Phyllis Kaberry and Me by Sandy Toussaint

Phyllis Kaberry and Me

Anthropology, History and Aboriginal Australia

by Sandy Toussaint

Melbourne University Press, 1999, [First Edition], ISBN 0522848354, black and white photographic plates, lightly illustrated with one or two maps, paperback with wraps

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions, uncreased spine (see photographs)

“Phyllis Kaberry and Me tells the fascinating story of two women, both anthropologists, who worked with Aboriginal people in the Kimberley region of Western Australia – one in the 1930s, the other in the 1980s and 1990s.
Phyllis Kaberry was one of an early – and largely forgotten – group of women anthropologists in Australia.  Her pioneering fieldwork, later published as Aboriginal Women: Sacred and Profane (1939), led her thru a distinguished academic career in London, where she died in 1977.  Kaberry’s approach was then a most unusual one: she investigated life from the vantage point of women, although not to the exclusion of men.
Phyllis Kaberry and Me raises fascinating questions about the nature of biography, the doing and writing of ethnography, the representation and interpretation of culture, and the changes and continuities in Aboriginal Australia.  With energy and originality, this remarkable book explores past, present and future relationships between anthropologists and the people among whom they work.”