Seminar Series: Abstract

09:30
July 22 2009
Seminar Room A

The Jodhpur in History: Anthropologists, bushwalkers, artists, metaphysicians and other progressives between the wars
Peter Sutton (University of Adelaide)

This paper takes a freshly integrative approach to what appear on the surface to be a disparate range of historical/cultural developments. Through their overlapping values and personal networks, progressivist Australians between the Wars, as did many other Westerners, experienced the impacts of modern psychology and anthropology, sexual liberalism, female emancipation, secularisation, unconventional spirituality, fading imperialism, Indigenous welfare reform, new appreciation for Indigenous peoples, growing environmental protectionism, the hiking, bushwalking and other vitalist movements, and modernist art and letters. These incipient decolonisations were occurring across a broad spectrum but can be shown to have been intricately linked intellectually, aesthetically, metaphysically and socially. In a small country, the web of personal relationships was especially crucial to this transformation. This was a critical creative phase in the history of emergent modern values in Australia, setting the basic pattern for decades to come. The sixties didn’t just pop up from nowhere.