Roger Sandall

Frederick Roger Sandall (18 December 1933 – 11 August 2012) was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist, essayist, cinematographer, and scholar. He was a critic of romantic primitivism, which he called designer tribalism, and argued that this rooted Indigenous people in tradition and discouraged them to assimilate to Western culture. He studied anthropology at University of Auckland (BA, 1956) and received his MFA from Columbia University. Among his teachers were Margaret Mead and Cecile Starr. He replaced Peter Coleman as the editor of Quadrant from March 1988 to January 1989, after which he quit due to a public political clash and difficulty in drumming up interest among writers. He retired from teaching in 1993. In 2001, he published The Culture Cult with an American firm after comments he had made at a conference years prior were "grossly distorted in a[n Australian] newspaper report." In 2003, the book won him a Centenary Medal. He named Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Robert Owen, and John Humphrey Noyes as part of the "culture cult" that kept designer tribalism alive. A quote from The Culture Cult reads: "If your traditional way of life has no alphabet, no writing, no books, and no libraries, and yet you are continually told that you have a culture which is 'rich', 'complex', and 'sophisticated', how can you realistically see your place in the scheme of things? If all such hyperbole were true, who would need books or writing? Why not hang up a 'Gone Fishing' sign and head for the beach?" He also felt that "repression, economic backwardness, endemic disease, religious fanaticism, and severe artistic constraints" were inherent within primitive Indigenous cultures.

Personal life Sandall was married to Bay Books publisher Philippa; they had two children, Richard and Emma. He died on 11 August 2012 in Australia. Pintubi Revisit Yumari (1970) Pintubi Revisit Yaru-Yaru (1972) What You Thinkin' About, Little Horse? (1972) Coniston Munster: Scenes from a Stockman's Life (1972) Larwari and Walkara (1976) Weddings (1976) A Walbiri Fire Ceremony - Ngatjakula (1977) The Tragada Bhavai: A Rural Theater Troupe of Gujarat A Zenana Scenes and Recollections (1982) Nomads (1984) The Bharvad Predicament (1987) Close Encounters of No Kind (2002)