Journal articles on the topic 'Language and tribalism'

This article discusses a phenomenon that is gaining popularity – a description of political events in the Russian Far East in the language of tribalism. The study is based on critical discourse analysis, which makes it possible to compare many texts mentioning tribalism in one form or another with the discursive and social practices in the region. The study offers a typology of tribalist political discourses, and also examines in detail one of the options common in national republics. The analysis shows that tribalism in the description of politics has little in common with real political groups; it is rather used as a tool to describe political events and explain them in a way convenient for the author. It is closely related to tradition and rooting (autochthonism). This allows us to discuss the identities of political actors and make judgments about the legitimacy of their actions.

Tribalism is coined from ‘tribes’, an alternative word for ethnic or linguistic groups or in some countries ‘nation’ or ‘nationality’. Tribes supply a lot of Nigeria’s diversity providing traditional costumes, dress, music, dancing, indigenous language, arts, folklore, religion, all of which can constitute an asset to a people. It is naturally regarded as a small group, a human social organization defined by ‘traditions of common descent’ having temporary or permanent political integration above the family level with a shared language, culture or ideology. Encyclopedia Britannica asserts that tribe members ‘share a tribe name in a contiguous territory, and engage in joint endeavours such as trade, agriculture, house construction, warfare, economic and business activities and warfare. They often stay in small cluster-communities which can grow into large communities and even a nation. This paper attempts to critically examine the multiple play-outs of Nigeria’s many tribes and nationalities during and after colonialism, the intricate connection between tribalism and politics, leadership and the evolution of the Nigerian polity, the grievous harm as well as advantages of tribalism to Nigeria’s evolution. The tribe is always a major factor in the country and in its people. It ends with specific prognosis and a few recommendations.

The post-apartheid South African government has in principle instituted a new language policy, which changes the country from one with two official languages to one in which there are eleven. The previously ignored indigenous languages are to have equal status with English and Afrikaans. This paper explores the views of some members of an indigenous language group about the language question. Two focus groups were conducted, with Zulu-speaking students at the University of Cape Town. One group contained only male students and the other female students. The discussions of the focus group were translated into English by the second researcher. The translations were thematically analysed. Some of the themes that emerged in the discussions were issues such as the practicality of the language policy, the multiple versus single language debate, ‘tribalism’, the meaning of language and its role in identity. In general, three major positions on the language issue were apparent, one favouring the increased status of the Zulu language, one favouring the pre-eminence of the English language, and one supporting a diglossia position.

There is evidence from across the disciplines that at least some of the contemporary regional names of African tribes, dialects and languages are fairly recent inventions in historical terms. This article offers some evidence from Zimbabwe to show that missionary linguistic politics were an important factor in this process. The South African linguist Clement Doke was brought in to resolve conflicts about the orthography of Shona. His Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects (1931) shows how the language politics of the Christian denominations, which were also the factions within the umbrella organization the Southern Rhodesia Missionary Conference, contributed quite significantly to the creation and promotion of Zezuru, Karanga and Manyika as the main groupings of dialects in the central area which Doke later accommodated in a unified orthography of a unified language that was given the name Shona. While vocabulary from Ndau was to be incorporated, words from the Korekore group in the north were to be discouraged, and Kalanga in the West was allowed to be subsumed under Ndebele.Writing about sixty years later, Ranger focusses more closely on the Manyika and takes his discussion to the 1940s, but he also mentions that the Rhodesian Front government of the 1960s and 1970s deliberately incited tribalism between the Shona and the Ndebele, while at the same time magnifying the differences between the regional divisions of the Shona, which were, in turn, played against one another as constituent clans. It would appear then that, for the indigenous Africans, the price of Christianity, Western education and a new perception of language unity was the creation of regional ethnic identities that were at least potentially antagonistic and open to political manipulation.Through many decades of rather unnecessary intellectual justification, and as a result of the collective colonial experience through the churches, the schools and the workplaces, these imposed identities, and the myths and sentiments that are associated with them, have become fixed in the collective mind of Africa, and the modern nation states of the continent now seem to be stuck with them. Missionaries played a very significant role in creating this scenario because they were mainly responsible for fixing the ethnolinguistic maps of the African colonies during the early phase of European occupation. To a significant degree, these maps have remained intact and have continued to influence African research scholarship.

Afghans and Afghanistan have, since September 11, risen to prominence in Western popular imagination as a land of tradition, tribalism and violence. Afghan women are assumed to be silent, submissive, and terrorised by Afghan men, who are seen as violent patriarchs driven by an uncompromising mediaeval religion. These Islamophobic tropes also inform perceptions of Afghans seeking asylum. In transit, identities are further reduced; asylum seekers lose even a national identity and become a Muslim threat – criminals, terrorists or invaders. These narrative frames permeate political discourse, media, and reports of non-governmental organisations (seeking donor funds to ‘save’ Afghan women). Drawing on fieldwork in Afghanistan and Indonesia, this article looks at how Afghans in Kabul and Indonesia are using art and other forms of cultural production to challenge over-simplified hegemonic narratives in the West, to open spaces for dialogue and expression within their own communities, and to offer a more nuanced account of their own identities.

Over the course of more than three decades, efforts to integrate theories of political economy with verbal culture have produced some of the most generative inquiries into the social meaning of discursive form. Beginning in the 1960s, sociolinguists developed what became known as the “ethnography of speaking,”1 with the aim of considering verbal skills and performance as aspects of a socioeconomic system whose resources are apportioned according to a hierarchical division of labor. Critical of the more formalist and universalist language paradigms of Leonard Bloomfield and Noam Chomsky, these theorists argued that speaking is a socially and culturally constructed activity that is meaningful precisely in its relationship to specific systems of material organization. By the 1970s, sociologists were extending these insights to broader political theory by proposing that linguistic competence be considered a form of “capital” that is distributed in “linguistic markets.”2 Through pioneering interdisciplinary efforts, inquiries into the competences of individual speakers gradually yielded to analyses of situated calculations that individuals make in exchange—calculations of quantities and kinds of return, of symbolic and economic capital, of alternative representations. Meaning was becoming as much a matter of value and power as it was an expression of relationships between, as Ferdinand de Saussure once proposed, a “sound pattern” and a “concept.”3 Indeed, in recent work in linguistic and cultural anthropology, studies of meaning have been linked even more intentionally to political economy by scholars who locate signs within social and material contexts. Words are things that circulate as signs through social, symbolic, and economic trajectories4 and are refracted through linguistic markets that are multiple and shifting.5 Building on earlier social anthropology, these studies suggest that, even within one tightly knit social community, exchange becomes meaningful only at the intersection of multiple systems of value.

The article is devoted to discussion taking place in the Polish-language Jewish press in the second half of the 19th century concerning the concepts of identity and community. In the period covered by this paper, there were political and social processes, in which the above mentioned terminology played a key role. The anti-Semitic slogans appearing more and more often in the 1870s made the Polish maskils develop a unified discourse on nationality or tribalism. Similarly, since the 1880s supporters of assimilation entered into a dispute on the fundamental matters with the Zionist movement. All these factors “enforced” specific definitions, sometimes even declarations, placed in the press.

The article discusses the concept of race, which was used in the Polish novel in the years 1870–1930. At that time, the concept became very popular in the language of the intelligentsia. The analysis showed the existence of three types of categorization of race: a) ethnic (it included the semantics of the past, space, tribalism, heredity; it positively valorized OUR MEN and negatively STRANGERS), b) socio-cultural (categories of heredity, family, kinship, sphere, custom, tradition, it was responsible for solidifying SOCIAL HIERARCHY), c) aesthetic (the category of race in the character description concerned the face, arms and legs; the racial parts of the body positively valorized the character; aestheticism was based on frequent comparisons to the sculpture, the ideal of BEAUTY became the Hellenic type.

Cathy N. davidson'S the new education: how to revolutionize the university to prepare students for a world in flux challenges us to address nonacademics, and to update our teaching, by focusing on the big picture. She calls on us to rise above departmental politics and the tribalism of disciplinary debates. Instead of engaging in those familiar struggles, we should be talking with our neighbors and our elected representatives about the advantages of eliminating letter grades; the virtues of pedagogies that are learner-centered, collaborative, and project-based; the perils of specialization; the damage that departments do by stifling change; the promise of educational technology if divorced from the profit motive; the myth that STEM degrees lead directly to career success; and, of course, the need for public reinvestment in higher education. Each of these talking points draws energy from Davidson's contention that digital media have rendered industrial models of education obsolete.

This research analyses media and online discourses produced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a Nigerian separatist/secessionist group that seeks a referendum for the independence of the Igbo ethnic group of Nigeria. The research examines discourse structures, such as language use that clearly or implicitly produces propositions of conflict and war, tribalism and hate-speech. Discursive strategies such as labelling, exaggeration, metaphor and contradiction applied by the group to produce ideological discourses of outrage are also analysed. Moreover, conflicting discourses produced by the Igbo politicians and factions of IPOB and other Biafra campaign groups are analysed in terms of their political implications to the overall self-determination efforts of the Biafra nation. The study concludes that the pragmatic implications of discourses that reflect opposing views, as well as varied ideological perspectives by group members, suggest that Biafra is a nation divided against itself and are a people incapable of the separate nation that they seek.

The current study analyzed the online wedding invitation genres in Jordan during COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to study the generic structures of these invitations and the role of the socio-cultural-religious norms and beliefs in shaping this type of genre. The corpus of 120 online wedding invitation cards was collected from Facebook from March to June 2020. Data were analyzed based on the framework presented by Swales (1990). Six obligatory and one optional move emerged from the analysis of the data. Through data analysis, it has been found that Jordanians’ linguistic behaviors were strongly associated with the religion of Islam and tribalism. Findings from this study have implications for language use and sociolinguistics as well as enhancing the understanding of online wedding invitation practices during a state of a public health emergency.

