> There weren't many anthropologists available in 1798. And he idea that
> hunter gatherers had no propertied classes is so entrenched in popular
> culture in 2004 that it is a brave anthropologist who critiques it now.
I guess I tried to make my point a little too subtly. Of course, there were no anthropologists in 1798. That's why reports of non-Western societies by Western explorers of that period need to be read with great skepticism. Their methodology, to say the least, was not terribly sophisticated. In particular, what they called "property" (an English word, which already had a specifically capitalist meaning at that time) might well have been an incorrect term to use for a very different kind of social institution. (Even in capitalist usage, there are a number of different kinds of "property rights.")
> What one has to remember here is that any manifestation of a propertied
> class within an indigenous society was _not_ convenient to a new
> settler
> sociey. The dominant ideology of a "propertyless people" was the basis
> of
> the legal doctrine of _terra nullius_ which prevailed in Australian
> property
> law until the High Court's Mabo Judgement (1992).
Similarly in the Americas, of course. The Europeans (in some cases, at least) recognized tribal land property claims and paid various sums for land, but of course, from their point of view, the whole thing was basically a matter of what Marx called primitive accumulation, and it was entirely up to the consciences of the Europeans whether they paid anything at all, or just occupied the land.
> As I said, the example of Bennelong was noted in writing by at least
> two
> different observers, both of them well-known figures from settler
> history,
> which makes them eaasily checked. There are better examples from other
> regions.
But my question is, when they used the English word "property," just what were they referring to in aboriginal terms? And what was this fellow Bennelong's position in his society -- was he a representative example, or did he have some sort of special status?
> I couldn't agree more. I guess the controversy comes from two
> directions:
> (1) landowners who perceive a challenge to their social legitimacy and
> (2)
> leftists who are attached to the idea of "primitive communism".
I think the "primitive communism" concept (which after all also dates from a period preceding the rise of scientific anthropology) has been pretty well blasted out of the water by now. I need to get back to Sahlin's _Stone Age Economics,_ which is one of the many books I started a long time ago and never finished. (I note by a quick look at the index that he was an anthropologist who was brave enough to use the word "property.")
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)