Chicanery

Senior Academic Appointments in Antipodean Anthropology, 1920–1960

Geoffrey Gray, Doug Munro, Christine Winter

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781800739703
• eBook ISBN: 9781800739710
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues' intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors' reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of influential anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Establishing Social Anthropology in the Antipodes
• Chapter 2. Anthropology at Sydney: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and A.P. Elkin
• Chapter 3. Australasian Anthropology during the Second World War
• Chapter 4. ‘A Matter of Reproach to New Zealand’: Auckland University College, 1949
• Chapter 5. ‘The Brightest of His Generation’: Siegfried Frederick Nadel, Foundation Professor of Anthropology, the Australian National University
• Chapter 6. Finding a Successor to A.P. Elkin, 1955
• Chapter 7. Expansion: Anthropology at the University of Western Australia
• Chapter 8. A Successor to S.F. Nadel
• Chapter 9. Sydney Again
• Conclusion
• Epilogue
• References
• Index