Papers by Ase Ottosson
Yearbook for Traditional Music, 2012
Co-edited with Niko Besnier, this collection explores alternative sexualities and gender identiti... more Co-edited with Niko Besnier, this collection explores alternative sexualities and gender identities in the Pacific region. In 2015, Gender on the Edge was a recipient of the ICAS Reading Committee Edited Volume Accolade in the Social Sciences.
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2014
Social Anthropology, 2004
... London: Continuum. 286 pp. Pb.: £16.99. ISBN 0 8264 5816 5. This collection of previously pub... more ... London: Continuum. 286 pp. Pb.: £16.99. ISBN 0 8264 5816 5. This collection of previously published essays unites Littlewood's academic inquiries into how it is that psychiatric illnesses occur at particular cultural and historical moments. ...
Many Australian indigenous-settler towns experience public disorder involving indigenous people. ... more Many Australian indigenous-settler towns experience public disorder involving indigenous people. Through focussing on indigenous experiences, scholars mostly explain this in terms of structural inequality and divisions between the two categories of indigenous and non-indigenous. Based on field-research in Alice Springs, Central Australia, the article explores how the debate about " antisocial behaviour " mediates contested sets of values that do not map onto an indigenous/non-indigenous division. The author argues for an expansion of conceptual models and field approaches to account for the more complex patterns of diverging and converging interests in contemporary indigenous-settler towns. By foregrounding place-specific forms of belonging she reveals new forms of difference, as well as shared values, both within and across indigenous and non-indigenous segments of the town population.
Anthropological Forum, 2014
Based on research in the town of Alice Springs in Central Australia the article explores how soci... more Based on research in the town of Alice Springs in Central Australia the article explores how social and material aspects of the town generate meaningful understandings of oneself and differentiated others. Drawing on anthropology of place and space and analytical notions of belonging, I explore shared and divergent ways in which a range of people in town come to 'know their place' both in a socio-cultural sense and in the sense of relating to the built environment. Paying just as detailed attention to non-indigenous experience as scholars have long paid to indigenous lives, the article suggests that a focus on how people form material and social attachments to place can facilitate more open-ended understandings of changing forms of indigenous-settler relations than the more common focus on difference and division between categories of indigenous and non-indigenous people and domains of life.
Based on extensive fieldwork among Aboriginal country, rock and reggae musicians in the Central A... more Based on extensive fieldwork among Aboriginal country, rock and reggae musicians in the Central Australian deserts, the present paper expands the analytical theme of mediation for exploring intercultural transformations of Indigenous and male modes of being. Drawing on ethnographic descriptions from interstate touring ventures, it explores
how various and overlapping ideas of masculinity and sense of selves are mobilised and transformed as the men engage with other ‘blackfella’ and ‘whitefella’ places, people and models of manhood and music. From such engagements, ambivalent ‘mongrel’ Aboriginal and male selves emerge that are nonetheless experienced as distinctive and deeply meaningful.
The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2012
This article explores country music as an important means for Aboriginal men in Central Australia... more This article explores country music as an important means for Aboriginal men in Central Australia to articulate contemporary forms of manhood and indigeneity. These desert men perceive their own music scene as a last stronghold for real country music. The article demonstrates how such notions of real involve the ongoing intercultural mediation of global and local male aesthetic styles and manhood ideals. In making and performing their country music, desert men continue to draw on enduring ancestral regimes for male demeanour that resonate with global country music imagery and practice, as well as with prominent non-Indigenous models of manhood in the regional settler history.
Ty P. Ka¯wika Tengan’s "Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai’i" documents h... more Ty P. Ka¯wika Tengan’s "Native Men Remade: Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai’i" documents how a group of Indigenous Hawaiian men (including the author), as part of a broader cultural nationalist movement, is reworking notions of masculinity and indigeneity by recreating a modern-day warriorhood. While praising the work for expanding anthropological methods and writing, the present review essay explores a question at the core of the book, namely how we can conceptualise localised and global practices and ideas through which contemporary and decolonised Indigenous and gendered forms of identification are shaped. A truly intercultural approach is proposed for a less limiting understanding of what ‘real’ and masculine Indigenous men and others can be.
Book Reviews by Ase Ottosson
Book Review: Indigenous radio and the cultural politics of voice
should be applauded for taking on the massive task of compiling the 35 specially commissioned ess... more should be applauded for taking on the massive task of compiling the 35 specially commissioned essays for The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music. The authors include scholars in music, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, communication, media, literature, dance and sociology, most of them working in North America, Britain and Australia. Their essays are gathered under nine headings that the editors regard as the major themes in current popular music studies: Theory and Method; The Business of Popular Music; Popular Music History; The Global and the Local; The Star System; Body and Identity; Media; Technology; and Digital Economies. Much like other handbooks on specific scholarly fields, Bennett and Waksman aim to give a sense of the current state and future directions of the field, as well as to introduce the area of study to beginners. Also, much like other handbooks, this dual aim is hard to achieve, and while many chapters in this Handbook provide good overviews for beginners, few develop substantial discussions on theoretical or methodological 'frontlines' of their sub-fields.
968 actors in search of an ideology post-hoc, making it difficult to see how this muddy concept m... more 968 actors in search of an ideology post-hoc, making it difficult to see how this muddy concept motivates violence.
The soft, rich voice of Henry "Seaman" Dan and his particular combination of instrumentation and ... more The soft, rich voice of Henry "Seaman" Dan and his particular combination of instrumentation and distinctive musical styles are not only an intrinsic part of the diverse soundscape of his home region of the Torres Strait Islands. They are also instantly recognizable in their singularity by scholars of Australian Indigenous music and a growing number of music lovers across Australia and beyond. Based on more than a decade of musical and scholarly collaborations, Seaman Dan and Karl Neuenfeldt have now co-produced the personal and musical biography Steady Steady: The Life and Music of Seaman Dan.
Yearbook for Traditional Music, 2012
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Papers by Ase Ottosson
how various and overlapping ideas of masculinity and sense of selves are mobilised and transformed as the men engage with other ‘blackfella’ and ‘whitefella’ places, people and models of manhood and music. From such engagements, ambivalent ‘mongrel’ Aboriginal and male selves emerge that are nonetheless experienced as distinctive and deeply meaningful.
Book Reviews by Ase Ottosson
how various and overlapping ideas of masculinity and sense of selves are mobilised and transformed as the men engage with other ‘blackfella’ and ‘whitefella’ places, people and models of manhood and music. From such engagements, ambivalent ‘mongrel’ Aboriginal and male selves emerge that are nonetheless experienced as distinctive and deeply meaningful.