Social Control and Conflict Management Among Australian Aboriginal Desert People Before and After the Advent of Alcohol

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter examines the Mardu of Australia. It describes social control and conflict management in Western Desert “traditional” culture, which suggests a number of mutually reinforcing dispositions, norms, values, and behaviors that work to minimize both interpersonal and intergroup conflict. Given the exceptionally marginal ecological setting, protracted feuding and boundary maintaining behaviors would be suicidal. The situational and shifting nature of leadership, in combination with the dominance of classificatory kinship in structuring interpersonal relations, ensures that cooperation is the dominant mode of social being. The discussion then turns to the intrusion of Europeans and alcohol in the early twentieth century, which heralded a massive period of reaction and adjustment.