Roger Sandall
BornFrederick Roger Sandall
18 December 1933
Christchurch, New Zealand
Died11 August 2012(2012-08-11) (aged 78)
Australia
Alma materUniversity of Auckland (BA)
Columbia University (MFA)
SubjectAnthropology
Website
www.rogersandall.com

Frederick Roger Sandall (18 December 1933 – 11 August 2012) was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist, essayist, cinematographer, and scholar.[1] He was a critic of romantic primitivism, which he called designer tribalism, and argued that this rooted Indigenous people in tradition and discouraged them to assimilate to Western culture.[2][3][4]

Early life

Sandall was born in Christchurch, New Zealand on 18 December 1933 and attended Takapuna Grammar School.[5] He studied anthropology at University of Auckland (BA, 1956) and received his MFA (1962) from Columbia University.[5][6][7] Among his teachers were Margaret Mead and Cecile Starr.[7] He filmed Maíz as partial fulfilment of his MFA at Columbia in 1962.[7] In 1965, he accepted a fellowship in anthropology at Columbia.[8][7]

Career

Sandall was finishing a librarianship course and taking photographs of the protests at Berkeley when MOMA's Willard Van Dyke recommended him to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) as a "one-man film unit."[7] Between 1966 and 1973, Sandall made a number of documentaries, oftentimes featuring sacred rituals that were shown only to small audiences in an effort to respect the privacy of these events. Despite this, he won the first prize for documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 1968 for his film Emu Ritual at Ruguri.[6][9][10][7]

After leaving AIAS in the early 1970s, Sandall became a political activist for the rights of Indigenous Australians.[7] In 1973, Sandall joined the anthropology department at the University of Sydney as a lecturer.[5][11] He wrote for a number of journals including The American Interest, Art International, Commentary, The New Criterion, Merkur, Encounter, and Quadrant.[6][5][12] He replaced Peter Coleman as the editor of Quadrant from March 1988 to January 1989, after which he quit due to a public political clash and difficulty in drumming up interest among writers.[11][13][14] He retired from teaching in 1993. In 2001, he published The Culture Cult with an American firm after comments he had made at a conference years prior were "grossly distorted in a[n Australian] newspaper report."[15] In 2003, the book won him a Centenary Medal.[6]

Sandall was a strong critic of romantic primitivism. He coined the term designer tribalism to criticise Western anthropologists' perpetuation of the noble savage archetype and the "Disneyfication" of Indigenous people's relationship with nature by "forcing" them to continue practicing their ancestral traditions.[3][2][16][17] He specifically criticises the Māori people for hunting practices that caused the extinction of the moa bird, which he felt was proof that these rituals were being maintained for Western tourism.[17][18] He named Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Robert Owen, and John Humphrey Noyes as part of the "culture cult" that kept designer tribalism alive.[17] A quote from The Culture Cult reads: "If your traditional way of life has no alphabet, no writing, no books, and no libraries, and yet you are continually told that you have a culture which is 'rich', 'complex', and 'sophisticated', how can you realistically see your place in the scheme of things? If all such hyperbole were true, who would need books or writing? Why not hang up a 'Gone Fishing' sign and head for the beach?"[3][19] He also felt that "repression, economic backwardness, endemic disease, religious fanaticism, and severe artistic constraints" were inherent within primitive Indigenous cultures.[3][4] He believed that the White Australia policy and similar legislations improved the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians and supported cultural assimilation into what he called "modern civilisation".[3][4][20]

Personal life

Sandall was married to Bay Books publisher Philippa; they had two children, Richard and Emma. He died on 11 August 2012 in Australia.[21][1]

Select publications

Books

  • The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays (2001), Westview Press.

Essays

  • "When I Hear the Word ‘Culture’: From Arnold to Anthropology" (1980), Encounter, 325, 84-92.
  • "The Rise of the Anthropologue" (1986), Encounter, 70 (12): 66-71.
  • "Nihilism in the Middle East" (2004), Commentary, 118 (5): 38-44.
  • "What Native Peoples Deserve" (2005), Commentary, 119 (5): 54-59.
  • "The Culture Cult Revisited" (2008), Social Science and Modern Society, 45 (3): 233-238.

