Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how class-based sets of value judgements cut across indigenous and non-indigenous residents' understandings of contemporary relational dynamics in the Central Australian town of Alice Springs.

Paper long abstract:

Class as a category of social difference is largely absent from anthropological research and analysis of indigenous-settler relations in Australia. Other categories, such as race, culture, indigeneity and kinship are taken to be much more prominent in defining who one is and how inequalities and divisions are reproduced between indigenous and non-indigenous people and domains. By exploring sets of values and everyday ethics that underpin indigenous and non-indigenous people's and institutional stakeholders' judgements of what is appropriate and inappropriate, desirable and undesirable, good and bad, in the Central Australian town of Alice Springs, the paper explores how the reality of class is in fact salient for how town people understand themselves and others, even if such understandings are 'spoken through' other categories of difference. The paper discusses how the displacement of class into privileged categories of race and indigeneity tend to obscure how these categories are increasingly crosscut by class division.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explains how the dynamics of the pan-Indigenous identity movement enabled the Hope Vale mission elite to re-orient themselves and retain their social position in the wake of the 'Aboriginal renaissance' from the 1970s.

Paper long abstract:

In early 1970s, Fiona Terwiel-Powell observed the early signs of an "Aboriginal renaissance" in the Hope Vale mission on the south east of Cape York (1976: 322). Travelling activists and young Guugu Yimidhirr people returning from southern cities were bringing "modern thinking" into the once-isolated Lutheran settlement, including the idea that Indigenous Australians should take pride in their difference from the settler-colonial majority (322). The light-skinned mission elite were sceptical of this new approach, Terwiel-Powell noted, because this group derived their high status from their presumed physical and cultural proximity to the European ideal of respectability. The mission elite worried that an Aboriginal cultural renaissance would upend the established hierarchy; promoting the marginalised dark-skinned families who were said to "live to blackfellows" or "camp", and leaving them "marginal to both cultures" (Terwiel-Powell: 308).

This paper will argue that two features of the pan-Indigenous identity movement have ensured that the Guugu Yimidhirr elites' fears have not come into fruition. Firstly, people of varying degrees of decent were given an equal claim to this new identity; and secondly, the movement was organised around sanitised and re-traditionalised representations of Aboriginality. These dynamics have enabled the entrepreneurial descendants of Guugu Yimidhirr elite to reclaim and benefit from their Indigenous identity, without renouncing the standards of respectability instilled in them by their parents.

Paper short abstract:

Gifting and giving are ethical acts that variably index and reproduce the moralities of class and gender respectability, individuality and sociality, and which are also framed within the shifting hegemonies of forgetting, foregrounding and/or misrecognising commodification.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I explore gifting and giving praxes of a cohort of low socio-economic females resident near Wellington, New Zealand's capital city. As ethical acts, gifting and giving variably reproduce the moralities of class and gender respectability, individuality and sociality, and are, in part, also variably framed within the shifting hegemonies of forgetting, foregrounding and/or misrecognising the commodification of labour, goods and exchange.

Numerous scholars have followed Mauss' (1950) seminal lead in noting that gifting (and by extension, giving and all transaction forms) are deeply implicated in the politics and economics of social life. Indeed both gifting and giving typically involve economic and other 'costs' to givers, and material, social, and other 'benefits' to recipients. Within the research cohort gifting is typically associated with celebrations of momentous occasions such as birthdays, manifests in charitable acts or donations, or is enacted in spontaneous moments of 'treating' in which commodity origins are either hidden, obscured or unmarked. Yet other similarly altruistic and empathetic acts - such as domestic provisioning (e.g. providing food for dependents and intimates) - are framed within the moral ordinariness of banal giving in which commodity modalities are visible, marked and sometimes foregrounded.

I argue that indexing gifting and giving within the shifting hegemonies of forgetting, foregrounding and/or misrecognising commodity modalities does the assessment work (Tsing 2013) of normalising the exploitative and stratifying aspects of capitalism as underpinning (albeit differently) and 'necessary' to the moral reproduction of class, gender, individuality and sociality.

Paper short abstract:

Papua New Guinea’s public realm is awash with conservative Christian moralising. This discourse reflects class distinctions but is in tension with a national ideology of inherently egalitarian Melanesian culture. This paper considers how PNG's middle-class negotiate these distinctions and dissonances.

Paper long abstract:

Papua New Guinea's (PNG) public realm is saturated with the moralising language of conservative Christianity. This discourse also reflects class distinctions but does so in tension with a national ideology of an inherently egalitarian Melanesian culture.

