From Sorcery to Laboratory: Pandemics and Yanyuwa Experiences of Viral Vulnerability

The COVID‐19 pandemic has prompted renewed attention among health professionals, Aboriginal community leaders, and social scientists to the need for culturally responsive preventative health measures and strategies. This article, a collaborative effort, involving Yanyuwa families from the remote community of Borroloola and two anthropologists with whom Yanyuwa have long associations, tracks the story of pandemics from the perspective of Aboriginal people in the Gulf region of northern Australia. It specifically orients the discussion of the current predicament of ‘viral vulnerability’ in the wake of COVID‐19, relative to other pandemics, including the Hong Kong flu in 1969 and the Spanish flu decades earlier in 1919. This discussion highlights that culturally nuanced and prescribed responses to illness and threat of illness have a long history for Yanyuwa. Yanyuwa cultural repertoires have assisted in the process of making sense of massive change, in the form of past pandemics and the onset of sickness, the threat of illness with COVID‐19 and the attribution of ‘viral vulnerability’ to this remote Aboriginal community. The aim is to centralise Yanyuwa voices in this story, as an important step in growing understandings of Aboriginal knowledge of pandemics and culturally relevant and controlled health responses and strategies for communal well‐being.     

Book reviews

PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN SOUTHERN ASIA, by Sydney D. Bailey. The Hansard Society, London, 1953, in co‐operation with the International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations. Pp. 100. Price 9s.

INDEPENDENT IRAQ, a study in Iraqi Politics since 1932, by Majid Khadduri. Issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Oxford University Press. London, New York, Toronto, 1951.

NATIONALISM AND REVOLUTION IN INDONESIA, by George McT. Kahin. Cornell, New York 1952. Pp. 490.

LIBERATION IN SOUTH AMERICA 1806–1827: THE CAREER OF JAMES PAROISSIEN, by R. A. Humphreys. University of London: The Athlone Press, 1952. Pp. XI, 177. Maps and illus. Price 25/‐.

JAPAN IN WORLD HISTORY, by G. B. Sansom. Issued under the auspices of the Japan Institute of Pacific Relations, International Secretariate of the Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1951. 94 pp.     

Georgii Mirskii and Soviet Theories of Authoritarian Modernization

This article examines Soviet thinking about authoritarian modernization through the life and thought of Georgii Mirskii, a noted expert on Arab politics. Mirskii was a regular adviser and speechwriter for the Soviet Central Committee, and was also followed by the KGB for his criticism of Stalin. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mirskii looked to the example of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser to develop a theory of military-led modernization. This article examines how Mirskii's faith in the ability of Third World militaries to function as modernizing forces changed over time. The course of military politics in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, when military coups proliferated, bringing to power violent and self-interested regimes, disabused Mirskii of any faith in military modernization. Examining Mirskii's thought not only sheds light on the ideas that motivated Khrushchev-era Soviet foreign and development policy, it also provides an illuminating comparison for better-studied theories of authoritarian modernization in the United States.