Filmography

  • Maíz (1962)[22][7]
  • Walbiri Ritual at Ngama (1966)[22]
  • Djungguan at Yirrkala (1966)
  • The Mulga Seed Ceremony (1967)
  • Emu Ritual at Ruguri (1967)[22]
  • Gunabibi: An Aboriginal Fertility Cult (1968)[22]
  • Walbiri Ritual at Gunadjarai (1969)[22]
  • Camels and the Pitjantjara (1969)[23][22]
  • Making a Bark Canoe (1969)[23]
  • Pintubi Revisit Yumari (1970)[22]
  • Pintubi Revisit Yaru-Yaru (1972)
  • What You Thinkin' About, Little Horse? (1972)[7]
  • Coniston Munster: Scenes from a Stockman's Life (1972)[23][22]
  • Larwari and Walkara (1976)
  • Weddings (1976)[7]
  • A Walbiri Fire Ceremony - Ngatjakula (1977)[23]
  • The Tragada Bhavai: A Rural Theater Troupe of Gujarat[7]
  • A Zenana Scenes and Recollections (1982)[7]
  • Nomads (1984)[7]
  • The Bharvad Predicament (1987)[7]
  • Close Encounters of No Kind (2002)[7]

References

  1. 1 2 "Roger Sandall". Sydney Morning Herald. August 2012. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  2. 1 2 Hirsi Ali, Ayaan (12 June 2010). "Facing up to radical Islam". The Gazette. Montreal, Canada. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Peacock, Janice (2006). "Culture Cullt Clan 2001: comments on the survival of Torres Strait culture". Aboriginal History. 30: 138–155. JSTOR 24046902. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Malcolm, Ian (2002). "Coming to Terms with Diversity: Educational Responses to Linguistic Plurality in Australia" (PDF). Zeitschrift für Australienstudien. 16: 17–30. doi:10.35515/zfa/asj.16/2002.04. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Appendix I" (PDF). The Samuel Griffith Society. 1997. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Roger Sandall". ABC. n.d. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Mortimer, Lorraine (2019). Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology: Explorations in the Aesthetic, the Existential, and the Possible. Indiana University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctvpb3wgk.4. JSTOR j.ctvpb3wgk.4.
  8. ↑ "A Grand Ride". The Atlantic. 1959. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  9. ↑ "Award film reserved for select audiences". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. 27 November 1989. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  10. ↑ Dunlop, Ian (1979). "Ethnographic Film-Making in Australia the First Seventy Years (1898-1968)". Aboriginal History. 3 (1/2): 111–119. JSTOR 24045736. Retrieved 21 July 2022.
  11. 1 2 Coleman, Peter (27 November 1989). "A literary giant confronted by pygmy poison". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  12. ↑ "Earth - Contributors" (PDF). Millenium House Australia. n.d. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  13. ↑ "The perils and pitfalls of publishing the Right". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. 27 November 1989. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  14. ↑ "Stepping out". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. 30 October 1987. Retrieved 19 July 2022.
  15. ↑ Arndt, Bettina (26 April 2001). "A culture of Denial". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  16. ↑ Kenny, Denis (30 June 2001). "It's cosmic, man". The Gazette. Sydney, Australia. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  17. 1 2 3 Kimball, Roger (2001). "The perils of designer tribalism". The New Criterion. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  18. ↑ Levine, H.B. (1987). "New Zealand". Commentary. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  19. ↑ Sandall, Roger (2001). The Culture Cult Designer Tribalism And Other Essays. Avalon Publishing. ISBN 9780813338637.
  20. ↑ Mcinnes, Rod (15 May 2001). "Inequality is not a black or white issue". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  21. ↑ "Performing - it's in the blood". The Sydney Morning Herald. Sydney, Australia. 12 September 1992. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Roger Sandall". British Film Institute. n.d. Archived from the original on 23 July 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
  23. 1 2 3 4 "Roger Sandall". Ronin Films. n.d. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
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