McCoy, Brian (2008) Holding Men: Kanyirninpa and the health of Aboriginal men, Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press
The complex social and cultural determinants of the health of Aboriginal men are given coherence by McCoy through the desert society concept of kanyirninpa. Whilst the term ‘holding’ provides a succinct rendering of kanyirninpa into English, it fails to capture the full range of meanings associated with this idea in desert society culture. Put simply, kanyirninpa is a concept that describes the normative system that balances the opposing forces of nurturance and authority, relatedness and autonomy in a bid to ensure the social, cultural and material reproduction of desert society as a series of relationships to family (walytja), land (ngurra) and ancestral dreaming (tjukurrpa).
After explaining its post-settlement history, McCoy uses the concept of kanyirninpa as a lens through which to understand the paradoxical nature of the social and cultural determinants of the health of Aboriginal men. He uses the particular sites of male sociality within petrol sniffing, prison and football as a way to show how kanyirninpa and its absence can impact healthy outcomes. Petrol sniffing, for example, provides a bridge between childhood and adulthood where young boys can explore the extremes of the value of autonomy, albeit at the expense of their own physical health. Initiation into manhood offers the countervailing force of relatedness that tends to untether boys’ dependence on petrol sniffing as a mode of exploring their autonomy. However, similar problems can be reproduced in adulthood where alcohol presents itself as a substitute for exploring adult male autonomy. As this example demonstrates, the male praxis that both gives expression to and is expressed by the normative system of kanyirninpa can produce adverse health outcomes, in both black and white terms, as much as it produces improvements. More…
I’m beginning to think that Watermark Books at T2 Sydney Airport is a place of literary miracles for me. Three times now I’ve bought books there without much thought and have come away with treasures. First was Rana Dasgupta’s epic Solo. Then there was the rollicking ride of Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey. Just recently I finished the third wonder offered up magically by Watermark Books: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman. This book is a challenging and controversial rendering of the story of Jesus Christ.
In response to a young reader’s question about why he was motivated to write the book, Pullman says:
I’ve always been fascinated by the difference between the man Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, who I think almost certainly existed, and the idea of Christ, the son of God. The vast bulk of what people say about Christ seems to me nonsense, impossible, absurd. About Jesus, on the other hand, we can say many interesting things.
The master stroke of Pullman’s book is the way he realises this fascination by casting Jesus and Christ as twin brothers. Pullman humanises the New Testament by making Jesus and Christ imperfect and partial reflections of Jesus Christ. The biographies of Jesus and Christ are woven together by Pullman such that they illuminate the other’s flaws and strengths in a complementary way – the flaws of one highlight the strengths of the other and vice versa. This complementarity tends to work itself out productively, in the end, towards an overcoming of their flaws and a combination of their strengths. It’s a sort of cleverly carried out translation of Aristotle’s aphorism into a literary device: “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” More…
My good buddy, Alex, has an interesting take on Zadie Smith’s review of Sorkin’s The Social Network. He starts by saying Smith’s “main argument seems to be based on ‘I don’t like Zuckerberg so therefore Facebook is also bad’”. He goes on to explain how FB friends are based on new modes of interaction offered by the model of websites referred to as social networks. The Big A suggests that Smith is exaggerating the extent to which FB == Real Life – after all “it’s just a tool”. In the end, Alex discerns a bit of inter-generational hatred in Smith’s review. I want to respond to Alex and I’m doing it over here because he’s shut down comments on his site (probably because he’s running scared of his old stalker – big penis). Anyway, here’s my reply:
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