Paper short abstract:

This talk with focus on the value of autonomy, its place in my folk values prior to fieldwork, and discuss how my field experience challenged and displaced it. I will also throw open a question about the place of autonomy as a value in the ethnography of Aboriginal Australia based on my experience.

Paper long abstract:

This talk with focus on the value of autonomy, its place in my folk values learned prior to fieldwork, and discuss how my field experience challenged this value and displaced it in a way. I will also throw open a question or two about the place of autonomy as a key value in the ethnography of Aboriginal Australia based on my experience.

I was emotionally and politically attached to the concept of autonomy (largely via feminist and anarchist theory and practice) prior to fieldwork. I was also familiar with the concept of autonomy as an analytical tool in anthropological literature which describes Aboriginal sociality as being characterised by an 'unresolved tension between autonomy and relatedness' (Myers 1986). So while it wasn't something at the forefront of my mind autonomy was a key concept that I drew on in my interpretation and evaluation of everyday relations.

However, my experience living with my adoptive Yolngu family on the remote Yolngu Homelands in northeast Arnhem Land led me to question the universality or 'neutrality' of autonomy as a value and analytical tool. Indeed, my experience with my adoptive family encouraged me to seek out critiques of autonomy in the literature (Nedelsky 1989, Dworkin 1988).

By the time I had finished writing my dissertation I no longer felt that I could employ it in good faith as an analytical tool in my research. This experience and research also displaced autonomy as a value in my own personal folk set of values.