![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
Ronald and Catherine Berndt, eminent anthropologists of Aboriginal Australia, maintained a personal and professional interest in Asia throughout their almost fifty‐year marriage. Personally, this was expressed through their large private collection of Asian art and artefacts; professionally, they explored early Asian contacts with northern Australia, supported the development of Asian Studies in Australian universities—along with the forging of cross‐institutional relationships—and drew on Asia for cross‐cultural comparison. At the root of this interest lay the legacy of World War II, against which background the Berndts argued for increased engagement with Australia's regional neighbours, as well as for greater tolerance of cultural diversity.
Notes
1. Acknowledgment: I am grateful to the staff of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, in particular the Director, Dr John Stanton, for assisting me in my research and for providing access to the Berndts' personal archive.
2. A select bibliography can be found in Tonkinson and Howard (Citation1990a, 45–63).
3. The significance of the Asian collection in the Berndts' personal life and its role in their marriage is discussed in Brittlebank (Citationin press).
4. The library is now in the Berndt Museum of Anthropology. Runs of Contemporary Japan, from 1933–1940, and Contemporary Manchuria, from 1937–38, seem likely to have been acquired by Ronald as a teenager or young man. The library also contains a large number of copies of Illustrated Indian Weekly from the late 1960s.
5. A copy of their report, entitled Anthropology in India, is in the Berndt Archives.
6. It should be noted here that, while Ronald rarely explicitly referred to his professional interest in Asian culture—tending to describe himself as a ‘non‐specialist’, Catherine did list India and Indonesia as two of her areas of expertise (R. Berndt Citation1966a; C. Berndt c. Citation1965, c. Citation1984–86). On one of the few occasions that Ronald did refer to his interest, he rather amusingly wrote that Southeast Asian art ‘is one of my own major interests (after, of course, Aboriginal art)’ (R. Berndt Citation1969).
7. The interest continued even into retirement, in 1981, when Ronald indicated that along with other projects he planned to write a book based on a study of the voyages of the Macassans on their homeward journeys from Australia (Sansom Citation1981, 4). He had also underlined the theme of alien contact and Indonesian influence in discussing the significance of objects in his new Museum of Anthropology on its opening in 1977 (Berndt, R. Citation1977, 2–3).
8. In an excoriating review of C. P. Mountford's book on the art, myth and symbolism of Arnhem Land—which had failed even to mention the Berndts' Arnhem Land history—Ronald pointed out that the ‘aura or remoteness…deliberately nourished in the Press’, and perpetuated in Mountford's book, ‘was a complete misrepresentation, since the Arnhem Landers have, over a considerable period of time, had more association with alien peoples than most other Australian Aborigines.’ (R. Berndt Citation1958a, 250)
9. Earlier proposed titles for the article were ‘Asian contacts with Australian Aborigines’ and ‘An Asian Discovery of Australia?’. See 1964 correspondence in Hemisphere file, Berndt Archives.
10. The article does not appear to have been published. A typed bibliography from the 1960s only lists it (for the year 1945) as ‘for Asia and the Americas’ (Berndt, R. Citation1962b).
11. The Art Gallery of Western Australia, where he was an honorary associate in anthropology, was another target of Ronald's lobbying. Letters exist from the 1960s where he encourages the gallery's interest in Indian and Southeast Asian art, noting with regard to the latter that the ‘growth of this sector of the Gallery's interests is one I will watch with considerable pleasure’; and he underlines the value of such holdings ‘because of the cross‐cultural artistic perspective’ they offer. (R. Berndt Citation1969; see also Robertson, Citation1965).
12. The Berndts' itinerary can be found in the report of their survey.
13. The Illustrated Indian Weekly appears to have been part of that collecting, as it is drawn on more than once in the book (see note 4 above).
14. The use of Asian material to provide comparative examples occurs regularly through the Berndts' writings (see, for example, R. Berndt Citation1957, 160; Citation1984, 13; C. Berndt Citation1960, 51, 64; Citation1964, 168).
15. A Carnegie Fellowship had enabled them to spend time in America visiting institutions and meeting a substantial number of anthropologists working in them.
16. Later in his address, Ronald acknowledged that ‘Social Anthropology is increasingly concerned with practical issues and with social problems which relate very closely indeed to the exigencies of everyday living and social and personal welfare.’ (R. Berndt Citation1984, 22)
17. For example, as well as the survey for the Indian University Grants Commission in 1965, the Berndts attended the All‐India Summer School in Anthropology in New Delhi in 1972 (sponsored by the Grants Commission), and when visiting Thailand and Burma sought out members of local university anthropology departments (C. Berndt Citation1965; C. Berndt and R. Berndt Citation1972, 3, 6–12). Ronald's paper presented to the 1972 summer school, a critical evaluation of social anthropology in India, was later published in the journal Indian Anthropologist (R. Berndt Citation1974).
18. Their two papers for the Asia Bulletin comprehensively reveal this process at work (R. Berndt and C. Berndt Citation1968; C. Berndt and R. Berndt Citation1972).