R. H. Mathews - Impact of R. H. Mathews

Impact of R. H. Mathews

Thomas notes that professional anthropologists have often been cautious in acknowledging the contribution of their ‘amateur’ forebears. Mathews had few champions among academic anthropologists until A. P. Elkin became interested in his work. In an obituary of Alfred Radcliffe-Brown dated 1956, Elkin declared that Mathews’ work on Australian kinship marked a significant intellectual breakthrough. He listed eleven key achievements in the field of kinship study, including Mathews’ realisation that the totemic heroes ‘were related to one another in the same kinship manner as human beings were related: in other words, that they were part of the same social order.’ More controversially, Elkin argued that anyone ‘familiar with Radcliffe-Brown’s writings on this subject since 1913 will realize the extent to which he used Mathews’s concepts and generalizations.’ Elkin claimed Radcliffe-Brown was familiar with Mathews’s writings but, regarding him as an amateur, ‘underestimated his ability for careful recording and sound generalization. This, however, did not prevent him adopting the results of much which Mathews had accomplished.’ Twenty years later, Elkin built substantially on his earlier argument for Mathews’ importance. This was published as a three-part journal article titled ‘R. H. Mathews: His Contribution to Aboriginal Studies’. A draft ‘Part IV’ in the University of Sydney Archives indicates that Elkin was planning further writings on Mathews before his death in 1979.

Another early champion was Norman Tindale who found Mathews’ understanding of topography and cartography invaluable to his project of mapping tribal boundaries. The bibliography of Tindale’s Aboriginal Tribes of Australia reveals the extensive use he made Mathews’ writings. Tindale wrote in 1958 that in ‘going through Mathews’ papers for the purpose of checking the second edition of my tribal map and its data, I have been more than ever impressed with the vast scope and general accuracy of this work. Despite earlier critics I am coming to believe that he was our greatest recorder of primary anthropological data.’

Disagreement about the value of Mathews’ work has continued. In a 1984 article the historian Diane E. Barwick, made a damning appraisal of Mathews, criticising his Victorian research for perpetrating a ‘sometimes ignorant and sometimes deliberate distortion has so muddled the ethnographic record …’. Barwick claimed that from 1898 Mathews ‘contradicted, ridiculed or ignored’ the ‘careful ethnographic reports’ of Howitt for whom he had an ‘almost pathological jealousy’. The contemporary anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose and colleagues take the opposite view, describing Mathews as ‘a more sober and thorough researcher’ than Howitt. They claim that ‘Mathews did not share Howitt’s penchant for suppressing the particular in favour of the grand theory, or for suppressing women in favour of men.’ Unusually for a male anthropologist, he acknowledged ‘the existence of women’s law and ritual.’

The enactment of Native Title legislation in Australia has created new interest in Mathews’ work. His writings are now routinely cited in Native Title claims put forward by Aboriginal claimants.