Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Hanna Jagtenberg
(Utrecht University)
Alessandra Prunotto (Clear Horizon)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussants:
-
Yasmine Musharbash
(Australian National University)
Debra McDougall (University of Melbourne)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- Eucalyptus (S205), R.N Robertson Building
- Sessions:
- Thursday 5 December, -, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
This panel invites papers addressing both the value and the values of student anthropologists. How is student work valued and what do students bring to the discipline (which may be undervalued)? And what values do student anthropologists hold with regards to their work today?
Long Abstract:
This panel invites papers that address two related themes: the value and values of student anthropologists. We encourage students at various stages of their research to propose a paper that speaks to one or both themes (other scholars are also invited).
Although anthropology may be less hierarchical than other disciplines, student work does tend to be undervalued (as suggested by previously low attendance to the ANSA panel). Yet students, as a new generation of thinkers, often have innovative ideas, precisely because they come into the discipline with a 'fresh' mind. We ask presenters to address the value that their work as students brings to the discipline and to the broader public. In line with ANSA's aims to promote applied anthropology, we particularly encourage presenters to consider how their work could be applied to inform policy or solve problems.
The second, related theme of our panel creates space for discussion on what students value, and on how these values shape their work and their engagement with the discipline and the public. We invite presenters to articulate ideas that include (but are not limited to) what they value in anthropology, why they are anthropologists, how they navigate ethical issues and conflicts relating to values in their work, and how their personal values influence their professional lives.
Furthermore, since we value creativity, we ask those proposing papers to foreshadow how they will create an engaging presentation, including but not limited to speech, visuals, audio, movement, and audience participation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 4 December, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
With increased national & political populism,the value of compassion towards the 'other' is losing traction.Through the lens of asylum seeking, I argue the ancient concept of Xenia infused in time is losing value, allowing sovereign states to enact structural & political forms of (dis)citizenship.
Paper long abstract:
The Odyssey (Homer, 750BC) reflects various themes which are as relevant today as the time it was written. Inspired by Homer this self-authored poetic piece examines the theme of Xenia. In an increasingly fractured society hospitality and concern towards others, including strangers should be noted more than ever. Xenia - The practice of hospitality and reciprocity of that hospitality which occurs in most societies in one form or another is fast losing its meaning. Without this reciprocal arrangement, we lose our humanity and our ability to be open and compassionate. This poem reflects various situations in today's society where Xenia, or the lack of it has both positive and negative consequences.
The poem attempts to draw connections between hospitality and asylum (Isayev, 2017). The opening verse is an 'Introduction' examining what Xenia is. This is followed by the 'Giving' whereby the concept of giving shelter to a stranger is reciprocated with gifts and respect and explains why this act is sacred. The 'Abuse' of Xenia follows with examples of modern-day abuses and lack of hospitality towards our bordered neighbours and the consequences. Through this abuse, 'Revenge' is sought. On a sociological level this is translated as revenges on the part of both parties through lack of respect. There are 'Lessons' to be learned from this process which is drawn out in the following verse. Finally, the 'Gods Speak' of our folly, and this is followed by a 'Requiem' for our society.
Paper short abstract:
By investigating the generation and elimination of Chinese teachers' negative emotions, this research seeks to reveal Chinese teachers' daily emotional labor mechanism and shape a three-dimensional and comprehensive image of teachers' community.
Paper long abstract:
There is a long history of respecting teachers in Chinese traditional society for people regard teachers as knowledge authorities and exemplars. However, traditional expectations lead to solidification and one-sidedness of teachers' dispassionate social image. One evidence is that little attention has been paid to Chinese teachers' emotional practice. This research focused on Chinese teachers' negative emotions. By investigating the generation and elimination of Chinese teachers' negative emotions, I seek to reveal Chinese teachers' emotional labor mechanism and shape a three-dimensional and comprehensive image of teachers' community. I conducted a qualitative research and adopted the ethnography approach by one-on-one semi-structured interview with nine Chinese teachers. The interview contained questions about teacher' interactions with their students, family and other social relations to investigate their emotions generated during these interactions. Research findings are as follows. First, Chinese teachers suffer from various negative emotions such as disappointment and anger, anxiety and shame or grievance and exhaustion in different working contexts. Although teachers may struggle with negative emotions, they will positively adopt various emotional regulatory strategies to eliminate negative emotions. Finally, I highlighted the emotional and psychological support from their social relations. In this research, I argued that because of frequent emotional display, high attentiveness, various displayed emotions and emotional dissonance during teachers' working process, Chinese teachers bear high emotional labor costs. Although they try to use various emotional regulatory strategies and social support, Chinese teachers' efforts to eliminate negative emotions and keep positive social image will take up much emotional labor costs.
Paper short abstract:
This research contributes to the historical scholarship on Aboriginal missions in Australia through detailed archival analysis which draws on anthropological frameworks and theorists to propose new ways of using archives to analyse the historical construction of spaces and identities on missions.
Paper long abstract:
Through the arrival of the Methodist missionaries to North East Arnhem Land in the early twentieth century, Milingimbi (which was already part of Yolŋu relations with country and kin) was drawn into new and expanding networks of people and places. The years of this mission before the Second World War are moving beyond living memory, although in Milingimbi there remain many who continue to carry the oral histories of the place. However, away from this site, it is predominantly through the written accounts left by missionaries and anthropologists that details of these early years are found. Whilst these records have an important role in representing some aspects, their value remains limited as they do not represent the dynamic experiences of the Yolŋu people whose lives were and still are significantly impacted by colonisation to their lands. My project is to determine the value of accounts left by missionaries and anthropologist in a way that retains the temporality and 'specificities' of histories without reducing the mission to a fixed and determined space, by which the social interactions become unrecognisable. This requires conceptualising the mission in terms of a space shaped through its constituents and in which multiple stories coexist -both known and unknown within the archival record. Such a view, I argue, enables a standpoint to explore the mission space as contextual, contested and configured and to observe what else was going on, amidst the projects and imagined altruism shaping the rhetoric of the official records.