In a country characterised by extremes of wealth, PNG's middle class are often regarded as privileged 'elites'. However, their self-descriptions are characterised by complaints about the cost of living and reflect economic precarity, not the prosperous accumulation of property and other forms of social and economic capital. Meanwhile, powerful and affluent politicians, senior public servants and beneficiaries of resource developments control the flows of the nation's wealth, diverting it away from public goods into their own channels of patronage.

Public Christian moralising in PNG frequently takes two forms, both expressing class distinctions. One denounces corrupt leaders, who need to repent of their venial ways and turn to God for personal moral regeneration. This 'disparagement of elites' (Martin 2012) reflects an 'upward' critique of the powerful, in the process redefining the middle-class as moral actors constrained by dissolute leaders.

The second moralising denunciation is a 'downward' critique of the 'grassroots', who are often rendered as lazy and all too ready to ask for 'handouts' from their middle-class relatives. Nevertheless, middle-class Papua New Guineans are often far more accommodating of their importunate kin than this disparagement of the poor implies. This paper considers how PNG's middle-class negotiate these denunciations, distinctions and dissonances by blending Melanesian cultural norms with cosmopolitan practices of Christian charity and development assistance.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the South Indian city of Hyderabad, I look for evidence of middle-class embarrassment and notions of lower-class authenticity/cool and consider the implications of this material for Dumontian ideas of hierarchy in India.

Paper long abstract:

Much has been written about the centrality of moral discourses of 'respectability' to middle-classness, both in Euro-American contexts and India, where I conduct fieldwork. In Euro-American contexts there is also a growing interest in alternative class moralities - the embarrassment in the pronouncement of something as 'so middle-class', the critique of pretentiousness, and the championing of the authenticities of down-to-earth workers and (racialized) inner-city cool. Such alternative moralities are absent from the literature on class in India, however. It is often implied that India's middle classes are relatively unquestioning of their superiority and relatively unashamed of their privilege, in a manner redolent of Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus. In this paper, I look for evidence of middle-class embarrassment and notions of lower-class authenticity/cool in my ethnographic fieldwork with families in suburban Hyderabad, India, and consider the implication of this material for Dumontian ideas of hierarchy in India.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines moral boundary making and mediation in intra- and inter-ethnic relations of middle class Filipino transnationals in Indian cities.

Paper long abstract:

The paper examines the formation of moralities in the context of intra- and inter-ethnic relations of middle class Filipinos in Indian cities. What moralities emerge from interactions among Filipino transnationals, and between them and Indian locals? How might social relations shaped by such moralities be characterised? In addressing these questions, I explore the moralities, tensions and modes of relations that emerge in the context of a global South transnational migration route. Based on analysis of ethnographic data and interactions between Filipino transnationals and Indian locals in online spaces (e.g. Yahoo news group and Facebook), I find simultaneous processes of boundary making (Sayer 2005) and mediation among research participants. While they seek to assert their moral dispositions, they also find ways to mediate between conflicting moralities through discourse on- and offline. Filipino transnationals tend to use propriety, competence and cosmopolitanism as moral boundaries among them and in relation to Indian locals. In turn, the latter use cosmopolitanism and tolerance as criteria in evaluating the manner in which Filipino transnationals relate to them. The tension between boundary making and mediation may reinforce or reconstitute moral dispositions and give rise to ethical terms of relating. I highlight the discursive work of mediators in articulating both sides of a boundary and in finding ethical terms of relations. Indeed, the situation of transnational migration shows how the middle class propensity for moral distinction might be eclipsed by an ethical demand for social connection (Zigon 2008).

Paper short abstract:

Contrary to claims from cosmopolitan migrants that they are part of a global middle class, this paper argues that nationality, for many, remains a key segregator between a “middle-class” us and the “working class” them - migrants.

Paper long abstract:

Contrary to claims from cosmopolitan migrants that they are part of a global middle class, this paper argues that nationality, for many, remains a key segregator between a "middle-class" us and the "working class" them - migrants. Newly-arrived Chinese migrants in Singapore are of diverse social class backgrounds, ranging from highly-skilled expatriates to unskilled blue-collar workers. Expatriates regularly claim to be of the middle-class, just like their Singaporean counterparts. My research, however, showed many locals are of opposing views. Instead of embracing the migrants as part of a global middle class, many locals perceive Chinese migrants as embodying the "developing" status of their country, China. In this manner, Chinese migrants, despite their backgrounds, are seen as backward, uncouth and generally of a lower social class than locals. Through expressing disgust on Chinese migrants' sexuality, taste and hygiene, locals claim a moral high ground. Such discourses enable locals to perform and (re)produce their middle-classness while legitimating their rights as citizens. As a result, Chinese migrants are marginalized and framed as unworthy of citizenship rights.