The last few decades have brought advances and positive developments in safety. Traditional approaches to prevent accidents are supplemented and enhanced with approaches that stress positive instead of negatives, that humanize, that are more systemic, that appreciate complexity, context, variability and adaptability. One must wonder, however, are there any negative effects we should be wary about? This paper reflects about this question by using five mechanisms: 1) the language we use to discuss things, 2) the emergence of professional tribalism, 3) the evolution of ideas and concepts, 4) side-effects of success, and 5) ethical dilemmas we may encounter in our everyday work. New developments will come with by-products that we cannot prevent. Suggestions to deal with this include open, critical minds, and awareness of possible pitfalls. Being prepared to deal with the inevitable variations that will occur is important, as are balanced approaches in how professionals discuss and handle concepts and tools.

This article examines debates about national identity in the media landscape of post-referendum and post-independence South Sudan. Having never existed as a sovereign state and with its citizens being a minority group in Sudan, collective action among South Sudanese has historically been shaped in response to external pressures: in particular, the aggressive nation-building pursued by successive Khartoum governments that sought to Arabize and Islamize the South. Today, in the absence of a clear-cut enemy, it is a major challenge for South Sudan to devise a common identity that unites the putative nation beyond competing loyalties to ethnicity, tribe and family. Analysing opinion pieces from South Sudanese online media and placing them in the context of contemporary African nationalism, this article gives an initial overview of the issues that dominate the public debate on national identity: fear of tribalism and regionalism, commemoration of the liberation struggle, language politics, and the role of Christianity.

In 1995, Ballantine Books published in New York a book by Benjamin R. Barber. Its title was Jihad vs. McWorld, a phrase that would not have made much (any?) sense in 1895, or been easily unpacked even in 1975. It is often in word capsules like these that we see how much a language can change in a century, so as to put Arabic jihad alongside Latin versus while attaching Gaelic Mc (courtesy US fast food) to world, the only bit of original Anglo-Saxon. Barber also provided the subtitle ‘How globalism and tribalism are reshaping the world’, and it is the use of globalism that particularly interests me here. 1995 was a key year for globalization as a label for the worldwide spread of Western and especially US notions and practices relating to trade and technology. On page 23 of his book, Barber says: [bull ] ‘Welcome to McWorld. There is no activity more intrinsically globalizing than trade, no ideology less interested in nations than capitalism, no challenge to frontiers more audacious than the market.’

Abstract: Tribals hold all rituals and functions as a community and those include putting up a mandap. Teksingh Tekam, a scholar of Gondi language and culture, says, “Early in the morning, six or seven men leave for the forest in four bullock carts. The literature departments of some universities have included tribal literature in their curricula for purposes of study and research, but that too has been largely perfunctory – and this when Bodo and Santhali languages have been given the status of Scheduled Languages. Residential schools for tribal students have come up right from villages in the interior to cities but little has changed on the ground for the Tribals. Starvation, exploitation, displacement and mass killings continue. To understand Tribal Literature, we will first have to classify it on the basis of ethnic and linguistic diversities and geographical extent. Tribal Literature can be broadly defined as the literature of the ancestors, which, despite being in different languages and dialects, has an all-India character. Tribal Literature is thus multilingual and multicultural. Culture and traditions are often the products of the place of residence. India, with its wide geographical diversity, has given birth to many different cultures. The geographical and climatic conditions of Gondwana (the area of central India where Gond Tribes are found), Bhilanchal and northeastern states are so different that a difference in lifestyle and food is inevitable. Keywords: Bodo and Santhali, Gond, tribality, literature, Issues, Challenges

This essay begins with a Native American women's perspective on Early Feminism which came about as a result of Euroamerican patriarchy in U. S. society. It is followed by the myth of “tribalism,” regarding the language and laws of V. S. coh’ nialism imposed upon Native American peoples and their respective cultures. This colonialism is well documented in Federal Indian law and public policy by the U. S. government, which includes the state as well as federal level. The paper proceeds to compare and contrast these Native American women's experiences with pre-patriarchal and pre-colonialist times, in what can be conceptualized as “indigenous kinship” in traditional communalism; today, these Native American societies are called “tribal nations” in contrast to the Supreme Court Marshall Decision (The Cherokee Cases, 1831–1882) which labeled them “domestic dependent nations.” This history up to the present state of affairs as it affects Native American women is contextualized as “patriarchal colonialism” and biocolonialism in genome research of indigenous peoples, since these marginalized women have had to contend with both hegemonies resulting in a sexualized and racialized mindset. The conclusion makes a statement on Native American women and Indigensim, both in theory and practice, which includes a native Feminist Spirituality in a transnational movement in these globalizing times. The term Indigensim is conceptualized in a postcolonialist context, as well as a perspective on Ecofeminism to challenge what can be called a “trickle down patriarchy” that marks male dominance in tribal politics. A final statement calls for “Native Womanism” in the context of sacred kinship traditions that gave women respect and authority in matrilineal descendency and matrifocal decision making for traditional gender egalitarianism.

Against the backdrop of current research on the city, urbanity is understood to be a distinct way of life in which (in the spatial, factual and historical dimensions) processes of densification and heterogenization are perceived as acts of sociation. Urbanization is thus understood to include and produce structuration processes autonomously; this also includes autonomous linguistic practices, which are reflected as sediments of everyday knowledge in language and thus create the instruments needed for facilitating and generalizing such urbanization: urban languages. In this conceptual context, which looks at cities in Africa from the point of view of language sociology, two large phases of urbanization can be distinguished in Africa. The first phase is related to trade networks and cultural métissage of small groups of middlemen. The second phase, characterized by efforts to deal with Africa's colonial history and to catch up with “the world”, presses ahead with the development of an autonomous, authentic modernity. The reconstruction of the development undergone especially by the more recent urban languages raises questions about the connotations of urbanization and modernization in contemporary Africa: on the one hand, dissociation from colonial legacies as well as from the postcolonial political elites, impotent administrations, and tribalist instrumentalizations of language and language policies; on the other, quite the reverse – the creation of autonomous African modernities that include the city (and the state), brought about by the interplay of both local dynamics and global flows.

Despite entrenched views about tribes and tribalism as premodern phenomena, this form of social organization and identity is relevant today no less than in the past; in some cases, it is even more relevant. Even without exact statistics, one can safely assert that a large proportion of the Middle East's inhabitants belong to a tribe and adhere to tribal social norms and cultural values. Whereas tribe and tribalism in English have somewhat negative connotations—they refer to divisiveness, rivalries, sectarianism, and favoritism—in the Middle East the term tribe is used as a matter of fact, a part of reality. It has equivalents in the local languages (‘ashīra, qabīla, ṭā’ifa) and a long history, from the days before the emergence of Islam in the 7th century. It is a term used by local people, usually in a positive rather than a pejorative way; people are proud of their tribes and see them as building blocks of their societies.

Corruption in present-day Algeria has become so rife that it has gone from what Algerians once sardonically termed the ‘sport of the elite’ to being the ‘national sport’. Not only has it reached epidemic proportions at all levels, it has become a culture unto itself, endemic to the country. Because most documented instances of major corruption and scandals have been linked to official branches, apparatuses and persons of the state, and because most have occurred and would not have been possible without some sort of official sanction, corruption in Algeria is ipso facto political. The mechanisms and networks of corruption are many and interlocking, revolving around and feeding on bribery, clientelism, tribalism, nepotism, webs of personal interest and loyalties. The crisis is multifaceted with international dimensions as well, given the collusion of multinational corporations and the intersection of power and vast revenues deriving from oil rent that has also permitted, through an overinflated and ineffectual state bureaucracy, a fertile environment for the pernicious phenomenon. Privatization; the opening of Algerian markets to direct foreign investment and liberalization of trade in response to structural reforms demanded by international monetary institutions during the 1990s; what was effectively a vicious and disastrous civil war in the wake of the suspension of the 1992 elections; as well as globalization have all factored in reinforcing old forms of corruption and promoting new ones. Elite coteries, crony capitalism, and a new generation of ambitious intermediaries and young opportunistic entrepreneurs, such as Rafiq ‘Abd al-Mu'min Khalifa (convicted head of the al-Khalifa Group), have become the new players in billion-dollar schemes of graft, theft and embezzlement of unprecedented proportions. Furthermore, court cases and judicial proceedings have often taken on the aspect of farce when arrests are made and charges brought against minor officials, leaving those higher-up and known to have been party to illicit activities and dealings above the law in the realm of the ‘untouchables’. Significantly, the road to reform, which must necessarily be political in the first instance, is fraught with obstacles, not the least of which is that favouritism is institutionalized in the letter of Algerian law. With good reason, Algerians in general have become highly circumspect with candidates and an electoral process that are open to every tactic of manipulation. This article provides valuable insider information into the specifics and mechanics of Algerian corruption, which even the ruling elite has been obliged to admit constitutes the primary threat to the stability and continuity of the state. The research and distillation of conclusions in this article are drawn from the full-length Arabic-language book by Muḥammad Ḥalīm Līmām entitled Ẓāhirat al-Fasād al-Siyāsī fī al-Jazāʾir: al-Asbāb wa al-Āthār wa al-Iṣlāḥ. Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies (CAUS), 2011.

This paper explores the roots of the term ‘Subaltern’. The form of literature is backed by the history from time to time. The participation of the tribes in revolutions against the then ruling agencies escapes from the history proper. The unwritten languages of the tribes are posing a challenge. They are undermined. The 80 languages have not been brought to the pages of constitution of India. A language spoken by 10, 000 people have to be recognized as a language. There is a dire necessity of the study of folklore. In the multicultural society there is a need for projecting the life-s style and culture of the tribal population. The human rights speak volumes of betterment and welfare of the tribals on the norms of equality, fraternity and liberty. The evaluation of Subaltern studies has been traced right from the past to the present context in the paper to the extent possible. Mahasveta Devi’s visison is presented along with illustrations of her reasoning. The need for emergence of trends is emphasized in view of the humanitarian outlooks. The Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states are taken up for tracing the subaltern element with a few episodes emanating from history and folklore. Thus the retrospects and the prospects gauged in the paper will justify the Subaltern Studies.

