Changing Selves in Remote Australia? Observations on Aboriginal Family Life, Childhood and 'Modernisation'

The idea of modernity is increasingly called upon to describe and understand change in Indigenous societies, replacing the older paradigms of colonisation, culture change and the short-lived misnomer hybridity. This paper problematises such an approach in the field of Australian Aboriginal Studies, with special attention to the question of whether individualisation and individualism are real phenomena in Aboriginal life-worlds, or else what kind of subjectivities might be in the making. The focus is on childhood as a site of change towards, and resistance to, modern individualism in reference to the history of state and religious interventions into Aboriginal family life.