12 Facts About Roger Sandall

Frederick Roger Sandall was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist, essayist, cinematographer, and scholar.

Roger Sandall 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.

Roger Sandall studied anthropology at University of Auckland and received his MFA from Columbia University.

Roger Sandall filmed Maiz as partial fulfilment of his MFA at Columbia in 1962.

In 1973, Roger Sandall joined the anthropology department at the University of Sydney as a lecturer.

Roger Sandall wrote for a number of journals including The American Interest, Art International, Commentary, The New Criterion, Merkur, Encounter, and Quadrant.

Roger Sandall 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.

Roger Sandall coined the term designer tribalism to criticise Western anthropologists' perpetuation of the noble savage archetype and the "Disneyfication" of Indigenous people's relationship with nature by "forcing" them to continue practicing their ancestral traditions.

Roger Sandall specifically criticises the Maori people for hunting practices that caused the extinction of the moa bird, which he felt was proof that these rituals were being maintained for Western tourism.

Roger Sandall named Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Robert Owen, and John Humphrey Noyes as part of the "culture cult" that kept designer tribalism alive.

Roger Sandall believed that the White Australia policy and similar legislations improved the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians and supported cultural assimilation into what he called "modern civilisation".

Roger Sandall was married to Bay Books publisher Philippa; they had two children, Richard and Emma.