Overview

Academic appointments can bring forth unexpected and unforeseen contests and tensions, cause humiliation and embarrassment for unsuccessful applicants and reveal unexpected allies and enemies. It is also a time when harsh assessments can be made about colleagues' intellectual abilities and their capacity as a scholar and fieldworker. The assessors' reports were often disturbingly personal, laying bare their likes and dislikes that could determine the futures of peers and colleagues. Chicanery deals with how the founding Chairs at Sydney, the Australian National University, Auckland and Western Australia dealt with this process, and includes accounts of the appointments of famous anthropologists such as Raymond Firth and Alexander Ratcliffe-Brown.

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9781800739703

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This is an erudite eye-opening account of key appointments which shaped Antipodean anthropology. Three prominent Pacific historians scour the academic undergrowth to illuminate the politics of electing Chairs. It makes extensive (indeed, mindboggling) use of primary sources in public and private archives, as well as interviews to bring clarity to the politics of senior appointments within a nuanced appreciation of context. * Robert Gordon, University of Vermont

Author Information

Geoffrey Gray is Adjunct Professor at the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland.

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