Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnographic data, this paper seeks to challenge public health approaches to suicide prevention and intervention.

Paper long abstract:

Suicide, one of the leading causes of death in the world, has been framed as an urgent public health issue. Through exclusively employing biomedical research, suicide has been internalised as a product of individual pathology, justifying the use of hospitals, medical professionals, Crisis And Treatment Teams (CATT), and even the police in public health intervention and prevention programs, with little, if any, focus on the social or spiritual needs of suicidal individuals. Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnographic data, this paper seeks to challenge the hegemonic public health approach to suicide prevention and intervention. By contrast, ethnographic anthropological research portrays suicide as a social act driven by political, economic, historical, and cultural factors. The neoliberal mode of state governance, in particular, has been argued as a potent driving force of suicidal ideation and behaviours. Therefore, I argue, the biomedical myopia within public health discourse on suicide is an inevitable product of public health's embeddedness with the neoliberal mode of state governance. Public health is positioned as a politicised institution that acts to support neoliberal policies through depoliticising and decontextualizing the negative implications of these policies on lives of people across the world, acting to exacerbate the weight of structural violence on populations. Thus, I contend that suicide must be separated from the public health approach to allow for more effective prevention and intervention efforts to be conceptualised. This will require further ethnographic research to be conducted to understand the structural factors that drive suicide in Australia.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Women with autoimmune diseases often must negotiate challenges posed by the moralisation of health and illness, gender expectations, and disruptions to identities. This paper provides an overview of my PhD project which explores the implications of these issues for regional support worlds.

Paper long abstract:

Chronic autoimmune diseases (ADs) affect an estimated 324,694 people in regional Australia, with women 2.7 times more likely to contract an AD than men. Little is known about the support needs of women with ADs in regional Australia, however having effective and appropriate support systems in place is important given that support services tend to be limited in regional areas, relative to their metropolitan counterparts. It is well known that chronic illnesses can pose challenges to people's identities, and ADs are no exception. In fact, for many people an AD diagnosis is strongly linked to their identity and sense of self. These experiences are further influenced in particular ways by social expectations surrounding gender, and the way that neoliberal societies moralise health and illness. Consequently, it is important that support systems can address the broader support needs of women with ADs, as well as the specific challenges posed by disruptions to identities, gender expectations, and moralisation. This paper provides an overview of my current PhD project that investigates the support worlds of women with ADs in regional Queensland through a life story approach to ethnography. In addition to providing an overview of my project, I will present some preliminary findings from fieldwork that began in mid-2017, and consider some of the implications of these findings for the provision of support for women with ADs in regional Australia.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I will give an overview of hta (poetic oral communication) as central to pwa k'nyaw (Karen) ways of being, effects of colonialism on hta practice and discuss the potential of hta for decolonisation. I will illustrate this by performing hta.

Paper long abstract:

Pwa k'nyaw (Karen) are a hta making people. Hta is a poetic form of oral communication. Hta is part of our contingent, diasporic, hybridised identities as pwa k'nyaw. To be pwa k'nyaw is to know hta, to speak and to sing hta. Our ancestors in the past did not learn from text, they spoke in hta language. Hta is the authentic speech of our ancestors, linking our present with our history and our future. Hta is central to our epistemology, ontology and axiology. Hta contains important knowledge on all aspects of life such as cultivation, the meaning and rituals of birth and death, love, humour, health, illness and ethical forms of behaviours.

The colonisation of pwa k'nyaw is the colonisation of hta. Interventions of literacy through the colonial state disrupted the rhythmic flow of hta, and consequently, pwa k'nyaw indigenous knowledge. The resurgence of pwa k'nyaw knowledge through hta is, therefore, a crucial practice of decolonization. Hta as resurgence involves projects of rediscovering, creating, writing and singing. By doing this, the hegemony of colonial ways of understanding our social world can be challenged.

