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- Convenors:
-
Tyler Riordan
(University of Queensland)
Sarah Haggar (University of Queensland)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 25 November, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
As anthropologists early in their careers, postgraduate students have a unique voice which can be lost. This panel creates a space for presenters to explore their own exciting and enriching research. We especially welcome papers that fall outside specifically themed panels.
Long Abstract:
This panel provides space for any student anthropologist to engage with and reflect upon their own research. Postgraduate students who have not yet found their niche or whose field of research falls outside the scope of particular themes often find it difficult to present their work. This panel therefore aims to provide a space for the myriad topics and ideas with which student anthropologists grapple. We encourage students at various stages of their research to propose a paper that engages with some of their key research. Paper which are co-authored with supervisors will also be accepted.
The past year and a half have had an immense impact on anthropology, and students have had to overcome many hurdles to continue (or postpone) their research. This experience has amplified the restrictions and precarity of postgraduate students (and Early Career Researchers). This, along with a number of critical socio-political events - Black Lives Matter, Indigenous deaths in custody, the plight of asylum seekers, the eruption of settler colonial violence and war in Israel/Palestine, to name only a few - have highlighted the desire and discomfort for student anthropologists to use their voice and apply their anthropological knowledge to critical analyses of these events.
As such, this panel aligns with the ANSA Workshop in that it encourages the expression of student voice and student work. We look forward to proposals from presenters which explore their own exciting and enriching research.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 25 November, 2021, -Erin Gates (The Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from Marie Reay’s archival and collection sources, this paper will situate her as a significant figure in Australian anthropology, capture her defiance of and critical outlook towards the societal expectations of women, as well as illustrate the lasting importance of her work and archive.
Paper long abstract:
Dr. Marie Olive Reay once declared: “If I were writing an autobiography I would entitle it Against the Tide, though I can easily imagine a review headed Against the Grain.” Reay’s life in academia is emblematic of a period during which, by simply pursuing research as a same sex attracted woman anthropologist, her career was decidedly ‘against the grain’. As a result she often felt that her pioneering work in the male dominated field of anthropology was undervalued and over-managed as a direct result of her gender. Marie Reay was a pioneering anthropologist and a leading contributor to Australian and Pacific anthropology. Reay was the first to study contemporary conditions of Aboriginal communities in rural NSW, as well as the first woman to conduct extensive fieldwork in the Highlands region of PNG. As a lecturer at the Australian National University (ANU) from 1958-1988, she contributed substantially to the early history of the university; in particular as one of very few women academics. Drawing from Reay’s archival and collection sources, this paper will provide an overview of Reay’s career that situates her as a significant figure in Australian anthropology, captures her defiance of and critical outlook towards the societal expectations of women, as well as illustrates the lasting importance of her work and archive.
Nishith Tanny (The Australian National University) John McCarthy (ANU)
Paper short abstract:
We argue the economic well-being of a household does not guarantee food and nutrition for individual household members. Women from well-off families continue to suffer from inadequate nutrition. Given this reality, we explored the causality behind the intra-household food and nutritional inequality.
Paper long abstract:
Policymakers and development practitioners argue that the enhancement of agricultural production offers pathways to poverty alleviation and hence food security. Feminist scholars emphasize gender-inclusive development in the agricultural sector for better nutrition and food security. However, the narratives about gendered food and nutrition only partially consider the contextual processes and causal structures. This study examines how causal processes and structures lead to diverse food and nutrition outcomes, food and nutritional insecurity or inequality at the intra-household level. Even after decades of development interventions, undernutrition continues to persist amongst farming households in rural Bangladesh. We use the case of Bangladesh to assess the gender-nutrition linkages within agriculture. Combining ethnographic investigation and quantitative analyses across three villages in Bangladesh, we argue that the economic well-being of a household does not guarantee food and nutrition for individual household members. Women from well-off families continue to suffer from inadequate food and nutrition.
Dylan Strahan (University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
In 2017 informed consent was codified as a legitimate protocol for hormone commencement for Victorian trans patients. Examining trans patient and clinician experiences in this era, I ask what ‘consent’ means among historically coercive medical systems, used to constrain patient gender.
Paper long abstract:
Unprecedented visibility of ‘trans’ during the 2010s was paralleled by medical treatment and public policy attempts to reconcile ideas of ‘trans’ with ideas of ‘patient.’ When I sought hormones in Victoria in late 2017 at the age of 20, I had contradictory experiences with practitioners: paternalistic, condescending, respectful and deferential. At the time, I was not aware of the seismic impact of ‘informed consent’ within trans medicine. ‘Informed consent' is the ethical principle that a patient can decide to undergo a medical treatment/s, provided the patient has sufficient information regarding the benefits and risks of treatment, and adequate capacity over mental faculties in considering treatment.
Since the 1960s trans healthcare has involved compulsory psychiatric or psychological assessment prior to treatments such as hormones. Abnormal experiences of gender are construed as fundamentally pathological, insensible, and irrational, thus, in need of curtailment by medicine. In 2017 ‘informed consent’ was explicitly codified as a protocol for the initiation of cross-sex hormones for trans people. What are trans experiences of navigating, negotiating, and enacting informed consent? To address this question, I re-examined my own experiences in the clinic, compiled a history of trans health, and interviewed eight trans patients and clinicians about their experiences during the late 2010s.
In its totality, this article finds trans young people embrace uncertain and elastic visions of selfhood, contrary to medicine’s preferential treatment of the (imagined) rational, articulate, and coherent patient. Moreover, I suggest that informed consent is an essential but contradictory way of conceptualizing trans patients.
Carmen Jacques (Edith Cowan University) Lelia Green (Edith Cowan University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Jacques PhD methodology, combining collaborative and ethical anthropology to communicate with traumatised persons. This method seeks to redress the power imbalances between researcher and participant and empowers the storytelling capacities of traumatised individuals.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores Jacques PhD methodology, combining collaborative and ethical anthropology, as a way of communicating care to traumatised persons with an experience of terrorism. This paper argues that such a methodology seeks to redress the power imbalances between researcher and participant and empowers the storytelling capacities of traumatised individuals. This method led to a re-framing of the original research questions focused on storytelling and agency to ethical questions focused on the ways in which participants storytelling became a part of their ethical response to terrorism. The study was conducted by Jacques with six persons (two as a couple) who have an experience of terrorism; it sought to understand how the impacts of terrorism on the everyday lives of the participants. This paper contributes to the fields of Communications, Anthropology and practitioners working with traumatised persons. The methodology is currently being employed by Multicultural New South Wales to construct Australia’s first survivors of terrorism against violent extremism web-based platform.