And still on the topic of writing I really enjoyed this article from waitbutwhy. It really nails the ambiguous pragmatics/etiquette of email which after all is very new modality of communication. I especially love how the ellipsis can be “massively slutty”. Enjoy!
This cartoon is fun, from Itchy Feet: a travel and language comic from Malachi Rempen:
The ANU Filipino Association has been a tremendous force for fundraising, from soliciting online donations to hosting barbecues and film nights.
You can donate and follow their progress here.
The original target of $10,000 for the Red Cross has been exceeded and they’re now tracking towards $15,000.
I don’t want to add anything to the commentary on the tragedy but for those concerned about aid not getting through, I recommend reading this article.
This morning’s serendipitous discovery in archive.org is Wenceslao Retana’s biography of Jose Rizal in Catalan(!!), translated from the Spanish in 1910, three years after it was first published. The book doesn’t seem to display properly in archive.org but the pdf is downloadable. Enjoy!
A. W. Howitt and Lorimer Fison’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai: Group marriage and relationship and marriage by elopement (1880) was an early work on Australian kinship, grounded in a progressivist assumption that human social organisation evolved through incremental and predictable stages from a state of Barbarism to Civilisation.
As it happens, the kinship evidence brought to light in this work actually contradicted the specifics of evolutionist theory but this didn’t stop Howitt and Fison’s book from generating a great deal of interest. Among other influential works it was cited by James Frazer in The golden bough and in Frederick Engels’ (1891) The origin of the family, private property and the state. It also got a brief guernsey in Sex and society (1907) by the sociologist W. I. Thomas with its sensational chapter names like ‘Sex and Primitive Morality’ and ‘The Adventitious Character of Woman’. It was this book that famously described women as “intermediate between the child and the man”, but men also come in for a bollocking, being statistically more likely to be idiots and imbeciles. Of course, ‘idiot’ and ‘imbecile’ were once serious diagnostic terms without the exclusively pejorative sense they have today, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying this little table on page 25:
(All sources mentioned can be accessed via CACHE.)
It’s now been ten days since Bohol’s tragic earthquake in which at least 198 people have died, both within and beyond the island. I watched the tragedy unfold on social media from a safe distance and after ascertaining that all my friends and colleagues are safe I’ve had space to reflect on how the tragedy is being processed by Boholanos. We have all become accustomed to the truism that social media is well suited to disaster situations when—constraints on electricity and networks notwithstanding—individuals can share vital information in a way that is fast, relevant and decentralised. But as an outsider I was baffled, and a little angered, by how Filipino social media became saturated with images of ruined churches and desperate appeals for prayer. I couldn’t help being left with the impression that an almost hysterical cycle of conspicuous piety was drawing attention away from more pressing human needs. Which towns and villages were most affected? What roads and bridges were still open? Where were resources, money and volunteers needed?
On the AustKin project I’m going through 19th century sources in rough chronological order to try to trace European conceptualisations of Aboriginal social organisation.
The lexicographer finds it hard to resist early mentions and antedatings – whether or not they offer anything of substantial research value. So far, the earliest European reference to Aboriginal social organisation that I can find is certainly a little disappointing. It’s from William Dampier, who wrote in 1699 in the vicinity of Shark Bay:
Among the New Hollanders whom we were thus engaged with, there was one who by his appearance and carriage, as well in the morning as this afternoon, seemed to be the chief of them, and a kind of prince or captain among them.
The phenomenon of identifying European hierarchies in indigenous populations is well known (and discussed at some length by Benedict Anderson in Imagined communities). The Spanish recognised kings, nobles, commoners and slaves in Philippine communities, and James Cook wrote of the Tahitians in 1770 (p239):
Their orders are, Earee rahie, which answers to king ; Earee, baron ; Manahouni, vassal ; and Tou-tou, villain.
Speaking of which here is Cook’s earliest stab at describing Australian social organisation in Botany Bay (May 1770):
All the inhabitants that we saw were stark naked ; they did not appear to be numerous, nor to live in societies, but, like other animals, were scattered about along the coast, and in the woods. (p90)
What? No kings or barons? Preposterous!
More usefully for the project, the earliest settler description of an positively identifiable social category system is from George Grey (1841) who described sections in use in Western Australia between the 30th and 35th parallels; in other words, Noongar country:
One of the most remarkable facts connected with the natives is that they are divided into certain great families, all the members of which bear the same names, as a family, or second name: the principal branches of these families, so far as I have been able to ascertain, are the:
Ballaroke
Tdondarup
Ngotak
Nagarnook
Nogonyuk
Mongalung
NarrangurBut in different districts the members of these families give a local name to the one to which they belong, which is understood in that district to indicate some particular branch of the principal family. The most common local names are:
Didaroke
Gwerrinjoke
Maleoke
Waddaroke
Djekoke
Kotejumeno
Namyungo
Yungaree.[…]
These family names are perpetuated and spread through the country by the operation of two remarkable laws:
1. That children of either sex always take the family name of their mother.
2. That a man cannot marry a woman of his own family name.
As far as I can tell nothing else was written of Australian social categories until William Ridley’s paper of 1856 on Kamilaroi which created something of an international sensation. But that’s the subject of another post.
Brave new words 