I will illustrate this paper by performing hta.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the encounter between state, church and civil society groups working in a so-called 'witch camp', where a government is committed to discouraging its recognition in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

Where a government is committed to discouraging recognition of witch camps, it creates a structural void for many vulnerable individuals and groups. The role of religious actors in providing support and enabling advocacy for structurally invisible groups is a crucial case of the unique space that faith-based organisations occupy in development. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana, this paper examines the encounter between state, church and civil society groups working in a so-called 'witch camp'. A major strategy of witchcraft containment practice in northern Ghana is to isolate accused witches into 'witch camps'. Accusations of witchcraft have significantly increased in Ghana as the country endeavours to implement a neoliberal agenda. In this, the economic successes of some individuals have brought about tensions with those who have not. For the most part, the state neither acknowledges nor actively engages with these camps and in the process leaves a significant level of welfare stress. The problem in this case, however, is that in the process of ostracism, the shortfall of kinship and extended social networks that typically pick up the gap in welfare needs for individuals have also broken down. Reliance on civil society groups too is limited. It is in this context that the provision of resources by the Christian Churches in the witch camps is crucial for basic survival such as water, clothes, food and recreation of a community of belonging.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This PhD project sets out to document the interactions of religious experience, social formation and the urban environment in an inner suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka, by creating a dense ethnographic map of contemporary life and its historical antecedents.

Paper long abstract:

What is the relationship between religious experience, social formation and the urban environment? These three ecologies are mutually constitutive in many ways: inseparable in theory as well as practice. Through extended immersive field research, a dense ethnographic map of contemporary life and its historical antecedents in an inner-city suburb of Colombo, Sri Lanka, emerges. Focussed on a two kilometer diameter circle, the research observes and interrogates the institutions and people whose daily activities create the dynamic hum of the city's life. Stories, maps, drawings, photographs, relationships, experiences, news media and demographic data develop a sense of what exists within the circumference. Geography, history, ritual and belief motivate everything from the simplest meal to the most elaborate festival: Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic and their multivalent combinations. As well as peering in from the perimeter of the circle, this perspective also digs down, through time, attempting to see the inner workings of the sphere. Political, personal and physical histories created the space, inform the present and project the future. Familial connections, spirits, technology, opportunity and desperation repel and attract people and things beyond the circle, to and from the greater city area, the nation and the globe. Where are the fractures and structures, the discontinuities and cohesion, in this multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-class community? This spot-lit view of Colombo illuminates how religious experience, physical space and the historico-material reality of our lives conspire to effect social change.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Working in the context of drought in Sri Lanka my PhD fieldwork sought to explore the relationship between water management, the social formation and Sinhalese Buddhism in Polonnaruwa district. In understanding this relationship, emerging manifestations of the state come to the fore.

Paper long abstract:

In times of resource scarcity, manifestations and intersections of power become highly visible. Polonnaruwa district provides a rich ethnographic background for exploring this premise. Polonnaruwa was once the centre of power for Sri Lanka during the early medieval period. Polonnaruwa's dry climatic context and vulnerability to drought produced a society dependent on a complex irrigation and water catchment system, still utilised today. The position and power of the ancient Buddhist kings of Polonnaruwa were invariably tied to providing water through building, expanding and maintaining the irrigation system. The power imbued through the provision of water is also reflected through Sinhalese Buddhist rituals and cosmology. The research highlights how modern articulations of state power manifest in water management and how these articulations utilise historical and cosmological symbolic constellations. These articulations of power were at their most visible through interventions by the state during the drought. During a year in the field these interventions played out in various ways and were experienced by consumers of irrigated water relative to their position in the social formation of the district. The provision of irrigated water within the context of scarcity also provided opportunities for state actors to reinvigorate and reactivate historical and cosmological symbols of power. By exploring the relationship between water use and management, the social formation and Sinhalese Buddhism, emerging manifestations of state power in Sri Lanka are brought to the fore. The contingency of state power on socio-culturally informed constellations of historical and cosmological symbolism take on particular potency in Sri Lanka's post-conflict setting.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This research considers the governance of carbon and carbon offsets in two Australian municipalities - City of Melbourne (VIC) and Byron Bay Shire (NSW) - using cultural theory to explore the role of policy cultures and institutional differences in shaping local responses to climate change.

Paper long abstract:

Cities are increasingly recognised as important sites, and local governments as important actors, in reducing emissions in response to climate change.

This research examines how decisions about carbon and carbon offsets are made in City of Melbourne (VIC) and Byron Bay Shire (NSW), and how these decisions and flows of carbon are entwined with other sites, scales and institutions. Both municipalities are aiming for net zero emissions (by 2020 and 2025 respectively), but each is taking a different approach to managing carbon offsets as a way to neutralise remaining emissions.

