Associate Professor Mary Patterson
BA PhD (Sydney)
T: 03 8344 5142
Mary is a graduate of the University of Sydney where she taught until 1980.
Mary conducted fieldwork in Vanuatu on kinship, cosmology and gender relations, sorcery and political organisation and Indigenous attitudes to health and illness. Her major interests are theoretical approaches to kinship, sex and gender, the analysis of problems related to sex, gender and reproduction, and ideas about the 'supernatural' in a cross-cultural and historical context.
Mary is currently conducting research into contemporary kinship, gender and political relations and the impact of sorcery ideas on social life in rural and urban areas of Vanuatu.
Mary has published on sorcery, kinship and ritual.
Publications
M Patterson (2005) 'Introduction: reclaiming paradigms lost' The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16(1): 1-17.
M Patterson (2005) 'Coming too close, going too far: theoretical and cross-cultural approaches to incest and its prohibition' The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16(1): 95-115.
M Patterson (2002) 'Moving Histories: an analysis of the dynamics of place in North Ambrym, Vanuatu' The Australian Journal of Anthropology 13(2).
M Patterson (2001) 'Breaking the stones: ritual, gender and modernity in North Ambrym' Anthropological Forum 11(1).
M Patterson and B Tonkinson (eds) 2001 Special issue: 'Gender, power and ritual in cross-cultural perspective: essays in honour of Michael Allen' Anthropological Forum Vol 11(1).
M Patterson 2000 'Sorcery and Witchcraft' in R Scupin (ed) Religion and Culture Prentice Hall.
M Patterson '"Finishing the land" - a metaphor for the times: identity and land use in pre and post-colonial North Ambrym' in T Reuter and J Fox (eds.) Sharing the Earth, Carving up the land: territorial categories and Institutions in the Austronesian World.