Reviews of A Cautious Silence: The politics of Australian anthropology

Robert Kenny, History Australia, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2008
Indeed anthropology for its first century or so sought ‘pristine cultures’, which often brought it into conflict with settlement. Gray shows us how this concern for the ‘pristine’ often meant not looking at the Aboriginal societies most changed by settlement or at urban Aboriginal communities. But as Gray suggests in his closing pages, we now enter into a deeper tension, one that has haunted the discipline since the 1960s: What is anthropology? And why has it, and does it, gaze at Aboriginal Australians at all? There are more questions raised by A Cautious Silence than are answered. It may not, then, be a definitive study, but it is an invaluable contribution.

Will Owen, Aboriginal Art & Culture: an American eye, Anthropology Minor, December 2008
We've all been told not to judge a book by its cover, but in the case of Geoffrey Gray's A Cautious Silence: the politics of Australian anthropology, the cover design offers a somewhat more reliable insight into the book's contents than its subtitle does.

Sally Babidge, The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, Vol. 37, December 2008
I suggest that Gray’s work is of considerable importance in demonstrating the detail of engagements between the discipline of anthropology and Australian government, especially concerning policy formulated ‘for the benefit of’ Indigenous people. It illustrates in useful detail how not to go about doing research with, for and among Indigenous people, but says little about how to read from this a hopeful future for social science in Australia.

Henrika Kuklick, Australian Historical, Vol 40, 2009
The greatest value of his book lies in its narrative detail, reporting the research experiences and conclusions of a large cast of anthropological characters.

John Morton, The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 44, No. 1, June 2009
This is plain-speaking history which insists on the illumination of transparent, yet messy and contradictory, details gleaned from a broad archive.