Carbon is an important boundary object to understand the role of cultural and institutional differences in climate change governance. Carbon is generated by everyday practices but only comes to be known through scientific and technical practices. Carbon also permeates and transgresses the various sites and scales of climate governance through its release into the atmosphere, and through its entanglements with a complex array of institutional structures. Decisions about flows of carbon (or how to account for, and redirect carbon between, various sources and sinks) can reveal how boundaries are constructed and contested in the policy and governance of climate change.

By examining carbon governance in terms of cultural differences, this research will help to reveal how institutional dynamics might shape, and re-shape, policies and processes within and between the various sites and scales of climate governance.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Set in a Warlpiri community of central Australia, this paper looks at the interface between Warlpiri domestic practices related to rubbish and materiality, and an intrusive State agenda stressing a particular kind of tidiness and order.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on 19 months of fieldwork at a Warlpiri community in central Australia, in this paper I look at conceptions of rubbish verses thingness, and related practices of discarding and cleaning. In the Warlpiri context, the road from being a 'thing' of use or value to rubbish at the tip is neither linear, nor unidirectional. Here, an unambiguous act of discarding a thing is less frequent than an in-situ leaving, or setting aside, which suspends items between categories of 'actual rubbish' and potential re-use - a tin lid reclaimed to serve as a knife; a meat tray reused as a plate, and so on. Warlpiri domestic spaces are often scattered with items that may or may not be 'rubbish', the determination of which may depend on who is doing the looking. In this paper, my analysis turns on the interface between what locals would call a "yapa way" (yapa meaning Warlpiri or more generally Aboriginal person) of living in houses and with things, and a State agenda of 'tidy yards', monthly council audits of domestic litter and waste, and regular house inspections, all informed by unambiguous determiners of aesthetic desirability. To push at broader Western logics, I use insights from the Warlpiri life-world to explore other ways of seeing and categorising material things, and other logics informing material practices.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

I establish a connection between the generation of the social grouping of lun tauh "our people" and the value system which prizes the quality of doo'-ness, or prestige which is both inherited at birth and acquired through effort, through three narratives from the Kelabit highlands of Borneo.

Paper long abstract:

The first part of this chapter seeks to define the Long Peluan historical narratives as a genre of historical oral narratives, within oral traditions. I identify certain characteristics of historical oral narratives, looking at the use of genealogies, the use of place, conceptualizations of the past and episodic time. This analysis reveals the political intention of the narrator, which reflects his own value system and that of his audience. In the second part of this chapter, I deal with the Kelabit values associated with prestige, standing and the state of being good, doo', and a related notion of flexibility and dynamism, iyuk, (Bala 2008:54), all of which are linked to the wider notion of value as a vehicle for analyzing the narratives (Graeber 2001,Such an examination of the underlying notions of value widens the parochialism of the narrator's personal political perspective. I then argue the narrative serves as a vehicle for extending the narrator's social worlds, promoting his own prestige thereby creating value.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

The Social Solidarity Economy is a Latin American academic concept which has become policy in Ecuador. After reaching relatively superficial conclusions in previous research, I propose that the concept of 'translation' will offer better insight into how academic concepts affect actions of the state.

Paper long abstract:

The Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) is an approach to economics that examines actors and organisations that have motivations aside from profit, generally those with social and environmental objectives and a sense of solidarity and cooperation. Despite distant roots in 17th century France, the SSE is part of the Latin American intellectual tradition, having come to prominence there in recent decades. In 2009, the Ecuadorian government established the Instituto Nacional de Economía Popular y Solidaria (IEPS) in order to strengthen the SSE.

In 2015, for my minor thesis, did one month's research in Ecuador with the IEPS, examining the potential for the SSE to be used as a tool for development. Unsurprisingly, some of the conclusions I reached were relatively superficial: the participants in IEPS-led programs had slightly different conceptions of the SSE to IEPS staff. For my doctorate, I propose to use the concept of 'translation' to investigate the significance of these different understandings.

Translation should allow me to investigate why the participants in the program have different conceptions of the SSE and what they mean, both for the enactment of policy and how academic concepts transform as they move between contexts. This paper will be presented after having returned from six weeks pre-fieldwork, but before my year of fieldwork in 2018. It will lay out my proposed theoretical framework for analysing the influence of academic ideas on government policy.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

This paper problematises settler colonial citizenship in Palestine. Using data collected with Palestinian youth, it analyses indigenous aspiration and imagination within a framework of citizenship, arguing such capacities should be understood as resistive to settler colonial statecraft.

