Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection

Abstract

lives into penury and want; how at their side were the local charitable and religious institutions that supported communities in their time of need. In this way, the resilience of the human spirit is championed inBeaumont’s book. Beaumont’s chapter twenty-six, titled ‘Women at Risk’, further steps outside of existing Depression Era historiography, addressing a highly overlooked sector inmosthistorical examinations of the period. Political figures that manoeuvred their way through the Depression Era are intelligently treated. She adds the ‘personal’ to the policies, describing the motivations and actions of agents such as Scullin, Lyons and Lang, with perspicacity. Politicians do not come into their role out of a vacuum and Beaumont makes this point with real understanding. Joan Beaumont’s book is generally, and correctly, described as ‘wide-ranging’. Australia’s Great Depression comprehensively covers just what is printed on the cover – Australia, in its entirety and its experience of the Great Depression. All states and territories are examined and included and yet this history is not weighed down by the volume of its statistical evidence. Beaumont’s writing is narrative in style and makes very easy reading. In her introduction, by bringing the book into the present and not allowing the modern welfare state off the hook, Beaumont prepares us to make sense of the Great Depression from a perspective based in the here and now. Beaumont is a prolific, gifted and lauded author and historian. This book should add more plaudits to her already distinguished body of work.