Roger Sandall

Sandall was born in Christchurch, New Zealand on 18 December 1933 and attended Takapuna Grammar School.{{cite web|url=http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SGSocUphAUCon/1997/17.pdf|title=Appendix I|date=1997|publisher=The Samuel Griffith Society|access-date=2022-07-16}} He studied anthropology at University of Auckland (BA, 1956) and received his MFA (1962) from Columbia University.{{cite web|url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/roger-sandall/31606|title=Roger Sandall|date=n.d.|publisher=ABC|access-date=2022-07-16}}{{cite book |last=Mortimer|first=Lorraine|date=2019|title=Roger Sandall's Films and Contemporary Anthropology: Explorations in the Aesthetic, the Existential, and the Possible|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpb3wgk.4|publisher=Indiana University Press|doi=10.2307/j.ctvpb3wgk.4|jstor=j.ctvpb3wgk.4 }} Among his teachers were Margaret Mead and Cecile Starr. He filmed Maíz as partial fulfilment of his MFA at Columbia in 1962. In 1965, he accepted a fellowship in anthropology at Columbia.{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1959/04/a-grand-ride/640685/|title=A Grand Ride|date=1959|publisher=The Atlantic|access-date=2022-07-16}}

Sandall was finishing a librarianship course and taking photographs of the protests at Berkeley when MOMA's Willard Van Dyke recommended him to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) as a "one-man film unit." Between 1966 and 1973, Sandall made a number of documentaries, oftentimes featuring sacred rituals that were shown only to small audiences in an effort to respect the privacy of these events. Despite this, he won the first prize for documentary at the Venice Film Festival in 1968 for his film Emu Ritual at Ruguri.{{cite news|author=|date=1989-11-27|title=Award film reserved for select audiences|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/125534952/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-16}}{{cite journal|last=Dunlop|first=Ian|title=Ethnographic Film-Making in Australia the First Seventy Years (1898-1968) |date=1979|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24045736|journal=Aboriginal History|volume=3|number=1/2|pages=111–119|jstor=24045736 |access-date=2022-07-21}}

After leaving AIAS in the early 1970s, Sandall became a political activist for the rights of Indigenous Australians. In 1973, Sandall joined the anthropology department at the University of Sydney as a lecturer. He wrote for a number of journals including The American Interest, Art International, Commentary, The New Criterion, Merkur, Encounter, and Quadrant.{{cite web|url=https://millenniumhouse.com.au/assets/EARTH_Contributors.pdf|title=Earth - Contributors|date=n.d.|publisher=Millennium House Australia|access-date=2022-07-22}} He replaced Peter Coleman as the editor of Quadrant from March 1988 to January 1989, after which he quit due to a public political clash and difficulty in drumming up interest among writers.{{cite news|last=Coleman|first=Peter|date=1989-11-27|title=A literary giant confronted by pygmy poison|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/123775007/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-16}}{{cite news|author=|date=1989-11-27|title=The perils and pitfalls of publishing the Right|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/123504216/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-16}}{{cite news|author=|date=1987-10-30|title=Stepping out|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/120615841/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-19}} He retired from teaching in 1993.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}} In 2001, he published The Culture Cult with an American firm after comments he had made at a conference years prior were "grossly distorted in a[n Australian] newspaper report."{{cite news|last=Arndt|first=Bettina|date=2001-04-26|title=A culture of Denial|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/121497520/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-16}} In 2003, the book won him a Centenary Medal.