AbstractBased on fieldwork conducted in Kandhamal, Odisha in 2007–08, this article demonstrates how scripts about money, value, and indigeneity are used as exclusionary discourses by development state officials and caste Hindus to portray Indian tribals as failed citizens of the Indian development state. These discourses are used not only as a means of disciplining tribals as indigenous citizens, but also to elide other contradictions within the development state such as corruption, thereby sustaining ‘modern development’ as a project of perpetual deferral. However, this article also shows how Kandha tribals, in turn, appropriate these scripts to display their understanding of the shifting contours of indigenous citizenship and its mandates for entitlements from the development state and indigenous political agency. In so doing, this article demonstrates how historical discourses of money and indigeneity inform contemporary indigenous claims to citizenship. By attending to these discourses, it argues for indigeneity as a site to observe the folding-back of state power onto itself, as indigenous citizenship reanimates historical constructions of theadivasias indigene but subverts these constructions by using a language of indigenous entitlement.

The indigenous people of India have a very contested history of their origin, and hence a blurred identity. The initial contours of tribal identity in India was shaped by the idea that tribals should be assimilated into the dominant Hindu fold or integrated as citizens of a nation state. The dominant communities wanted the tribals even to learn and speak the languages of the dominant groups over their own native languages. On the other hand, the struggles against this discrimination waged by the oppressed and subordinated forlast two centuries or more were seen as struggle for recognition as equals. However, in recent times, as a counter to the threat posed to the tribal ways of living by the dominant groups, articulation of tribal identity has been emerging from within. The new struggle encompassed another completely new and opposite demand – the demand for recognition of difference. Building on Santali script (Ol-Chiki) movement in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, the paper argues that the struggle for equal rights of citizenship and distribution along with taking pride in their own tribal identity has led to the development of subnationalism among the Santals in Eastern India.

The indigenous people of India have a very contested history of their origin, and hence a blurred identity. The initial contours of tribal identity in India was shaped by the idea that tribals should be assimilated into the dominant Hindu fold or integrated as citizens of a nation state. The dominant communities wanted the tribals even to learn and speak the languages of the dominant groups over their own native languages. On the other hand, the struggles against this discrimination waged by the oppressed and subordinated forlast two centuries or more were seen as struggle for recognition as equals. However, in recent times, as a counter to the threat posed to the tribal ways of living by the dominant groups, articulation of tribal identity has been emerging from within. The new struggle encompassed another completely new and opposite demand – the demand for recognition of difference. Building on Santali script (Ol-Chiki) movement in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, the paper argues that the struggle for equal rights of citizenship and distribution along with taking pride in their own tribal identity has led to the development of subnationalism among the Santals in Eastern India.

Several studies have been conducted to confirm the robustness of intergroup contact theory to reduce sentiments among people from different races, nationalities, and languages. However, reviews conducted show that none of these studies examined the applicability of the intergroup contact theory to reduce prejudice among people from a multitribal context where the people share similar characteristics, but have sentiments against each other due to tribalism. The study examines the applicability of intergroup contact theory to promote positive attitudes among individuals to share knowledge in a multitribal context. A quantitative approach was adopted using questionnaires collected from two hundred and ninety-three lecturers from ten polytechnics in Ghana. Multivariate analysis revealed that equal status, cooperativeness and common goals have positive influence on an individual's attitude to share knowledge in a multitribal context. However, the influence of institutional support was not supported. The results of the study suggest the applicability of the intergroup contact theory explains how to promote a positive attitude in a multitribal context.

This paper explores the patterns of the representation of Adivasis or aboriginals – known as ‘tribals’ in common parlance – in Malayalam language films. Film as a medium of representation is continuously engaged in constructing images and thus the process becomes an ideological enterprise contributing to the relentless practice of defining and redefining the society and its various components in terms of several binaries. The film industry of Kerala, a southern state of India, is affluent and more influential than other art forms and production. Though the tribal population of Kerala is around 400 thousand and they belong to as many as 43 subgroups, they are underrepresented in films and that too is in a stereotypical manner. These groups are considered to be largely distinct with each tribal group identifying themselves with their own mythologies, tales of origin, and distinctive religious and ritualistic practices. This paper critically analyses the politics of representation using the example of tribals in Malayalam films as it has evolved over the past decades and attempts to trace a whole gamut of aesthetic and ethical issues at stake.

The present study aims to examine the educational status and the cause of school dropouts, absenteeism, low enrolment and the male-female gap in literacy among tribals of Koraput district of Odisha. A survey was carried in 467 households constituting 1830 villagers to find out the educational status in Koraput district of Odisha. Subsequently, 104 children and adolescents aged between 9 and 16 were selected purposively in terms of schooling profile and household occupation for ascertaining the cause of absenteeism and dropout or leaving the study after primary education. The study found a literacy rate of 32.4% in the studied population and the major causes for school dropout and absenteeism were the economic problem, household work, lack of interest in the study, earning member of the family, parents not interested in studies, distance of schools and difficulties in reaching school, and language of teaching problem.

One of the longest standing debates in social science has been that which has divided students of ethnicity over the issue of modernization. On the one side are the tribalists, who emphasize that the ethnonational consciousness of a self-defined group is historically rooted and believe that processes of racial and cultural homogenization associated with the broader phenomenon of modernization promote the gradual break-down of ethnic boundaries within states and ultimately encourage the spread of global culture and the disappearance of ‘tribal’ languages (here one might include such examples as Catalan, Sorb, Romansch, and perhaps also Welsh, Macedonian and Estonian). In this view, ethnocentrism is negatively correlated with the degree of interaction, and multiethnic societies are supposed to be less ethnocentric than ethnically homogeneous societies. There are two chief variants of this approach represented by the functionalists (assimilationists) and the Marxists.

AbstractIn the world of the Brahmaputra valley inscriptions between the 5th and the 12th/13th centuries A.D. the Brahmins, traditionally at the apex of the caste hiearchy, had their position as the dominant landholding class buttressed by certain fiscal and administrative-judicial privileges that went along with the donations of land they received from the contemporary kings. However, in contrast to certain other areas of India, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra where the donated plots of land were supposedly in waste areas, giving the donee Brahmins absolute land tenure rights, the rights of the already existing peasantry in the donated plots of land in the Brahmaputra valley were unlikely to have been impaired because these plots of land were in already settled regions and not in areas to be reclaimed. The reclamation of land went on in the hilly fringe of the Brahmaputra valley as late as the 19th century, and the peasants, originally tribals, cnjoyed a permanency of tenure in the land they reclaimed. The Brahmaputra valley was reclaimed before the period of our inscriptions, and this means that the Brahmins got only the rent which the resident peasantry used to give earlier to the king. The ranks of the peasantry also included such occupational groups as boatsmen, potters and weavers, suggesting on the whole a picture of occupational mobility which could be found even the early 20th century Assam, mainly because of the general availability of cultivable waste land and the insignificance of trade conducive to the growth of occupational groups. The peasant production was geared to wet rice cultivation which had an irrigational system, perhaps honed by the Kachari element of the population of our period, to fall back upon. The Kachari participation in this irrigation system can be surmised both from the occurrence of the related language words in the inscriptions and the general ethnographic literature on pre-modern irrigation in the Brahmaputra valley. The interaction between the Brahmins and the general range of peasantry which undoubtedly had a significant tribal element ushered in what would be called the process of Sanskritization of the grassroots village level in the Brahmaputra valley. The data on the systems of landholding and the general character of the peasantry are not much in the inscriptions of our period, constituting, in fact, its basic historical source, but viewed in the light of the relevant ethnographic evidence in the context of pre-modern Assam, even this limited amount of data can offer a coherent picture, howsoever brief.

