We are here for a conversation about gender as an analytical lens on the relationship between theory and fieldwork in anthropology. It has been suggested that we talk about this through personal narratives from those of us who have been involved in anthropology in Australia for some time. In Papua New Guinea, where my husband (and colleague) Alan Rumsey and I have been going since 1981, I have recently written about the changing roles and relations of women to warfare, which was colonially suppressed but then has re-emerged at times in the region of the Western Highlands we are familiar with. The continuity of some forms and grounds of hostility through significant change at many levels has provided a way of looking at some aspects of gender relations there. But today I want to focus on my experience of perhaps comparable changes in (especially northern) Australia.

HAR editors are pleased to bring you this Special Focus Section, guest edited by Benjamin Heagarty, Shiori Shakuto, and Caroline Schuster. The pieces in this collection will be published on a rolling basis, and the table of contents will be updated accordingly.

This special section brings together seven essays which were originally presented at the roundtable Theory as Reproduction: Reflections on the History of Doing Feminist Anthropology in Australia. It also includes an introduction, co-authored by Benjamin Hegarty, Shiori Shakuto, and Caroline Schuster. The event was held at the annual Australian Anthropological Society conference held on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people (Australian National University, Canberra) on Monday 2 December 2019. Part oral history and part conversation, the organizers brought together a group of women to reflect on their experiences of a politically and intellectually dynamic period in Australian feminist anthropology during the 1970s and 1980s. For this roundtable, held at the campus where Derek Freeman penned his famous series of polemics denouncing Margaret Mead’s research, feminist researchers came together to reflect on the work of producing theory and the labour involved in its reproduction through the maternal line.

Table of Contents

May 2025

Theory as Reproduction: Histories of Doing Feminist Anthropology in Australia

Benjamin Hegarty, Shiori Shakuto, and Caroline Schuster

The “F” Word: Anthropology, Positionality, and Intersecting Lives in Oz

Margaret Jolly

Anthropology as a Feminist Project of Collective Practice

Kathryn Robinson

A Lone Woman in the Jungle

Christine Helliwell

June 2025

Problems and Possibilities of Being a Feminist Anthropologist