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Article: Should Australian aborigines succumb to capitalism?
- Article from:
- Journal of Economic Issues
- Article date:
- June 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For more than 50,000 years Aborigines (1) successfully inhabited the rugged land of Australia without much change and with little contact from the outside. In a mere fraction of that time, little more than 200 years, foreign invaders/settlers forever changed the Aborigine reality, introducing diseases, invasive species, western institutions, and a capitalist culture. Motivated by the vast cultural gaps that exist between Aboriginal Australians and modern capitalist values, this paper asks the question, "Should Australian Aborigines succumb to capitalism?" The underlying question is, however, "What path should Aborigines take to preserve their culture, mitigate social ills, ...