Sandall was a strong critic of romantic primitivism. He coined the term designer tribalism to criticise Western anthropologists' perpetuation of the noble savage archetype and the "Disneyfication" of Indigenous people's relationship with nature by "forcing" them to continue practicing their ancestral traditions.{{cite news|last=Hirsi Ali|first=Ayaan|date=2010-06-12|title=Facing up to radical Islam|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/426557377/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22%20%22designer%20tribalism%22&match=1|work=The Gazette|location=Montreal, Canada|access-date=2022-07-22}}{{cite news|last=Kenny|first=Denis|date=2001-06-30|title=It's cosmic, man|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/121580677/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Gazette|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-22}} He specifically criticises the Māori people for hunting practices that caused the extinction of the moa bird, which he felt was proof that these rituals were being maintained for Western tourism.{{cite web|url=https://www.commentary.org/articles/reader-letters/new-zealand/|title=New Zealand|last=Levine|first=H.B.|date=1987|publisher=Commentary|access-date=2022-07-22}} He named Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Robert Owen, and John Humphrey Noyes as part of the "culture cult" that kept designer tribalism alive.{{cite web|url=https://newcriterion.com/issues/2001/4/the-perils-of-designer-tribalism|title=The perils of designer tribalism|last=Kimball|first=Roger|date=2001|publisher=The New Criterion|access-date=2022-07-22}} A quote from The Culture Cult reads: "If your traditional way of life has no alphabet, no writing, no books, and no libraries, and yet you are continually told that you have a culture which is 'rich', 'complex', and 'sophisticated', how can you realistically see your place in the scheme of things? If all such hyperbole were true, who would need books or writing? Why not hang up a 'Gone Fishing' sign and head for the beach?"{{cite book |last=Sandall|first=Roger|date=2001|title=The Culture Cult Designer Tribalism And Other Essays|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1bO3AAAAIAAJ|publisher=Avalon Publishing|isbn=9780813338637}} He also felt that "repression, economic backwardness, endemic disease, religious fanaticism, and severe artistic constraints" were inherent within primitive Indigenous cultures. He believed that the White Australia policy and similar legislations improved the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians and supported cultural assimilation into what he called "modern civilisation".{{cite journal|last=Peacock|first=Janice|date=2006|title=Culture Cullt Clan 2001: comments on the survival of Torres Strait culture|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24046902|journal=Aboriginal History|volume=30|pages=138–155|jstor=24046902 |access-date=2022-07-21}}{{cite journal|last=Malcolm|first=Ian|date=2002|title=Coming to Terms with Diversity: Educational Responses to Linguistic Plurality in Australia.|url=https://thestacks.libaac.de/bitstream/handle/11858/1605/ZfA_16-2002_17-30_Malcolm.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y|journal=Zeitschrift für Australienstudien|volume=16|pages=17–30|doi=10.35515/zfa/asj.16/2002.04|access-date=2022-07-21}}{{cite news|last=Mcinnes|first=Rod|date=2001-05-15|title=Inequality is not a black or white issue|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/121477998/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-22}}

Sandall was married to Bay Books publisher Philippa; they had two children, Richard and Emma. He died on 11 August 2012 in Australia.{{cite news|author=|date=1992-09-12|title=Performing - it's in the blood|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/120300555/?terms=%22roger%20sandall%22&match=1|work=The Sydney Morning Herald|location=Sydney, Australia|access-date=2022-07-16}}

{{Incomplete list |date=October 2024}}{{bots|deny=Citation bot}}

• {{cite book |title=The culture cult : designer tribalism and other essays |publisher=Westview Press |date=2001 }}

• "When I Hear the Word ‘Culture’: From Arnold to Anthropology" (1980), Encounter, 325, 84-92.
• "The Rise of the Anthropologue" (1986), Encounter, 70 (12): 66-71.
• {{cite journal |date=Jul–Aug 2003 |title=Kenneth James Maddock, 1937-2003 |journal=Quadrant |volume=47 |issue=7–8 [398] |pages=56–57}}
• "Nihilism in the Middle East" (2004), Commentary, 118 (5): 38-44.
• "What Native Peoples Deserve" (2005), Commentary, 119 (5): 54-59.
• "The Culture Cult Revisited" (2008), Social Science and Modern Society, 45 (3): 233-238.

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• Maíz (1962){{cite web|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9f35acc5|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220723011651/https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b9f35acc5|url-status=dead|archive-date=23 July 2022|title=Roger Sandall|date=n.d.|publisher=British Film Institute|access-date=2022-07-16}}
• Walbiri Ritual at Ngama (1966)
• Djungguan at Yirrkala (1966)
• The Mulga Seed Ceremony (1967)
• Emu Ritual at Ruguri (1967)
• Gunabibi: An Aboriginal Fertility Cult (1968)
• Walbiri Ritual at Gunadjarai (1969)
• Camels and the Pitjantjara (1969)
• Making a Bark Canoe (1969){{cite web|url=https://www.roninfilms.com.au/person/9705/roger-sandall.html|title=Roger Sandall|date=n.d.|publisher=Ronin Films|access-date=2022-07-16}}
• Pintubi Revisit Yumari (1970)
• Pintubi Revisit Yaru-Yaru (1972)
• What You Thinkin' About, Little Horse? (1972)
• Coniston Munster: Scenes from a Stockman's Life (1972)
• Larwari and Walkara (1976)
• Weddings (1976)
• A Walbiri Fire Ceremony - Ngatjakula (1977)
• The Tragada Bhavai: A Rural Theater Troupe of Gujarat
• A Zenana Scenes and Recollections (1982)
• Nomads (1984)
• The Bharvad Predicament (1987)
• Close Encounters of No Kind (2002)

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Category:1933 births

Category:2012 deaths

Category:Australian male essayists

Category:Australian essayists

Category:Australian anthropologists

Category:Writers from Sydney

Category:Writers from Christchurch

Category:Educators from Christchurch

Category:Academic staff of the University of Sydney

Category:Quadrant (magazine) people

Category:University of Auckland alumni

Category:Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Category:People educated at Takapuna Grammar School

Category:Australian documentary filmmakers