eCite Digital Repository
The Refusal of Holy Engagement: How Man-making Can Fail
Citation
Sansom, B, The Refusal of Holy Engagement: How Man-making Can Fail, Oceania: Devoted to The Study of The Indigenous Peoples of Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Indonesia, Polynesia and Insular Southeast Asia, 80, (1) pp. 24-57. ISSN 0029-8077 (2010) [Refereed Article]
![]() | PDF Not available 160Kb |
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2010 Oceania Publications
Official URL: http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/oceania/
DOI: doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.2010.tb00070.x
Abstract
Among Aboriginal Countrymen of the Darwin hinterland, a youth can be ceremonially circumcised only to emerge from the ceremony physically altered but unchanged in himself. Man-making can thus fail. To explain both the possibility and the consequences of crashing failure, the analyst attends to: (1) politics attendant on the maturation of males, (2) the relationship between the failed rite and the total structure for the performance of all 'Men's Business' and (most importantly) (3) the relationships between Dreamings and humans as players in the socio-religious formation (a concept derived from application of the Thomas theorem) in which there is human engagement with the holy. Argument establishes that (in logic) ontology precedes structure because the structure for holy engagement is built to accommodate prior constructions of both the human person and the personified Power that is a Dreaming.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Research Division: | Human Society |
Research Group: | Anthropology |
Research Field: | Social and cultural anthropology |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Other culture and society |
Objective Field: | Other culture and society not elsewhere classified |
UTAS Author: | Sansom, B (Professor Basil Sansom) |
ID Code: | 67255 |
Year Published: | 2010 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 6 |
Deposited By: | Riawunna |
Deposited On: | 2011-03-01 |
Last Modified: | 2011-10-06 |
Downloads: | 2 View Download Statistics |
Repository Staff Only: item control page