Aboriginal Business: Alliances in a remote Aboriginal town

Kimberly CHRISTEN

Availability: Print

July 2009, pb, 230x152mm, 336pp, b/w illus.
RRP $39.95 incl. GST
ISBN 9780855757021

Australian and New Zealand rights only

My work in Tennant Creek started out as somewhat of a fluke—I followed directions. I have continued to return and work with Warumungu people because the drive-through version of Tennant Creek reveals only the surface grit. Those quick denouncements deny the work of the Warumungu community to carve out a place for themselves through sustained alliances generated out of chance meetings and awkward engagements. Preface, Aboriginal Business

This is not simply ethnography for its own sake, but a sustained deployment of ethnography in response to the vexed circulation of representations with which Indigenous minorities everywhere must engage. Christen’s strong approach to the current realities is a breath of fresh air and highly original. — Fred Myers, New York University

[This book] offers some new writing and perspectives on the emergence of Aboriginal organisations and the unfolding of this within national, regional and town contexts. It will make the book of interest not only to academic anthropologists but also to people in applied fields, political science, sociology, history and other disciplinary areas. —
Dr Francesca Merlan, Professor of Anthropology,
Australian National University

Christen has drawn upon impressive ethnographic research to craft a moving and important book that captures some of the dilemmas and hopes of the present moment in Aboriginal Australia and that also has the potential to shape broader anthropological questions about the conditions of indigeneity. — Jessica Cattelino, Assistant Professor of
Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Dr Kimberly Christen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies, Washington State University, USA. Her primary research involves examining contemporary Indigenous alliances, primarily in Australia, but with comparative analysis globally.