu persons in time and space; others have described Aboriginal personhood as "dividual." Based on ethnography from the northwest Kimberley region of Western Australia, I argue that one way of characterizing personhood is as an ontology of embodied relatedness. In this, I draw inspiration from Ashforth's (2011) approach to relational realism, in which he extends the field of relations under consideration to entities beyond the human. I also consider Viveiros de Castro's (2009) synthesis of kinship, exchange, and magic to argue that the relationship between these can be understood through the embodied relationality that is at the core of cultural conceptions of the person.