Paper short abstract:
A qualitative approach is used to explore the transition of discourse practice about diligence(qinfen) in everyday lives of Chinese postgraduates. There are three different forms of "doing diligence". The practice reflects discipline, subjectisation, symbolic violence and gender discrimination.
Paper long abstract:
A stereotype of Chinese students is that they are extremely diligent because many see hard-working as a critical virtue. However, little is known about the everyday practice of "doing diligence" among Chinese students. To fulfill this knowledge gap, this paper examines how the discourse of diligence has been reconstructed and subjectified by a group of Chinese postgraduates.This study uses a qualitative approach. I interviewed seven postgraduate students from two universities, among whom four are females and three are males. A typical interview began from the interviewees' current campus lives to their life histories relating to the perceptions on and practice of "doing diligence". Also, these seven students' everyday posts of WeChat Moments, a Chinese version of twitter, are collected as data for further analysis.Research findings show that students use several criteria to justify "diligence", including learning length, learning space, learning purpose, learning effect and learning mentality. By analysing the data, I identify three different forms of "doing diligence": "rigid diligence" (si qin fen)/ "skillful diligence" (you ji qiao de qin fen), "false diligence" and "concealed diligence".Many master students no longer see doing diligence as moral practice. This transition mirrors both individualisation of the younger generation and the political, social and cultural changes in broader Chinese society. This paper argues that the understanding and practice of "diligence" (qin fen) by postgraduate students reflects the discipline to students in China. The practice of "doing diligence" also reflects a process of subjectisation, within which symbolic violence and gender discrimination exist.
Paper short abstract:
Young substitute teachers in China suffer from the derogation of social stigmatization, especially differentiated treatment by various groups at school. Substitute teachers bear the derogation of stigmatized status in the special gap between actual and virtual social identities.
Paper long abstract:
Substitute teachers in China are teachers who work in state-run schools without an authorized identity within the state system. These 'teachers' do not have a 'complete' (paper) identity that help them fit in and pursue professional development. Inspired by Goffman's stigma theory, my research looks at the 'awkwardness' and 'strangeness' of substitute teachers in everyday school life.
Drawing on two months long ethnographic fieldwork, this paper highlights five young substitute teachers' life stories. All of these five teachers work in an urban public school in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province which is located on the east cosat of China. During my fieldwork, I followed their routines on campus, observed their interactions with peers and senior teachers. Besides casual chats, I also conduct formal interviews with the five substitute teachers, four teachers with within-state-system identit.
Research findings show that the young substitute teachers suffer from the derogation of social stigmatization, especially differentiated treatment by various groups at school. Substitute teachers bear the derogation of stigmatized status in the special gap between actual and virtual social identities. They suffer from uncomfortable interaction in the context of remixed contact and promotes the transformation of self-identity in the reflection because of the stigma.
This paper argues that the stigmatization toward substitute teachers is not only a social construct of hierarchical membership between different groups of teachers, but also a practice of normalized symbolic violence at work. The feelings of incompleteness is a constant construction of social identities.
Paper short abstract:
My research addresses why women engage with stories of true crime. The study focuses on women who consume true crime podcasts. I examine true crime podcasts which are used as a tool for the construction of stories of violence and why this medium might lend itself to such narratives.
Paper long abstract:
Previous academic consideration of true crime narratives have been bounded in disciplines such as criminology, psychology, or media studies. This work has tended to be based on the content of violent crime; detailing the crime scene, murder weapons and police investigations; rather than the corresponding consumption of true crime narratives. My research is unique insofar as it analyses the consumption of true crime podcasts in Australia, specifically the gendered nature of such consumption. My decision to focus on gendered consumption reflects my understanding that violent crime itself is gendered, with the majority of victims of violent sexual crime being women. It is reasonable to consider that women may be expected to have a particular interest in true crime given the gendered experience of violence which they face. Given this, my study focuses exclusively on the women who engage with each other via true crime podcasts and the corresponding digital mediated experience. This research highlights the increasing focus on true crime and its validity within popular culture and academia, giving voice to the women who actively engage with this topic and providing the student researcher and the participants the opportunity to explore both their passion for true crime, and the broad social value of this engagement.
Paper short abstract:
the research questions in this study start from the perspective of teachers' emotions, explore the personal emotional factors that influence teachers' professional identity and give some suggestions, mainly by way of documenting, interviewing and case study.
Paper long abstract:
Since the 21st century, issues of teacher professional development have attracted intensive attention in China. Teacher professional identity greatly affects the teacher's teaching, attitudes, commitment and career development. Education reform is always closely related to the quality of teachers. The establishment of teachers' professional identity refers to both a process and a state.
Although the importance of teachers' emotions has been discussed in mainland China in recent years, the analysis of teachers' professional identity and the countermeasures and suggestions based on the teacher's emotional perspective lacks explanatory basis and detailed implementation efficiency. Therefore, the research questions in this study will start from the perspective of teachers' emotions, from three dimensions : the middle school teachers' peer atmosphere, the teacher's symbolic capital and the school organization culture, exploring the personal emotional factors that teachers have produced in teaching practice, and which dimension these factors belong to, mainly by way of documenting, interviewing and case study. through the emotional self-report of the teacher, this study sorts out the emotional dilemma and emotional needs of the teachers. According to the research results, suggestions should be made on how to guide teachers' negative emotions, and enhance teachers' professional identity by cultivating teachers' positive emotions, and support teachers to be more effective and teach and learn more happily.