William Edward Hanley Stanner - Early Career

Early Career

Stanner was born at Watson's Bay, Sydney on 24 November 1905, the son of Andrew Edwin Stanner and Mary Catherine Stanner (née Hanley). He was educated at state schools and won a bursary to Parramatta High School (1919–21), but was unable to stay on after the Intermediate Certificate. Stanner worked for two years in a bank and matriculated by private study. He worked as a journalist while studying at University. In 1927 Stanner obtained full-time work as a reporter for the Sydney Daily Guardian for Frank Packer, the first of a number of posts in journalism which financed his studies in Australia and England.

At University, Stanner has an interest in athletics, football and was the secretary of the University's League of Nations Society. He stated afterward that his selection of anthropology as a profession was influenced by the famous anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown. Stanner worked as a journalist until 1932 by which time he was chief sub-edior of the Sunday Sun including several years in the Parliamentary Gallery. Stanner won the Frank Albert Prize in anthropology in two successive years and graduated with a BA (Honours) (Anthropology and Economics) in 1932.

In 1933 Stanner took up a temporary position on the personal staff of Bertram Stevens, the Premier of NSW, for whom he drafted parliamentary and public speeches and prepared reports. At that time he met H.C. Coombs and formed and enduring friendship with W.C. Wentworth who he worked with in later life. He received an MA (Class 1 Honours) in Anthropology in 1934 from the University of Sydney for which he did extensive field research in the Daly River region of Northern Australia. A. P. Elkin judged Stanner's 1934 thesis on culture-contact at the Daly River as "a work of outstanding quality". Stanner criticised the popular assumption that the main function of the anthropologist was "the naive search for uncontaminated aboriginal cultures". He presented an exposition of a method for studying contact and cultural change, insisting that this was "an important and neglected problem". Barwick, Beckett and Reay wrote in 1985 that already his lifelong concern with the practical value of anthropology to Aboriginal welfare was apparent.

In 1935, on his second field work, Stanner accompanied the Catholic priest Father Richard Docherty to Port Keats, now known as Wadeye on the south-western coast of the Northern Territory, halfway between the mouths of the Daly River and Fitzmaurice River. Docherty was commissioned to establish a mission in the region and Stanner helped him choose the site. Over the next thirty years, the people of the two river valleys came into the mission and eventually became permanent residents. On his appointment to the Australian National University, Stanner renewed his interest in the Port Keats Wadeye area renewing old friendships. Much of his work as an anthropologist was based on his field work with Indigenous Australians in the Port Keats Wadeye area.

Stanner moved to London in 1936 completed his PhD at the London School of Economics in 1938 studying under Bronisław Malinowski. Compatriots included Phyllis Kaberry and Piddington. Jomo Kenyatta, the first Prime Minister (1963–1964) of Kenya and subsequently President (1964–1978) was a fellow student. Stanner also worked as a sub-editor in the Foreign Room at The Times.

Early academic appointments and field research included:

• 1932-36 Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney.
• 1932, 1934-35 Field research in north and central Australia (for the Australian National Research Council).
• 1936-38 Research Assistant, London School of Economics.
• 1937 Personal staff of Commonwealth Treasurer, The Right Honourable The Lord Casey at the Imperial Conference in London.
• 1938-39 University of Oxford Expedition to Kenya (Oxford Social Sciences Research Committee).

Under the auspices of Oxford University he did field research in Kenya in 1938-39 as part of the Oxford Expedition to Kenya and East Africa for the Oxford Social Studies Research Committee. This field research was discontinuted at the outbreak of World War II when Stanner returned to Australia. He obtained employment at the Department of Information and subsequently acted as adviser to successive Ministers for the Army, Percy Spender and Frank Forde who subsequently became Prime Minister.