Hermann Rorschach s’est intéressé aux différences culturelles ou ethniques en étudiant les Bernois, tout particulièrement ceux de la partie centrale du canton, et les gens d’Appenzeller. Depuis, beaucoup de travaux ont porté sur les différences ethniques. Les textes de référence sont ceux de Henry et Spiro, De Vos, Boyer et plus généralement l’ouvrage d’Abel (1973). Avec l’arrivée du Système intégré (SI), des normes ont été établies durant les années 1973–1986, sur des populations d’adultes en bonne santé et bien intégrés sur le plan social et professionnel, ainsi que pour divers groupes psychopathologiques. Actuellement, les praticiens du Rorschach àtravers le monde se sont mis àmettre en doute l’universalité, c’est-à-dire la valeur étique, de ces normes. Il est important d’observer que les seuils de signification ont été établis de manière empirique par les Rorschach Workshops tout au long des trois dernières décennies du siècle dernier. Récemment, Exner (2002) a publié les premiers résultats d’une nouvelle étude de non-consultants, réalisée selon les même principes que précédemment, avec dans l’ensemble, des résultats similaires. Plus l’utilisation du Système intégré se répandait, et plus nombreuses devinrent les données locales de référence. Un certain nombre d’entre elles comportent de nettes différences avec les normes des Rorschach Workshops. Au congrès d’Amsterdam de 1999, Erdberg et Shaffer ont réuni les données obtenues dans divers pays: France, Tunisie, trois études américaines, deux études italiennes, Japon, Espagne, Danemark, Finlande, Belgique, Portugal, Pérou et Argentine. Shaffer et Erdberg en ont fait une nouvelle présentation au congrès de la Society for Personality Assessment Í Philadelphie en 2001, mettant en évidence des similarités, mais aussi des différences. Dans cette section spéciale de Rorschachiana, nous essayons de contribuer àcette question si importante mais aussi si complexe. La section comporte cinq articles portant sur les différences interculturelles écrits par les auteurs suivants: 1. Hélène Salaün de Kertanguy et Anne Andronikof, 2. Alicia Martha Passalacqua, Lelia Sandra Pestana, et autres, 3. Regina Sonia Gattas Fernandes do Nascimiento, 4. Outi Kalla, Jarl Wahlström, Jukka Aaltonen, Juha Holma, Pentti Tuimala, et Carl-Erik Mattlar, et 5. Carl-Erik Mattlar. A la lecture de ces articles, on s’aperç oit que chacun apporte quelque chose d’original: des données nouvelles, des problèmes méthodologiques, etc. Le premier est une étude de terrain réalisée sur des populations tribales aux Indes qui se trouvent en danger sur les plans culturel et physique en raison de changements qui leur ont été imposés. Le Rorschach (SI) a été utilisé pour mettre en lumière la faç on dont ils se sont aménagés face au traumatisme que représente la perte de leur environnement socioculturel. Les chercheurs se sont heurtés àun certain nombre de problèmes liés àla recherche de terrain et àl’interprétation des résultats. Ils ont néanmoins pu montrer comment les sujets ont réagi àla détresse induite par la situation déstructurante àlaquelle ils étaient confrontés. Le deuxième est une comparaison très intéressante entre la série parallèle des planches de la Scuola Romana Rorschach et les planches originales de Rorschach réalisée dans deux échantillons de population en Argentine. Le problème toutefois vient de ce que la cotation des protocoles s’est faite d’après la méthode développée par l’école argentine, basée sur les méthodes de Klopfer et de Bohm. Alors que les deux séries de planches ont produit principalement des résultats similaires, il est difficile de transposer ces résultats àd’autres méthodes de cotation internationalement utilisées. Le troisième consiste en une importante étude normative brésilienne (n = 200 adultes non consultants), dont certains résultats accusent de nettes différences avec les normes en Système intégré. Par exemple, le Mode de R est de 14 (23 dans les normes américaines), et la moyenne de Lambda est de 1,07 (0,60 dans les normes américaines). L’auteur met en évidence l’influence majeure du niveau socioculturel dans ces résultats. Le quatrième est une recherche dans le domaine psychiatrique qui compare 41 patients finlandais à32 espagnols, qui présentent des tableaux de schizophrénie débutante, de troubles schizophréniforme, schizoaffectifs, des états délirants ou encore des épisodes psychotiques aigus. Les résultats montrent que les patients psychotiques, en Finlande comme en Espagne, manifestent un certain nombre de caractéristiques communes. Les différences principales entre ces deux groupes de patients se situaient dans les secteurs de la perception de soi et des relations interpersonnelles. Les auteurs pensent que ces données traduisent bien de véritables différences interculturelles de la personnalité. Le cinquième est une revue de question qui s’interroge sur le caractère étique ou émique du Rorschach. Autrement dit, les normes produites par les Rorschach Workshops sont-elles valables universellement (étique), ou sont-elles spécifiques àchaque culture (émique) ? Dans ce dernier cas, nous avons non seulement besoin de normes différentes pour chaque culture, mais aussi une grande quantité de recherches empiriques qui établissent de nouveaux seuils de signification pour toutes les variables. Les recherches les plus récentes (Erdberg & Shaffer, 1999; Shaffer & Erdberg, 2001; Exner, 2001, 2002; Meyer, 2001, 2002) semblent soutenir l’idée que le Rorschach est un instrument étique. Si l’on veut conduire des comparaisons internationales, il faut porter une attention toute particulière aux groupes étudiés (Weiner, 2001a) comme aux modes d’administration et de cotation des protocoles, ainsi qu’àla compétence des personnes responsables de l’étude. align="left" language="inherit">Dans son ensemble, cette section spéciale met en lumière un certain nombre d’aspects tout àfait critiques et intéressants de l’utilisation du Rorschach dans le monde. Il me semble que la lecture attentive de ces cinq articles très différents vaut vraiment la peine et qu’elle est riche en enseignements.

Despite living in a techno- crafted society, many communities are still marginalized. This paper intends to examine the socio-cultural development of the Paniya tribes, the major tribal community which is sidelined in the Nilgiris district. Being mostly landless workers, illiterates, leaderless, unorganized, they are considered the most deprived people. The critical factors of constructive communication are found wanting in tribal people due to their shyness in contacting others, introverted behavior, lack of self-awareness, attitudes of the peer groups, and lack of condence that affects them physically and psychologically. This pushes the Paniyas into the vortex of a regressive stage in this society. The Paniyas, as a whole, are the poorest of the poor among all tribal communities. The struggles of the paniyas to be on a par with the mainstream in this society are taken cognizance of in this paper through a critical view of the socio-cultural dimensions like Culture, Language, Religion, and Level of education of tribals belonging to the Paniya community and their development. This paper adopts a Qualitative Research of descriptive case analysis using face-to-face interviews and case studies as the research tools. Though paniyas are underprivileged they are looking for a change in their standard of living. The changeover can take place by creating awareness and knowledge about the sources available for them for their development in social, economic, physical, and psychological aspects. Effective interpersonal interaction is the byword.

Liquidate the entire rapacious monstrosity that is the global surf industry. Eradicate the gloating, insolent, overfed, carrion-feeding surf media altogether. Destroy the overweening, insidious and growing attraction that surf fashion is for common landlubbers. Dismantle, annihilate and devastate the whole swelling, putrescent edifice of surfing once and for all. There are too many people in the water and all I want to do is go surfing with my mates goddammit (Breuchie 26). Nick Breuchie’s letter to Tracks reflects an individual’s fight against the popularity of surfing, a popularity that he sees manifested in crowded surf line-ups boosted by the images and rhetoric found in surfing magazines. Beyond surfing magazines, surfing is currently enjoying an ultra-hip status in the world of popular culture: Hollywood has recently reinvigorated the surf movie genre that started with Gidget through putting “chicks on sticks in flicks” in the surfploitation film Blue Crush; surfing scenes open the most recent James Bond film, Die Another Day. Surf fashion is seemingly ubiquitous among youth and their baby boomer parents, and the global surf industry is worth “at least $US7.4bn,” most of which is generated through sales of apparel (Gliddon 20). No longer is surfing for youth; now it is about youth. Most importantly for Breuchie and others like him, surfing saturation in popular culture has resulted in more than an excess of representation: it has resulted in an excess of participation. For the “original” members of surfing subcultures, surfing has simply become too crowded, resulting in a frustration that is too often being expressed in aggressive behaviour and surf rage. >From any point of view, it is clear that surfing has become so popular that it is increasingly difficult to find a non-remote surf break that is not overcrowded. Carrol claims in The Association of Surfing Professionals Media Guide and Statistics Booklet that “everybody surfs – mums, dads, sisters, four-year-old groms, 80-year-old great grandparents” (21). As a result of this demand for waves, surf-travel to remote locations is experiencing massive growth and at the same time, as discussed below, intense localism is rampant. Although waves suitable for surfing in many parts of the world may be considered as a public territory where access is usually on a first-come-first-serve basis, local surfers tend to behave more dominantly at their home breaks. These surfers take what might be referred to in sporting terms as the home ground advantage. Increasingly, however, waves of the ocean are not public access spaces: these surf breaks are for exclusive use by guests of resorts that have negotiated deals with governments, traditional owners or other local authorities. Surfers, frustrated by crowds at breaks in the “surf slums” in the more populated areas of the world, are increasingly prepared to pay to play