Australian Totemism. D'Arcy Ryan's annotated copy, "A Re-examination of the Problem, with Special Reference to Recent Field Work. Thesis for the degree of B-Litt."

Oxford, 1952. Hardcover. Very good condition. The author's copy of the typewritten thesis of Australian anthropologist D'Arcy Ryan, for the degree of B. Litt. at Lincoln College, Oxford, on Australian totemism, with his pencil annotations.

D'Arcy Ryan (1923 - 2014) was born in Bondi, educated in Sydney and Oxford and lectured for 25 years at the University of Western Australia, an expert on the Mendi people of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

The author put his academic work at Oxford into perspective in his autobiographical essay in another work, "Ethnographic Presents: Pioneering Anthropologists in the Papua New Guinea Highlands", edited by Terence Hays: "In these days, when many postgraduate students are demanding that supervisors be a cross between a parent, confessor, and nanny, the casual style of Oxford supervision may seem incredible; indeed, in retrospect, it was. I was rash enough to remark on this at one stage, and received the reply (from E -P) [Evans-Pritchard]: "I'm afraid we don't indulge in spoon feeding Here!" I came to realize that this meant in practice an almost complete abdication from any sense of duty or responsibility to students, who were singularly blessed to be Here [Oxford] at all." (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1992. p200).

Contents in the thesis include: the Ecological and Social Setting of Totemism; the Religious Life of the Aborigines; theories of Totemism; Appendix I: Circumcision and Subincision; Appendix II: Psycho-analytical theories: Freud and Roheim.

8vo, [iv], 272pp, folding map, map. Quarter blue cloth and dark blue buckram boards, with title at spine in white on black, printed by a label maker. Libraries Australia ID 42956953. OCLC: 271760713 cites only Oxford and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies holding copies.