'Disciplining the savages: Savaging the disciplines provides alternative reading for those struggling with the contradictory and ambiguous intersections of academia and Indigenous experience. In doing so, it moves beyond the usual criticisms of the disciplines which construct the way we have come to know and understand Indigenous peoples.'
'Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander academic, casts a critical gaze on the research conducted by the Cambridge Expedition in the late 1890s. Meticulously analysing the linguistic, physiological, psychological and anthropological testing conducted, he offers an astute critique of the researchers’ methodologies and interpretations. He uses these insights to reveal the similar workings of recent knowledge production in Torres Strait education.'
'In systematically deconstructing these knowledges, Nakata draws eloquently on both the Torres Strait Islander struggle and his own personal struggle to break free from imposed definitions, and reminds us that such intellectual journeys are highly personal and political.'
'Nakata argues for the recognition of the complexity of the space Indigenous people now live in — the cultural interface — and proposes an alternative theoretical standpoint to account for Indigenous experience of this space.' (Source: Publisher's website)
'Martin Nakata has chosen a title that is absolutely right for this book, Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the disciplines. In the nineteenth century, the Torres Strait Islanders were thought to be locked in savagery and sin and in desperate need of the civilising disciplines offered by assorted European academics, anthropologists and missionaries. In the present century it is the turn of the European disciplines to be savaged. Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander with a doctorate in Education, casts a critical eye on what assorted academics and missionariesthought that they were accomplishing as they investigated and patronised the islander communities of the Torres Strait.' (Introduction)
'Martin Nakata has chosen a title that is absolutely right for this book, Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the disciplines. In the nineteenth century, the Torres Strait Islanders were thought to be locked in savagery and sin and in desperate need of the civilising disciplines offered by assorted European academics, anthropologists and missionaries. In the present century it is the turn of the European disciplines to be savaged. Nakata, a Torres Strait Islander with a doctorate in Education, casts a critical eye on what assorted academics and missionariesthought that they were accomplishing as they investigated and patronised the islander communities of the Torres Strait.' (Introduction)