in such exclusive surf resorts as those now found in the Maldives, Indonesia and Fiji. Local enforcers guard the surf breaks of these resorts and, on behalf of the resort owners, ensure that the guests maintain the privilege of the exclusivity they have paid for. For a long time now, surfers at breaks around the world have been punching each other in the head while surfing magazines have been telling the world about the individuality, the brotherhood, the beauty and the spirituality of surfing as an “art,” “lifestyle,” “religion” and “sport.” One way of maintaining the perception of individualism and freedom of the surfing experience is through protecting the local break from newbies via localism: its advocates justify it as a means of keeping hierarchical law and order in a field where game rules do not officially exist. Viewed anthropologically, localism can be viewed as territorialism important to the self-preservation and well-being of the clan; it can also be a unifying force that may bond communities together to invest in, develop and protect common interests. Localism is one of the defining concepts of modern surfing. The mythology of surf localism is that it exists to instill order and respect in the water and provides people with a sense of belonging. Its main function for surfing communities, however, is to exclude surfers who are not from the immediate vicinity of a surfing spot. This version of localism is characterized by a masculinized, xenophobic territorialism and a hostility to outsiders that can both unite and fracture others through threatened or actual violence: it is about policing and protecting “our” waves and is enacted in the water by dominant males who “hassle” surfers who are not part of the local tribe. Surfing magazines and films often encourage the siege-like tribalism and aggressive expression of localism through advocating 'the rights' of local surfers: for example, the magazines will often not reveal the source location of surfing photographs “out of respect for the locals.” Blue Crush includes the apparently obligatory fight scene found in many Hollywood surfing films: locals who claim exclusivity to the surf fight the outsider—in this case, the kooky love interest of the film’s female star. The masculine aggressiveness of surfing argot that is extensively used in surfing magazines may be better suited to a misogynistic slasher movie than a sport—surfers ride thrusters, they carve, shred, slash, tear, pull out, perform re-entries, crack and rip filthy, sick pits, and request the male surf god Huey to make mother ocean pump. The language is more reflective of a fight with the waves than an expression of how to ride them for leisure and play. In the “age of rage” (Agbayani) localism in surfing at its most extreme is manifested through surf rage. Cralle defines a local as “anyone who’s been there a day longer than you” while localism is “territorial defiance in defence of a surf spot.” Agbayani argues that “the activity was born in 1779 when angry Hawaiians killed Captain James Cook at Kealakekua Bay.” The current CEO and President of the Association of Surfing Professionals and former world champion surfer, Wayne Bartholomew, somewhat confusingly writes that a beating he received from locals in the winter of 1976-1977 on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii reminded him of Captain Cook. “I don’t know what happened to Captain Cook but the scene that confronted me on the beach always reminds me of Captain Cook” (151). Bartholomew claims his selfish behaviour in the water so affronted the Hawaiians that “I was held under water, pounded round the back of the head, then pulled up and pounded in the face. They knocked all my teeth out and just flattened my nose, I had cuts all over my eyes and lips” (151). Discussing a fight with an American opponent during the 1966 world championships at San Diego, Nat Young wrote in his newspaper column: “I am afraid I lost my temper and did what most other Australians would have done—I hit him—and knocked him flat” (980). Young had his own face knocked flat after a fight with another surfer at Angourie in March 2000. Coming in from the surf, he was attacked on the beach by Michael Hutchinson, a rival longboarder, who hospitalized Young with two broken eye sockets, shattered cheekbones and destroyed sinuses. Both Young and Hutchison were locals. The incident was sparked by Young, who admitted to slapping Hutchison’s son for “bad behaviour” while out in the surf. (In a cathartic moment, Young subsequently published a book entitled Surf Rage that told stories of the pointlessness of fighting for waves). Beyond (but not unconnected to) localism, the increase in confrontations, aggression and fighting in the surf may also be partly attributable to the impact of technology upon surfing. Technology is having a significant influence on when and where people can go surfing. Readily available surf craft such as bodyboards and the (rediscovered) Malibu surfboard are allowing learners quick results in developing the ability to ride waves; warmer, more comfortable wetsuits are allowing year round surfing in cold water; and the leg rope allows people to fall off surfboards without having to swim to shore to retrieve rock-damaged foam and fibreglass. In addition to these technological developments, “surfcams” show surf conditions, and non-locals can look at real time conditions all over the world (see, for example http://www.coastalwatch.com, http://www.surf-news.com or http://www.baliwaves.com). These cameras are regularly vandalised to thwart the dissemination of this information to non-local surfers. Meanwhile, surf-forecasting services notify customers via mobile phone, pager or email when the conditions for surfing are good, so there is little chance of lonely surfs. The increasing number of surfboard riders, bodyboarders, windsurfers, surf ski riders, personal watercraft and kite surfers are straining a natural resource that is open to those who can grab a surf craft and get to the beach. The use of personal watercraft in crowded breaks to provide surfers with a technological advantage is also causing uneasiness and resentment in the water, as Chronicles (2003) notes: … I was out at Currumbin Alley the other arvo, sitting among a pack of around 50 guys and girls on shortboards, longboards and the occasional wave ski and bodyboard, when I noticed a group that wasn’t equal. With one guy driving a jet ski, four surfers were getting lifts back into the line up after every wave, doing away with the sometimes horrendous paddle-back at The Alley, which can take as along as ten or 15 minutes to get back to the line-up. After a wave, the surfer was dragged back to the top of the point by the ski. He was then dropped off a few metres from the line-up and rejoined the pack. Guys were, quite rightly, getting pissed off that they were jockeying for position on the next wave with a kid who had caught a wave not even five minutes ago. And all because one surfer could afford $12,000 or whatever it costs for a Yamaha three-seater Waverunner these days. Factors other than technology have also increased the number of surfers in the water. Baby boomers have not retired from the sport, and specialist surfing magazines such as Australian Longboarder and The Surfers Journal cater for those surfers older than thirty-five. News articles and surfing magazines are claiming that more girls and women are taking up surfing for pleasure and personal fitness, although to what degree this has occurred is contestable. Such claims seem to originate largely from the public relations departments of surfing companies, whose worldwide sales of female board shorts have grown significantly in the past three years: it would be interesting to determine whether such sales reflect growth in female participation in the sport or female consumption of its symbolic commodities. No longer viewed as a deviant subculture, surfing is marketed by surfing magazines as a global lifestyle that can be achieved through the consumption of global commodities. While the peak industry and surfing competition bodies continually espouse the need for the sport to grow, the remaining cottage industries creating commodities for use by surfers are being squeezed out by global corporations. Pop-out surfboards are being mass-produced in a Thailand factory to be sold in chain stores throughout the world. Non-paying surfers are excluded from “private” surf breaks, while wave pools and artificial reefs are being created to provide simulations of the “natural” surfing experience. The frustration expressed by Breuchie in relation to the (over)popularization of surfing is being felt in oceans around the world. Additionally, individual surfers fear that the accompanying violence and fighting may result in regulation, discipline and authoritarianism. Such regulation may manifest itself via licenses, liability insurance and other restrictions, and would regulate one of the few “free” activities that remain little affected by law. But continued fighting and surf rage may provide governments with few alternatives. Works Cited Agbayani, Caroline. Annotated Bibliography on the Age of Rage. Accessed 12 January, 2003. Bartholomew, Wayne, and Baker Tim. Bustin’ Down the Door. 2nd Edition. Sydney: HarperSports, 2002. Breuchie, Nick. Tracks, March. Sydney: EMAP Publishing, 2002. Carroll, Nick. The Association of Surfing Professionals Media Guide and Statistics Booklet. Coolangatta: Association of Surfing Professionals and Chilli Industries, 2002. Chronicles, Jonas. To Ski or not to Ski Real Surf. Accessed 9 January, 2003. Cralle, Trevor, ed. The Surfin’ary. Berkely, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2001. Gliddon, Joshua. “Mad Wax.” The Bulletin, Sydney: ACP Publishing, August 13, 2002. Young, Nat. “My punch-up at San Diego.” Sunday Telegraph, Sydney, 1966. ---. Surf Rage. Angourie: Nymboida Press, 2000. Links http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/409as2001/agbayani/report1.htm http://www.coastalwatch.com http://www.realsurf.com.au/news/newsitem.php?id=106 http://www.baliwaves.com http://www.surf-news.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Scott, Paul. "We shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans…We shall " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/05-weshallfight.php>. APA Style Scott, P., (2003, Feb 26). We shall Fight on the Seas and the Oceans…We shall . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/05-weshallfight.html

