A Cautious Silence: The Politics of Australian Anthropology

This is the first exploration of modern Australian social anthropology to examine the forces that helped shaped its formation. Geoffrey Gray reveals the struggle to establish and consolidate anthropology as an academic discipline in Australia. He argues that anthropologists had to demonstrate that their discipline was the predominant interpreter of Indigenous life, leading to them being called on to assist government in the control, development and advancement of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Gray’s work complements and adds to earlier publications like Wolfe’s Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, McGregor’s Imagined Destinies and Anderson’s Cultivating Whiteness.