Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines

A review of L.R. Hiatt's 'Arguments About Aborigines' that opens on a meta-question ('what are anthropologists even doing?') and tours the discipline's eras (19th-c grand stage-theories; early-20th-c 'primitive culture proves my politics' projects) before staging the Hobbes/Rousseau debate via Edgerton's 'Sick Societies' vs Henrich's 'Secret of Our Success.' The substance: Aboriginal society as a 'polygynic gerontocracy with infant betrothal' (old men accumulate young wives; young men stay celibate into their thirties through mutilating initiations), the eight-'section' kinship system (Morgan's group-marriage theory; the functional reading as incest-prevention plus a continent-wide social network), and the mother-in-law taboos/avoidance-languages and the mirriri (spearing one's sisters), all explained through the sexual-frustration economics of the marriage system. A standout riff imagines an Aboriginal anthropologist cataloguing Western sex taboos ('HR ladies' as witches, the 'barely legal' paradox). It closes on the genuine, humane puzzle of post-colonial alienation: why colonized peoples with citizenship and welfare spiral into suicide and alcoholism when First-World immigrants mostly don't, Hiatt's lost-initiation-system hypothesis ('the West has the same system: we call it grad school'), and what equilibrium traps modern Aborigines between two worlds.

Quality 79 · Excellent. Excellent band, low. A rich, deeply engaging, and frequently brilliant review that adds substantial value beyond the book (the Henrich/Edgerton framing, the incest-economics throughline, the immigrant-vs-colonized comparison, the grad-school-as-initiation insight) and lands on a real unresolved question. Top tier of the census, level with the Rise of Christianity review (79); held just below the 80-85 foundational-classic anchor because it is a superb tour-plus-frame rather than a paradigm-shaping thesis.

Claude’s paradigm shift 38 · Slight. Slight-to-moderate. Synthesizes existing anthropology and the well-worn Hobbes/Rousseau and cultural-evolution frames; the worth is the synthesis, wit, and the closing puzzle (scored in A), not new ideas at publication.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A rich, engaging review that adds substantial value beyond the book (the Henrich/Edgerton framing, the incest-economics throughline, grad-school-as-initiation) and lands on a real unresolved question. Conceptual influence within intellectual discourse, niche, no material change — low RWI.