The use of the term authenticity in the social science literature can be rather eclectic at best and unscrupulous at worst. (Vanini, 74)We live in an age of authenticity, according to Charles Taylor, an era which prizes the finding of one’s life “against the demands of external conformity” (67–68). Taylor’s argument is that, correctly practiced, authenticity need not result in individualism or tribalism but rather a generation of people “made more self-responsible” (77).Philip Vanini has surveyed the turn toward authenticity in sociology. He has parsed the word authenticity, and argued that it has been used in three ways—factual, original, and sincere. A failure to attend to these distinctives, mixed with a “paucity of systematic empirical research” has resulted in abstract speculation (75). This article responds to Taylor’s analysis and Vanini’s challenge.My argument utilises Vanini’s theoretical frame—authenticity as factual, original, and sincere—to analyse empirical data gathered in the study of recent religious innovation occurring amongst a set of (“alternative worship”) Christian communities in the United Kingdom. I am drawing upon longitudinal research I have conducted, including participant observation in digital forums from 1997 to the present, along with semi-structured interviews conducted in the United Kingdom in 2001 and 2012.A study of “alternative worship” was deemed significant given such communities’s interaction with contemporary culture, including their use of dance music, multi-media, and social media (Baker, Taylor). Such approaches contrast with other contemporary religious approaches to culture, including a fundamentalist retreat from culture or the maintenance of a “high” culture, and thus inherited patterns of religious expression (Roberts).I argue that the discourse of “alternative worship” deploy authenticity-as-originality as essential to their identity creation. This notion of authenticity is used by these communities to locate themselves culturally (as authentically-original in contemporary cultures), and thus simultaneously to define themselves as marginal from mainstream religious expression.Intriguingly, a decade later, “alternative worship” was appropriated by the mainstream. A new organisation—Fresh Expressions—emerged from within the Church of England, and the Methodist Church in Britain that, as it developed, drew on “alternative worship” for legitimation. A focus on authenticity provides a lens by which to pay particular attention to the narratives offered by social organisations in the processes of innovation. How did the discourse deployed by Fresh Expressions in creating innovation engage “alternative worship” as an existing innovation? How did these “alternative worship” groups, who had found generative energy in their location as an alternative—authentically-original—expression, respond to this appropriation by mainstream religious life?A helpful conversation partner in teasing out the complexity of these moves within contemporary religious innovation is Sarah Thornton. She researched trends in dance clubs, and rave music in Britain, during a similar time period. Thornton highlighted the value of authenticity, which she argued was deployed in club cultures to create “subcultural capital” (98-105). She further explored how the discourses around authenticity were appropriated over time through the complex networks within which popular culture flows (Bennett; Collins; Featherstone; McRobbie; Willis).This article will demonstrate that a similar pattern—using authenticity-as-originality to create “subcultural capital”—was at work in “alternative worship.” Further, the notions of authenticity as factual, original, and sincere are helpful in parsing the complex networks that exist within the domains of religious cultures. This analysis will be two-fold, first as the mainstream appropriates, and second as the “alternative” responds.Thornton emerged “post-Birmingham.” She drew on the scholarship associated with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, glad of their turn toward popular culture. Nevertheless she considered her work to be distinct. Thornton posited the construction of “taste cultures” through distinctions created by those inside a particular set of signs and symbols. She argued for a networked view of society, one that recognised the complex roles of media and commerce in constructing distinctions and sought a more multi-dimensional frame by which to analyse the interplay between mainstream and marginal.In order to structure my investigation, I am suggesting three stages of development capture the priority, yet complexity, of authenticity in contemporary religious innovation: generation, appropriation, complexification.Generation of Authenticity-as-OriginalityThornton (26, italics original) writes:authenticity is arguably the most important value ascribed to popular music … Music is perceived as authentic when it rings true or feels real, when it has credibility and comes across as genuine. In an age of endless representations and global mediation, the experience of musical authenticity is perceived as a cure both for alienation … and dissimulation.Thornton is arguing that in this manifestation of youth culture, authenticity is valued. Further, authenticity is a perception, attached to phrases like “rings true” and “feels real.” Therefore, authenticity is hard to measure. Perhaps this move is deliberate, an attempt by those inside the “taste culture” to preserve their “subcultural capital,”—their particular sets of distinctions.Thornton’s use of authentic slides between authenticity-as-sincerity and authenticity-as-originality. For example, in the above quote, the language of “true” and “real” is a referencing of authenticity-as-sincerity. However, as Thornton analysed the appropriation of club culture by the mainstream, she is drawing, without stating it clearly, on both authenticity-as-sincerity and authenticity-as-originality.At around the time that Thornton was analysing club cultures, a number of Christian religious groups in the United Kingdom began to incorporate features of club culture into their worship services. Churches began to experiment with services beginning at club times (9.00 pm), the playing of dance music, and the use of “video-jockeying.” According to Roberts many of these worshipping communities “had close links to this movement in dance culture” (15).A discourse of authenticity was used to legitimise such innovation. Consider the description of one worship experience, located in Sheffield, England, known as Nine o’Clock Service (Fox 9-10, italics original).We enter a round, darkened room where there are forty-two television sets and twelve large video screens and projections around the walls—projections of dancing DNA, dancing planets and galaxies and atoms … this was a very friendly place for a generation raised on television and images … these people … are doing it themselves and in the center of the city and in the center of their society: at worship itself.This description makes a number of appeals to authenticity. The phrase “a generation raised on television and images” implies another generation not raised in digitally rich environments. A “subcultural” distinction has been created. The phrase “doing it themselves” suggests that this ‘digital generation’ creates something distinct, an authentic expression of their “taste culture.” The celebration of “doing it for themselves” resonates with Charles Taylor’s analysis of an age of authenticity in which self-discovery is connected with artistic creation (62).The Nine o’Clock Service gained nationwide attention, attracting attendances of over 600 young people. Rogerson described it as “a bold and imaginative attempt at contextual theology … people were attracted to it in the first instance for aesthetic and cultural reasons” (51). The priority on the aesthetic and the cultural, in contrast to the doctrinal, suggests a valuing of authenticity-as-originality.Reading Rogerson alongside Taylor teases out a further nuance in regard to the application of authenticity. Rogerson described the Nine o’Clock Service as offering “an alternative way of living in a materialist and acquisitive world” (50). This resonates with Charles Taylor’s argument that authenticity can be practiced in ways that make people “more self-responsible” (77). It suggests that the authenticity-as-originality expressed by the Nine o’Clock Service not only appealed culturally, but also offered an ethic of authenticity. We will return to this later in my argument.Inspired by the Nine o’Clock Service, other groups in the United Kingdom began to offer a similar experience. According to Adrian Riley (6):The Nine O’clock Service … was the first worshipping community to combine elements of club culture with passionate worship … It pioneered what is commonly known as “alternative worship” … Similar groups were established themselves albeit on a smaller scale.The very term “alternative worship” is significant. Sociologist of religion Abby Day argued that “boundary-marking [creates] an identity” (50). Applying Day, the term “alternative” is being used to create an identity in contrast to the existing, mainstream church. The “digitally rich” are indeed “doing it for themselves.” To be “alternative” is to be authentically-original: to be authentically-original means a participant cannot, by definition, be mainstream.Thornton argued that subcultures needed to define themselves against in order to maintain themselves as “hip” (119). This seems to describe the use of the term “alternative.” Ironically, the mainstream is needed, in order to define against, to create identity by being authentically-original (Kelly).Hence the following claim by an “alternative worship” organiser (Interview G, 2001):People were willing to play around and to say, well who knows what will happen if we run this video clip or commercial next to this sixteenth century religious painting and if we play, you know, Black Flag or some weird band underneath it … And what will it feel like? Well let’s try it and see.Note the link with music (Black Flag, an American hard core punk band formed in 1976), so central to Thornton’s understanding of authenticity in popular youth cultures. Note also the similarity between Thornton’s ascribing of value in words like “rings true” and “feels real,” with words like “feel like” and “try and see.” The word “weird” is also significant. It is deployed as a signifier of authenticity, a sign of “subcultural capital.” It positions them as “alternative,” defined in (musical) distinction from the mainstream.In sum, my argument is that authenticity-as-originality is present in “alternative worship”: in the name, in the ethos of “doing it themselves,” and in the deploying of “subcultural capital” in the legitimation of innovation. All of this has been clarified through conversation with Thornton’s empirical research regarding the value of authenticity in club culture. My analysis of “alternative worship” as a religious innovation is consistent with Taylor’s claim that we inhabit an age of authenticity, one that can be practiced by “people who are made more self-responsible” (77).Mainstream AppropriationIn 2004, the Church of England produced Mission Shaped Church (MSC), a report regarding its future. It included a chapter that described recent religious innovation in England, grouped under twelve headings (alternative worship and base ecclesial communities, café, cell, network and seeker church models, multiple and mid week congregations, new forms of traditional churches, school and community-based initiatives, traditional church plants, youth congregations). The first innovation listed is “alternative worship.”The incoming Archbishop, Rowan Williams, drew on MSC to launch a new organisation. Called Fresh Expressions, over five million pounds was provided by the Church of England to fund an organisation to support this