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'In a paper published in Australian Aboriginal Studies, Bob Reece (2007:54) explains his purpose in writing about Daisy Bates:
'My purpose here is not to rehabilitate Bates as an ethnographer…As an historian, I see it as my ultimate task to make available from her extensive correspondence sufficient of her own writings for people to make up their minds about her motivation and beliefs, and about what kind of person she really was.
'He charts her early life in Ireland, arrival and work in Australia, her interest in Aboriginal peoples and her consequent development as a fieldworker (a self-taught anthropologist), and her final days working as a journalist in Adelaide. Reece makes the assertion that she was the first to undertake intensive participant/observer fieldwork, which became the template for modern anthropological fieldwork. (This is contested by the work of AC Haddon in the Torres Strait in 1898, and Baldwin Spencer in Central Australia in the 1890s). She is described as not engaging in theory, just stating the facts as she witnessed them — empiricism at its most pure. In response to a criticism by JB Cleland that she was misled by informants who provided the answers that they thought she wanted, Reece defends her: it ‘is hardly a convincing accusation against a highly experienced field worker who was perfectly aware of the hazard’ (p.88). Her unsubstantiated arguments about the existence of wholesale cannibalism among the desert people seems to seriously undermine his defence.' (Introduction)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Reply to Geoffrey Gray's Review of B Reece 2007, Daisy Bates : Grand Dame of the Desert
2009
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 1 2009; (p. 97-98)'Geoffrey Gray’s (2008:114–15) remarks on Daisy Bates’ scientific achievements call for a biographer’s response — on her behalf and on behalf of the late Isobel White. My assertion that Bates ‘pioneered anthropological fieldwork’ (Reece 2007:9) was based on White’s chapter in Marcus’ collected essays on women anthropologists (White 1993:58–61). White’s editing of Bates’ manuscript, ‘The Native Tribes of Western Australia’, had given her an intimate knowledge of her modus operandi: a self-taught researcher who picked the brains of the experts to inform her ethnographic work. In her introduction to the edited version, White remarked that ‘while C Strehlow, Howitt, R H Mathews, John Mathew, Spencer and Gillen describe marriage rules, ceremonies, mythology and beliefs, Mrs Bates writes of everyday behaviour…she gives us a much more vivid picture of Aboriginal life than previous workers’ (Bates 1985:20–1). White did not claim, however, that Bates’ work ‘became the template for modern anthropological fieldwork’ (Gray’s words), which he attributes to Spencer and Haddon. Gray has set up a straw woman by misrepresenting White’s evaluation.' (Introduction)
-
Reply to Geoffrey Gray's Review of B Reece 2007, Daisy Bates : Grand Dame of the Desert
2009
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 1 2009; (p. 97-98)'Geoffrey Gray’s (2008:114–15) remarks on Daisy Bates’ scientific achievements call for a biographer’s response — on her behalf and on behalf of the late Isobel White. My assertion that Bates ‘pioneered anthropological fieldwork’ (Reece 2007:9) was based on White’s chapter in Marcus’ collected essays on women anthropologists (White 1993:58–61). White’s editing of Bates’ manuscript, ‘The Native Tribes of Western Australia’, had given her an intimate knowledge of her modus operandi: a self-taught researcher who picked the brains of the experts to inform her ethnographic work. In her introduction to the edited version, White remarked that ‘while C Strehlow, Howitt, R H Mathews, John Mathew, Spencer and Gillen describe marriage rules, ceremonies, mythology and beliefs, Mrs Bates writes of everyday behaviour…she gives us a much more vivid picture of Aboriginal life than previous workers’ (Bates 1985:20–1). White did not claim, however, that Bates’ work ‘became the template for modern anthropological fieldwork’ (Gray’s words), which he attributes to Spencer and Haddon. Gray has set up a straw woman by misrepresenting White’s evaluation.' (Introduction)
