Two or Three Things that Chris Haynes Knows about Kakadu
Chris Haynes is not your typical Ph. D student. In contrast to the majority of post-graduates – who decide to write a dissertation, and only then formulate a topic after the fact – Chris chose to write about the joint-management of Kakadu National Park as a result of his experience as Park Manager between 2002 and 2004. Chris’ association with Kakadu goes back to the time before park’s proclamation, as he started working there in 1978, and had responsibility for it between 1979 and 1985. While this recent history means that Chris already knows a lot about his topic, he has been interviewing many past and present park officers to learn more, and has also spent a considerable amount of time researching the field of anthropology.
It was therefore highly appropriate that the 2006 Seminar Series began with Chris’ paper “Marshall Sahlins and me: Reflections on the 1998 Huxley Lecture, ‘Two or three things that I know about culture”, because it demonstrated in a personal way the value of theoretical reflection to the understanding of complex social and cultural issues. Many in the audience were no doubt aware of Chris’ illustrious background in natural resource management, but it was the theme of personal reflection and consideration that really struck a chord. It was also encouraging to see at the seminar a number of researchers from other schools at the Institute of Advanced Studies – a trend that will hopefully continue for the rest of the year.
At present, Chris resides in Perth, but he has recently been completing his fieldwork in the Kakadu area, where he has been interviewing a number of people from both indigenous and mainstream cultural backgrounds. He has been confronted with the problem of how to understand from an anthropological perspective the cross-cultural interaction that is a day-to-day reality for the park managers. Broadly speaking, it was Chris’ supervisor at the School for Social and Policy Research, Tess Lea, who suggested that he write a paper which considered his field from a theoretical position. Yet Chris was spurred to write about this particular topic by Bob Tonkinson, the Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia and author of many works in anthropology including the classic text Victors of the Desert Crusade (1973).
Marshall Sahlins is an influential American anthropologist who espouses a brand of cultural studies commonly referred to as the “Chicago School”. It was Bob Tonkinson who turned Chris on to Sahlins’ short essay, and warned him not to let the study of power become all consuming; nor to categorise many of the “codgers” (a term used to describe the first wave of classical anthropologists) as representing cultures as “rigidly bounded, separated and unchanging, coherent, uniform, totalized and systematic”. Taking Sahlins’ point as a check on his own thought, Chris advocates a critical re-appraisal of the codgers, and believes that their work can be used to construct a sense of traditional culture that is able to invent and re-invent itself. In broader terms, Chris gave a personal account of his own attempts to construct a theoretical position that allows for both a “structural-functionalist” description of traditional Aboriginal culture (the methodology most commonly used in early Australian Aboriginal studies) and a critical institutional analysis of the role of the state in managing the park.
There were many interesting points made in Chris’ paper, indeed, too many to summarize here, yet it was divided into six sections that correspond loosely to the new theoretical perspectives opened for him by Sahlins: “(1) Rearticulation of the differences in the American and British perceptions of culture …; (2) The inevitability of culture change, and difficulties that its lack of recognition has created; (3) The hegemony of afterological studies … and their correlation with ‘forgetting culture’; (4) Power, hegemony and resistance; (5) How to understand and interpret ‘reinvented’ culture, and associated commodification of culture; and (6) Localisation and globalisation” (Quoted from Abstract). Despite the complexities involved in all of these issues, Chris was able to ground his personal reflection using concrete examples from his own experience as an anthropologist and park-manager.
At the end of the presentation, there was about 25 minutes left for questions, and a lively debate ensued. Prof David Bowman from the School of Environmental Research drew attention to the power of the Land Rights Act, and the importance of anthropological assumptions to the definition of the continuity and coherence of traditional culture. Dr. Gary Robinson also gave a good description of the cultural issues faced by local indigenous workers, who have to balance conflicting pressures imposed on them by the traditional owners and tourists, as well as furthering their own personal development in the eyes of the state. Judging by the attendance and discussion, the first seminar was a great success, and hopefully such scenes will be repeated for the rest of the year.
WSM