religious innovation.Intriguingly, recognition of authenticity in these “alternative” innovations was evident in the institutional discourse being created. When I interviewed Williams, he spoke of his commitment as a Bishop (Interview 6, 2012):I decided to spend a certain amount of quality time with people on the edge. Consequently when I was asked initially what are my priorities [as Archbishop] I said, “Well, this is what I’ve been watching on the edge … I really want to see how that could impact on the Church of England as a whole.In other words, what was marginal, what had until then generated identity by being authentic in contrast to the mainstream, was now being appropriated by the mainstream “to impact on the Church of England as a whole.” MSC was aware of this complexity. “Alternative worship” was described as containing “a strong desire to be different and is most vocal in its repudiation of existing church” (45). Nevertheless, it was appropriated by the mainstream.My argument has been that “alternative worship” drew on a discourse of authenticity-as-originality. Yet when we turn to analyse mainstream appropriation, we find the definitions of authenticity begin to slide. Authenticity-as-originality is affirmed, while authenticity-as-sincerity is introduced. The MSC affirmed the “ways in which the Church of England has sought to engage with the diverse cultures and networks that are part of contemporary life” (80). It made explicit the connection between originality and authenticity. “Some pioneers and leaders have yearned for a more authentic way of living, being, doing church” (80). This can be read as an affirmation of authenticity-as-originality.Yet MSC also introduced authenticity-as-sincerity as a caution to authenticity-as-originality. “Fresh expressions should not be embraced simply because they are popular and new, but because they are a sign of the work of God and of the kingdom” (80). Thus Fresh Expressions introduced authenticity-as-sincerity (sign of the work of God) and placed it alongside authenticity-as-originality. In so doing, in the shift from “alternative worship” to Fresh Expressions, a space is both conflated (twelve expressions of church) and contested (two notions of authenticity). Conflated, because MSC places alternative worship as one innovation alongside eleven others. Contested because of the introduction of authenticity-as-sincerity alongside the affirming of authenticity-as-originality. What is intriguing is to return to Taylor’s argument for the possibility of an ethic of authenticity in which “people are made more self-responsible” (77). Perhaps the response in MSC arises from the concern described by Taylor, the risk in an age of authenticity of a society that is more individualised and tribal (55-6). To put it in distinctly ecclesiological terms, how can the church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic be carried forward if authenticity-as-originality is celebrated at, and by, the margins? Does innovation contribute to more atomised, self-absorbed and fragmented expressions of church?Yet Taylor is adamant that authenticity can be embraced without an inevitable slide in these directions. He argued that humans share a "horizon of significance" in common (52), in which one’s own "identity crucially depends on [one’s] dialogical relations with others" (48). We have already considered Rogerson’s claim that the Nine o’Clock Service offered “an alternative way of living in a materialist and acquisitive world” (50). It embraced a “strong political dimension, and a concern for justice at local and international level” (46). In other words, “alternative worship’s” authenticity-as-originality was surely already an expression of “the kingdom,” one in which “people [were] made more self-responsible” (77) in the sharing of (drawing on Taylor) a "horizon of significance" in the task of identity-formation-in-relationships (52).Yet the placing in MSC of authenticity-as-sincerity alongside authenticity-as-originality could easily have been read by those in “alternative worship” as a failure to recognise their existing practicing of the ethic of authenticity, their embodying of “the kingdom.”Consequent ComplexificationMy research into “alternative worship” is longitudinal. After the launch of Fresh Expressions, I included a new set of interview questions, which sought to clarify how these “alternative worship” communities were impacted upon by the appropriation of “alternative worship” by the mainstream. The responses can be grouped into three categories: minimal impact, a sense of affirmation and a contested complexity.With regard to minimal impact, some “alternative worship” communities perceived the arrival of Fresh Expressions had minimal impact on their shared expression of faith. The following quote was representative: “Has had no impact at all actually. Apart from to be slightly puzzled” (Interview 3, 2012).Others found the advent of Fresh Expressions provided a sense of affirmation. “Fresh expressions is … an enabling concept. It was very powerful” (Focus group 2, 2012). Respondents in this category felt that their innovations within alternative worship had contributed to, or been valued by, the innovation of Fresh Expressions. Interestingly, those whose comments could be grouped in this category had significant “subcultural capital” invested in this mainstream appropriation. Specifically, they now had a vocational role that in some way was connected to Fresh Expressions. In using the term “subcultural capital” I am again drawing on Thornton (98–105), who argued that in the complex networks through which culture flows, certain people, for example DJ’s, have more influence in the ascribing of authenticity. This suggests that “subcultural” capital is also present in religious innovation, with certain individuals finding ways to influence, from the “alternative worship” margin, the narratives of authenticity used in the complex interplay between alternative worship and Fresh Expressions.For others the arrival of Fresh Expressions had resulted in a contested complexity. The following quote was representative: “It’s a crap piece of establishment branding …but then we’re just snobs” (Focus group 3, 2012). This comment returns us to my initial framing of authenticity-as-originality. I would argue that “we’re just snobs” has a similar rhetorical effect as “Black Flag or some weird band.” It is an act of marginal self-location essential in the construction of innovation and identity.This argument is strengthened given the fact that the comment was coming from a community that itself had become perhaps the most recognizable “brand” among “alternative worship.” They have developed their own logo, website, and related online merchandising. This would suggest the concern is not the practice of marketing per se. Rather the concern is that it seems “crap” in relation to authenticity-as-originality, in a loss of aesthetic quality and a blurring of the values of innovation and identity as it related to bold, imaginative, aesthetic, and cultural attempts at contextual theology (Rogerson 51).Returning to Thornton, her research was also longitudinal in that she explored what happened when a song from a club, which had defined itself against the mainstream and as “hip,” suddenly experienced mainstream success (119). What is relevant to this investigation into religious innovation is her argument that in club culture, “selling out” is perceived to have happened only when the marginal community “loses its sense of possession, exclusive ownership and familiar belonging” (124–26).I would suggest that this is what is happening within “alternative worship” in response to the arrival of Fresh Expressions. Both “alternative worship” and Fresh Expressions are religious innovations. But Fresh Expressions defined itself in a way that conflated the space. It meant that the boundary marking so essential to “alternative worship” was lost. Some gained from this. Others struggled with a loss of imaginative and cultural creativity, a softening of authenticity-as-originality.More importantly, the discourse around Fresh Expressions also introduced authenticity-as-sincerity as a value that could be used to contest authenticity-as-originality. Whether intended or not, this also challenged the ethic of authenticity already created by these “alternative worship” communities. Their authenticity-as-originality was already a practicing of an ethic of authenticity. They were already sharing a "horizon of significance" with humanity, entering into “dialogical relations with others" that were a contemporary expression of the church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic (Taylor 52, 48). ConclusionIn this article I have analysed the discourse around authenticity as it is manifest within one strand of contemporary religious innovation. Drawing on Vanini, Taylor, and Thornton, I have explored the generative possibilities as media and culture are utilised in an “alternative worship” that is authentically-original. I have outlined the consequences when authenticity-as-originality is appropriated by the mainstream, specifically in the innovation known as Fresh Expressions and the complexity when authenticity-as-sincerity is introduced as a contested value.The value of authenticity has been found to exist in a complex relationship with the ethics of authenticity within one domain of contemporary religious innovation.ReferencesBaker, Jonny. “Alternative Worship and the Significance of Popular Culture.” Honours paper: U of London, 2000.Bennett, Andy. Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity, and Place. New York: Palgrave, 2000.Cronshaw, Darren, and Steve Taylor. “The Congregation in a Pluralist Society: Rereading Newbigin for Missional Churches Today.” Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies 27.2 (2014): 1-24.Day, Abby. Believing in Belonging. Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011.Collins, Jim, ed. High-Pop. Making Culture into Popular Entertainment. Oxford: Blackwells, 2002.Cray, Graham. Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Culture, London: Church House Publishing, 2004.Featherstone, Mike. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage, 1991.Fox, Matthew. Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996.Guest, Matthew, and Steve Taylor. “The Post-Evangelical Emerging Church: Innovations in New Zealand and the UK.” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 6.1 (2006): 49-64.Howard, Roland. The Rise and Fall of the Nine o’Clock Service. London: Continuum, 1996.Kelly, Gerard. Get a Grip on the Future without Losing Your Hold in the Past. Great Britain: Monarch, 1999.Kelly, Steven. “Book Review. Alt.Culture by Steven Daly and Nathaniel Wice.” 20 Aug. 2003. ‹http://www.richmondreview.co.uk/books/cult.html›.McRobbie, Angela. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.Riley, Adrian. God in the House: UK Club Culture and Spirituality. 1999. 15 Oct. 2003 ‹http://www.btmc.org.auk/altworship/house/›.Roberts, Paul. Alternative Worship in the Church of England. Cambridge: Grove Books, 1999.Rogerson, J. W. “‘The Lord Is here’: The Nine o’Clock Service.” Why Liberal Churches Are Growing. Eds. Ian Markham and Martyn Percy. London: Bloomsbury T & T, 2006. 45-52.Taylor, Charles. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Taylor, Steve. “Baptist Worship and Contemporary Culture: A New Zealand Case Study.” Interfaces: Baptists and Others. Eds. David Bebbington and Martin Sutherland. Carlisle: Paternoster, 2013. 292-307.Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures. Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: UP New England, 1996.Vanini, Philip. “Authenticity.” Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. Ed. Dale Southerton. Los Angeles: Sage, 2011. 74-76.Willis, Paul E., et al. Common Culture. Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young. Milton Keynes: Open UP, 1990.

