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Foreword
Gregory Bateson (1959) described the ‘delimitation of disciplines’ in the Western academy that saw sociology separated from psychology and history, social science from natural science, as a ‘tragic error’ (p. 296). A project for anthropology, he thought, might help make visible the interdependence of disciplinary expertise. Anthropology should deliberately aspire to be a nonspecialist enterprise in quest of holism and to deploy a diversity of forms of knowledge and so apprehend the vast intricacies of individual experience in sociocultural milieux. Simone Dennis’ new book is in Batesonian mould.
Christmas Island is located in the Indian Ocean, 1,600 miles northwest of Perth, Western Australia and 300 miles south of Jakarta, Indonesia. The island has remained a territory of Australia since its settlement in 1888. It measures 52 square miles and is home, at present, to some 1,500 people.
An abiding sound of Christmas Island is the scuttling of crabs on shingle; there are 20 species, of which the most numerous, in excess of 120 million, is the red crab.