Victoria Katherine Burbank

Monogamy and polygyny in Southeast Arnhem land: Male coercion and female choice

Abstract We discuss the female choice and male coercion models of polygyny in light of womens reproductive histories from an Australian Aboriginal community in Southeast Arnhem Land. We reject the female choice model not only because these women seem to have had little choice in their marriages, but also because lifetime reproductive success for women in polygynous marriages was significantly lower than for those in monogamous marriages. Although our data are consistent with the male coercion model, we assert that this model is incomplete because it makes no predictions about the alternative strategies available to women who find themselves unable to maximize numerical measures of reproductive success, nor does it accommodate our finding that in many respects sororal and nonsororal polygyny are as different from each other as they are from monogamy. We discuss the differences among the three marriage types and suggest that: (a) sororally polygynous women may be better able to maximize measures of offspring reproductive value than nonsororally polygynous women and (b) at least in this Aboriginal community, sororal polygyny may have been the optimal compromise between male and female reproductive interests.

From Bedtime to On Time: Why Many Aboriginal People Don't Especially Like Participating in Western Institutions1

Recent concern with ‘failures’ of Aboriginal development, and lives too often blighted by trauma, life-altering illness and premature death (Pearson 2000, 2001; Sutton 2001), has returned anthropology’s attention to the influence of Aboriginal culture on Aboriginal engagement with the encompassing social and economic structures of contemporary Australia. Trigger provides a thorough overview of this literature, addressing ‘problems of articulation’ (see Austin-Broos 2003, 120) and calling for the identification ‘of the kinds of changes in Indigenous cultural life’ that may enhance the ‘life circumstances of young people’ in their search for both ‘engagement’ with ‘and distance from the wider Australian society’ (Trigger 2004, 29). A difficulty that I see in the discussion so far is the way in which ‘culture’ is conceptualised. In spite of phrases such as ‘sedimented dispositions’ (Peterson 2002), and variations in the use of the culture concept, anthropologists working in Indigenous Australia have focused their attention via this construct at the level of individual or collective belief and practice. Here, I argue for the necessity of moving our focus to the level of mind and cognition, and largely from conscious to unconscious processes, for it is in terms of such an approach that we are able to understand what we call ‘culture’ as a motivational force that either facilitates or obstructs productive engagement with forms of living in this world. With bows to Goodenough (1971), D’Andrade (e.g., 1992) and Linger (1994), I take the position here that only by viewing culture as something in somebody’s mind can we understand how ‘culture’ can get anybody to do anything. I use this approach to examine family and the ways in which family, in at least one remote Aboriginal community, may be implicated in the manner of people’s participation in or resistance to the Western structures that penetrate their lives. Some of what I have to say here parallels Myers’s (1979, 1986) adept discussion of Pintupi autonomy, emotion, family and morality, and how these experiences interact

Sex, gender, and difference

Empirical research has demonstrated that women’s aggressive behavior is widespread and displays regularities across societies. Until recently, however, discussions about the aggressive behavior of women and gender differences in aggressive behavior have been based largely on data from nonhuman primates, children, or laboratory experiments. Using a unique corpus of naturalistic data on aggressive human interactions both between and among men and women, I explore the complexity of our questions about sex differences in aggression and further illuminate the ways in which men and women may use aggression in human interactions. In this paper I compare the aggressive behavior of men and women in an Australian Aboriginal community. In doing so I argue for the continuing use of a “sex differences” framework for organizing our understanding of gender relations and gender hierarchy. I believe, however, that this form of analysis benefits from, if not requires, a sensitivity to the most taken-for-granted aspects of our gender ideology and a commitment to attend to evidence that challenges our convictions about men and women.

Cross-cultural perspectives on aggression in women and girls: an introduction

In this introduction to the papers in the special issue of Sex Roles on female aggression, I emphasize the range and variety of our subject and the need for a multiplicity of perspectives. In the work of the eleven authors contained in this volume we can see the utility of both relativist and universalists frameworks. I discuss the problems with identifying aggression and violence cross-culturally and underline the importance of incorporating other perspectives into our theories. I also discuss the potential advantages and shortcomings of phrasing our questions about womens and girlss aggression in terms of sexual difference.

Precocious Pregnancy, Sexual Conflict, and Early Childbearing in Remote Aboriginal Australia

Ideas from evolutionary theory and a consideration of social and cultural factors are used to argue that teenage pregnancy in three remote Aboriginal communities represents a strategic response to current environments characterised by pervasive and sustained risk and uncertainty. Ethnographic studies of the communities find that these environments both provoke and enable the reproductive strategies of adolescent boys and girls but raise the question of the effects of father absent socialisation.