All history of this area and the general talk and all of that is that 1973 was a turning point and the Aquarius Festival is credited with having turned this region around in so many ways, but I think that is a myth ... and I have to honour the truth; and the truth is that old Dicke Donelly came and did a Welcome to Country the night before the festival. (Joseph in Joseph and Hanley)In 1973 the Australian Union of Students (AUS) held the Aquarius Arts and Lifestyle Festival in a small, rural New South Wales town called Nimbin. The festival was seen as the peak expression of Australian counterculture and is attributed to creating the “Rainbow Region”, an area with a concentration of alternative life stylers in Northern NSW (Derrett 28). While the Aquarius Festival is recognised as a founding historical and countercultural event, the unique and important relationships established with Indigenous people at this time are generally less well known. This article investigates claims that the 1973 Aquarius Festival was “the first event in Australian history that sought permission for the use of the land from the Traditional Owners” (Joseph and Hanley). The diverse international, national and local conditions that coalesced at the Aquarius Festival suggest a fertile environment was created for reconciliatory bonds to develop. Often dismissed as a “tree hugging, soap dodging movement,” the counterculture was radically politicised having sprung from the 1960s social revolutions when the world witnessed mass demonstrations that confronted war, racism, sexism and capitalism. Primarily a youth movement, it was characterised by flamboyant dress, music, drugs and mass gatherings with universities forming the epicentre and white, middle class youth leading the charge. As their ideals of changing the world were frustrated by lack of systematic change, many decided to disengage and a migration to rural settings occurred (Jacob; Munro-Clarke; Newton). In the search for alternatives, the counterculture assimilated many spiritual practices, such as Eastern traditions and mysticism, which were previously obscure to the Western world. This practice of spiritual syncretism can be represented as a direct resistance to the hegemony of the dominant Western culture (Stell). As the new counterculture developed, its progression from urban to rural settings was driven by philosophies imbued with a desire to reconnect with and protect the natural world while simultaneously rejecting the dominant conservative order. A recurring feature of this countercultural ‘back to the land’ migration was not only an empathetic awareness of the injustices of colonial past, but also a genuine desire to learn from the Indigenous people of the land. Indigenous people were generally perceived as genuine opposers of Westernisation, inherently spiritual, ecological, tribal and communal, thus encompassing the primary values to which the counterculture was aspiring (Smith). Cultures converged. One, a youth culture rebelling from its parent culture; the other, ancient cultures reeling from the historical conquest by the youths’ own ancestors. Such cultural intersections are rich with complex scenarios and politics. As a result, often naïve, but well-intended relations were established with Native Americans, various South American Indigenous peoples, New Zealand Maori and, as this article demonstrates, the Original People of Australia (Smith; Newton; Barr-Melej; Zolov). The 1960s protest era fostered the formation of groups aiming to address a variety of issues, and at times many supported each other. Jennifer Clarke says it was the Civil Rights movement that provided the first models of dissent by formulating a “method, ideology and language of protest” as African Americans stood up and shouted prior to other movements (2). The issue of racial empowerment was not lost on Australia’s Indigenous population. Clarke writes that during the 1960s, encouraged by events overseas and buoyed by national organisation, Aborigines “slowly embarked on a political awakening, demanded freedom from the trappings of colonialism and responded to the effects of oppression at worst and neglect at best” (4). Activism of the 1960s had the “profoundly productive effect of providing Aborigines with the confidence to assert their racial identity” (159). Many Indigenous youth were compelled by the zeitgeist to address their people’s issues, fulfilling Charlie Perkins’s intentions of inspiring in Indigenous peoples a will to resist (Perkins). Enjoying new freedoms of movement out of missions, due to the 1967 Constitutional change and the practical implementation of the assimilation policy, up to 32,000 Indigenous youth moved to Redfern, Sydney between 1967 and 1972 (Foley, “An Evening With”). Gary Foley reports that a dynamic new Black Power Movement emerged but the important difference between this new younger group and the older Indigenous leaders of the day was the diverse range of contemporary influences. Taking its mantra from the Black Panther movement in America, though having more in common with the equivalent Native American Red Power movement, the Black Power Movement acknowledged many other international struggles for independence as equally inspiring (Foley, “An Evening”). People joined together for grassroots resistance, formed anti-hierarchical collectives and established solidarities between varied groups who previously would have had little to do with each other. The 1973 Aquarius Festival was directly aligned with “back to the land” philosophies. The intention was to provide a place and a reason for gathering to “facilitate exchanges on survival techniques” and to experience “living in harmony with the natural environment.” without being destructive to the land (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Early documents in the archives, however, reveal no apparent interest in Australia’s Indigenous people, referring more to “silken Arabian tents, mediaeval banners, circus, jugglers and clowns, peace pipes, maypole and magic circles” (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). Obliterated from the social landscape and minimally referred to in the Australian education system, Indigenous people were “off the radar” to the majority mindset, and the Australian counterculture similarly was slow to appreciate Indigenous culture. Like mainstream Australia, the local counterculture movement largely perceived the “race” issue as something occurring in other countries, igniting the phrase “in your own backyard” which became a catchcry of Indigenous activists (Foley, “Whiteness and Blackness”) With no mention of any Indigenous interest, it seems likely that the decision to engage grew from the emerging climate of Indigenous activism in Australia. Frustrated by student protestors who seemed oblivious to local racial issues, focusing instead on popular international injustices, Indigenous activists accused them of hypocrisy. Aquarius Festival directors, found themselves open to similar accusations when public announcements elicited a range of responses. Once committed to the location of Nimbin, directors Graeme Dunstan and Johnny Allen began a tour of Australian universities to promote the upcoming event. While at the annual conference of AUS in January 1973 at Monash University, Dunstan met Indigenous activist Gary Foley: Gary witnessed the presentation of Johnny Allen and myself at the Aquarius Foundation session and our jubilation that we had agreement from the village residents to not only allow, but also to collaborate in the production of the Festival. After our presentation which won unanimous support, it was Gary who confronted me with the question “have you asked permission from local Aboriginal folk?” This threw me into confusion because we had seen no Aboriginals in Nimbin. (Dunstan, e-mail) Such a challenge came at a time when the historical climate was etched with political activism, not only within the student movement, but more importantly with Indigenous activists’ recent demonstrations, such as the installation in 1972 of the Tent Embassy in Canberra. As representatives of the counterculture movement, which was characterised by its inclinations towards consciousness-raising, AUS organisers were ethically obliged to respond appropriately to the questions about Indigenous permission and involvement in the Aquarius Festival at Nimbin. In addition to this political pressure, organisers in Nimbin began hearing stories of the area being cursed or taboo for women. This most likely originated from the tradition of Nimbin Rocks, a rocky outcrop one kilometre from Nimbin, as a place where only certain men could go. Jennifer Hoff explains that many major rock formations were immensely sacred places and were treated with great caution and respect. Only a few Elders and custodians could visit these places and many such locations were also forbidden for women. Ceremonies were conducted at places like Nimbin Rocks to ensure the wellbeing of all tribespeople. Stories of the Nimbin curse began to spread and most likely captivated a counterculture interested in mysticism. As organisers had hoped that news of the festival would spread on the “lips of the counterculture,” they were alarmed to hear how “fast the bad news of this curse was travelling” (Dunstan, e-mail). A diplomatic issue escalated with further challenges from the Black Power community when organisers discovered that word had spread to Sydney’s Indigenous community in Redfern. Organisers faced a hostile reaction to their alleged cultural insensitivity and were plagued by negative publicity with accusations the AUS were “violating sacred ground” (Janice Newton 62). Faced with such bad press, Dunstan was determined to repair what was becoming a public relations disaster. It seemed once prompted to the path, a sense of moral responsibility prevailed amongst the organisers and they took the unprecedented step of reaching out to Australia’s Indigenous people. Dunstan claimed that an expedition was made to the local Woodenbong mission to consult with Elder, Uncle Lyle Roberts. To connect with local people required crossing the great social divide present in that era of Australia’s history. Amy Nethery described how from the nineteenth century to the 1960s, a “system of reserves, missions and other institutions isolated, confined and controlled Aboriginal people” (9). She explains that the people were incarcerated as a solution to perceived social problems. For Foley, “the widespread genocidal activity of early “settlement” gave way to a policy of containment” (Foley, “Australia and the Holocaust”). Conditions on missions were notoriously bad with alcoholism, extreme poverty, violence, serious health issues and depression common. Of particular concern to mission administrators was the perceived need to keep Indigenous people separate from the non-indigenous population. Dunstan described the mission he visited as having “bad vibes.” He found it difficult to communicate with the elderly man, and was not sure if he understood Dunstan’s quest, as his “responses came as disjointed raves about Jesus and saving grace” (Dunstan, e-mail). Uncle Lyle, he claimed, did not respond affirmatively or negatively to the suggestion that Nimbin was cursed, and so Dunstan left assuming it was not true. Other organisers began to believe the curse and worried that female festival goers might get sick or worse, die. This interpretation reflected, as Vanessa Bible argues, a general Eurocentric misunderstanding of the relationship of Indigenous peoples with the land. Paul Joseph admits they were naïve whites coming into a place with very little understanding, “we didn’t know if we needed a witch doctor or what we needed but we knew we needed something from the Aborigines to lift the spell!”(Joseph and Hanley). Joseph, one of the first “hippies” who moved to the area, had joined forces with AUS organisers. He said, “it just felt right” to get Indigenous involvement and recounted how organisers made another trip to Woodenbong Mission to find Dickee (Richard) Donnelly, a Song Man, who was very happy to be invited. Whether the curse was valid or not it proved to be productive in further instigating respectful action. Perhaps feeling out of their depth, the organisers initiated another strategy to engage with Australian Indigenous people. A call out was sent through the AUS network to diversify the cultural input and it was recommended they engage the services of South African artist, Bauxhau Stone. Timing aligned well as in 1972 Australia had voted in a new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. Whitlam brought about significant political changes, many in response to socialist protests that left a buoyancy in the air for the counterculturalist movement. He made prodigious political changes in support of Indigenous people, including creating the Aboriginal Arts Board as part of the Australian Council of the Arts (ACA). As the ACA were already funding activities for the Aquarius Festival, organisers were successful in gaining two additional grants specifically for Indigenous participation (Farnham). As a result We were able to hire […] representatives, a couple of Kalahari bushmen. ‘Cause we were so dumb, we didn’t think we could speak to the black people, you know what I mean, we thought we would be rejected, or whatever, so for us to really reach out, we needed somebody black to go and talk to them, or so we thought, and it was remarkable. This one Bau, a remarkable fellow really, great artist, great character, he went all over Australia. He went to Pitjantjatjara, Yirrkala and we arranged buses and tents when they got here. We had a very large contingent of Aboriginal people come to the Aquarius Festival, thanks to Whitlam. (Joseph in Joseph and Henley) It was under the aegis of these government grants that Bauxhau Stone conducted his work. Stone embodied a nexus of contemporary issues. Acutely aware of the international movement for racial equality and its relevance to Australia, where conditions were “really appalling”, Stone set out to transform Australian race relations by engaging with the alternative arts movement (Stone). While his white Australian contemporaries may have been unaccustomed to dealing with the Indigenous racial issue, Stone was actively engaged and thus well suited to act as a cultural envoy for the Aquarius Festival. He visited several local missions, inviting people to attend and notifying them of ceremonies being conducted by respected Elders. Nimbin was then the site of the Aquarius Lifestyle and Celebration Festival, a two week gathering of alternative cultures, technologies and youth. It innovatively demonstrated its diversity of influences, attracted people from all over the world and was the first time that the general public really witnessed Australia’s counterculture (Derrett 224). As markers of cultural life, counterculture festivals of the 1960s and 1970s were as iconic as the era itself and many around the world drew on the unique Indigenous heritage of their settings in some form or another (Partridge; Perone; Broadley and Jones; Zolov). The social phenomenon of coming together to experience, celebrate and foster a sense of unity was triggered by protests, music and a simple, yet deep desire to reconnect with each other. Festivals provided an environment where the negative social pressures of race, gender, class and mores (such as clothes) were suspended and held the potential “for personal and social transformation” (St John 167). With the expressed intent to “take matters into our own hands” and try to develop alternative, innovative ways of doing things with collective participation, the Aquarius Festival thus became an optimal space for reinvigorating ancient and Indigenous ways (Dunstan, “A Survival Festival”). With philosophies that venerated collectivism, tribalism, connecting with the earth, and the use of ritual, the Indigenous presence at the Aquarius Festival gave attendees the opportunity to experience these values. To connect authentically with Nimbin’s landscape, forming bonds with the Traditional Owners was essential. Participants were very fortunate to have the presence of the last known initiated men of the area, Uncle Lyle Roberts and Uncle Dickee Donnely. These Elders represented the last vestiges of an ancient culture and conducted innovative ceremonies, song, teachings and created a sacred fire for the new youth they encountered in their land. They welcomed the young people and were very happy for their presence, believing it represented a revolutionary shift (Wedd; King; John Roberts; Cecil Roberts). Images 1 and 2: Ceremony and talks conducted at the Aquarius Festival (people unknown). Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Paul White. The festival thus provided an important platform for the regeneration of cultural and spiritual practices. John Roberts, nephew of Uncle Lyle, recalled being surprised by the reaction of festival participants to his uncle: “He was happy and then he started to sing. And my God … I couldn’t get near him! There was this big ring of hippies around him. They were about twenty deep!” Sharing to an enthusiastic, captive audience had a positive effect and gave the non-indigenous a direct Indigenous encounter (Cecil Roberts; King; Oshlak). Estimates of the number of Indigenous people in attendance vary, with the main organisers suggesting 800 to 1000 and participants suggesting 200 to 400 (Stone; Wedd; Oshlak: Joseph; King; Cecil Roberts). As the Festival lasted over a two week period, many came and left within that time and estimates are at best reliant on memory, engagement and perspectives. With an estimated total attendance at the Festival between 5000 and 10,000, either number of Indigenous attendees is symbolic and a significant symbolic statistic for Indigenous and non-indigenous to be together on mutual ground in Australia in 1973. Images 3-5: Performers from Yirrkala Dance Group, brought to the festival by Stone with funding from the Federal Government. Photographs reproduced by permission of photographer and festival attendee Dr Ian Cameron. For Indigenous people, the event provided an important occasion to reconnect with their own people, to share their culture with enthusiastic recipients, as well as the chance to experience diverse aspects of the counterculture. Though the northern NSW region has a history of diverse cultural migration of Italian and Indian families, the majority of non-indigenous and Indigenous people had limited interaction with cosmopolitan influences (Kijas 20). Thus Nimbin was a conservative region and many Christianised Indigenous people were also conservative in their outlook. The Aquarius Festival changed that as the Indigenous people experienced the wide-ranging cultural elements of the alternative movement. The festival epitomised countercultural tendencies towards flamboyant fashion and hairstyles, architectural design, fantastical art, circus performance, Asian clothes and religious products, vegetarian food and nudity. Exposure to this bohemian culture would have surely led to “mind expansion and consciousness raising,” explicit aims adhered to by the movement (Roszak). Performers and participants from Africa, America and India also gave attending Indigenous Australians the opportunity to interact with non-European cultures. Many people interviewed for this paper indicated that Indigenous people’s reception of this festival experience was joyous. For Australia’s early counterculture, interest in Indigenous Australia was limited and for organisers of the AUS Aquarius Festival, it was not originally on the agenda. The counterculture in the USA and New Zealand had already started to engage with their Indigenous people some years earlier. However due to the Aquarius Festival’s origins in the student movement and its solidarities with the international Indigenous activist movement, they were forced to shift their priorities. The coincidental selection of a significant spiritual location at Nimbin to hold the festival brought up additional challenges and countercultural intrigue with mystical powers and a desire to connect authentically to the land, further prompted action. Essentially, it was the voices of empowered Indigenous activists, like Gary Foley, which in fact triggered the reaching out to Indigenous involvement. While the counterculture organisers were ultimately receptive and did act with unprecedented respect, credit must be given to Indigenous activists. The activist’s role is to trigger action and challenge thinking and in this case, it was ultimately productive. Therefore the Indigenous people were not merely passive recipients of beneficiary goodwill, but active instigators of appropriate cultural exchange. After the 1973 festival many attendees decided to stay in Nimbin to purchase land collectively and a community was born. Relationships established with local Indigenous people developed further. Upon visiting Nimbin now, one will see a vibrant visual display of Indigenous and psychedelic themed art, a central park with an open fire tended by local custodians and other Indigenous community members, an Aboriginal Centre whose rent is paid for by local shopkeepers, and various expressions of a fusion of counterculture and Indigenous art, music and dance. While it appears that reconciliation became the aspiration for mainstream society in the 1990s, Nimbin’s early counterculture history had Indigenous reconciliation at its very foundation. The efforts made by organisers of the 1973 Aquarius Festival stand as one of very few examples in Australian history where non-indigenous Australians have respectfully sought to learn from Indigenous people and to assimilate their cultural practices. It also stands as an example for the world, of reconciliation, based on hippie ideals of peace and love. 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