Anomie and Demoralization in Transitional Cultures: The Australian Aboriginal Model

Abstract

Throughout the world, Aboriginal people remain disadvantaged socially, professionally and educationally. In Australia, imprisonment rates for Aboriginal peoples exceed by severalfold those of the rest of the population. Infant mortality rates are 4‐5 times greater as are the indices for infectious diseases and suicide. Life expectancy is 15‐20 years shorter for Aboriginal people and nearly 30% of Australia’s maternal deaths are in Aboriginal women. Alcoholism, diabetes, renal failure, obesity, smoking and substance abuse are just some of the many disorders on this very depressing list of high prevalence rates. These depressing figures are not unique to Australia as similar patterns have been reported in many other parts of the world where indigenous people are faced with the difficulties associated with transition from a historically earlier form of culture to that of contemporary Western society, following European invasions during the last two centuries (Hunt, 1981). The anthropological literature describes how the invading Europeans recognized this dilemma and notes the various strategies that were employed in an attempt to resolve it. These strategies fall into one of three broad categories, namely: extermination, separate development and assimilation. Fortunately, the first of these was abandoned in the nineteenth century and the current policy now seems to be a mixture of separate development in which special funding and services are provided, and assimilation in which an increasing number of Aboriginal people are slowly being absorbed into

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