Paper long abstract:

"I think it's like we are in a zoo. The animals in the large cages are happy they are not in the small cages. We are still in a cage, but we can raise our arms a little…"

This paper problematises settler colonial citizenship in Palestine through a comparative analysis of fragments of an indigenous community. Drawing on data from two doctoral studies with Palestinian youth in East Jerusalem and in the north of historic Palestine it juxtaposes aspirations and imaginations of citizenship as embodied responses to settler colonialism. Palestinians in Jerusalem hold a civil status of 'permanent residency', usually reserved for foreigners, guaranteeing no residency rights. Since Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, contravening international law, discriminatory and restrictive policies have aimed to reduce the Palestinian 'demographic threat' in the city. Yet many youth aspire to acquire citizenship as a pragmatic measure to access full rights. Meanwhile the realities for Palestinians in historic Palestine make it clear that citizenship in the settler colonial state can only ever be partial for the indigenous population. While the 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel have the right to vote, participation in the political sphere is limited and daily lives are navigated within a legislative web of exclusion and racial discrimination. This paper offers an analysis of indigenous aspiration and imagination in the settler colonial state within a framework of citizenship, arguing that, in the face of erasure, such capacities should be understood as fundamentally resistive to settler colonial statecraft.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the representation of Indigenous peoples and question the way that Australian statehood is contextualised and embedded within photographs. It also discusses how collaborative research provides way in which Adnyamathanha people may express their identity and kinship.

Paper long abstract:

New and experimental art-making and curatorial processes are reshaping relationships between Indigenous artists, anthropologists, major public cultural institutions, patrons and audiences in Australia. Using a mixture of media art, archival imagery and documentary interviews, this paper seeks to explore the representation of Indigenous peoples and question the way that Australian statehood is contextualised and embedded within this realm. It will also discuss how to create a space with Adnyamathanha people to express relationships with the photographs and their identity and kinship significance.

This paper discusses my PhD which is about re-thinking Adnyamathanha histories via critical engagement with the State Library of South Australia and South Australian Museum, relating the immediacy of photography to the layers of the colonial archive. This PhD is using workshops to create an exhibition of contemporary Adnyamathanha responses to historical photographs.

I will create the exhibition by conducting workshops with Adnyamathanha people. The workshops are to prepare contemporary Adnyamathanha artistic interpretations and responses to the photographic collections and how they relate to modern identity and relationships with land, kin and culture. I am then planning to write up the workshops as a part of my PhD exegesis on the exhibition.

I explore Mountford's collections in the South Australian Museum and the State Library of South Australia, and use Tindale's collections comparatively to contextualise Mountford's work. This paper also points towards significant other photographic archives which I may display in conjunction with the Mountford photographs including those from missionaries who were working in the Flinders Ranges.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

What can China's continuing infrastructural expansion on the Ice tell us about how different states (in the roles of established, emerging, and aspiring leaders) interact in the global commons that is Antarctica?

Paper long abstract:

The Chinese presence is becoming increasingly conspicuous in Antarctica. With four established bases and plans for further bases on the continent, China appears intent to become a leader on the ice. A full consultative party (CP) since 1985, China has, within a relatively short amount of time, become an Antarctic Treaty (AT) member that seems especially eager to grow and consolidate its presence on the ice. China's Antarctic engagement appears to reflect its general foreign policy and economic intentions (i.e. economic expansion and growth of socio- or geopolitical presence and resulting power). This critical review explores China's history, developments, and ambitions in the global commons environment that is Antarctica. I argue that developments are indicative of an international development towards militarization and spatial expansion in Antarctica, in the context of 'the Asian century'. In terms of international cooperation and co-existence in Antarctica, China's scramble for increased presence and geopolitical reach could lead to increasing suspicion and tension among Treaty members and an elevated need for the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) to monitor, secure, and govern international adherence to its basic principles and ambitions.

Key words: China, Global South, Asian Century, Antarctica, geopolitics, Antarctic Treaty System.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

Kamlahri is a bonded child labour system exclusively in young girl of the Tharu ethnic people in Nepal. The rescue, return and rehabilitation of Kamlahri is continued, but many of them are struggling for proper rehabilitation and enjoyment of freedom due to ineffective law, policies and programmes.

Paper long abstract:

The study was conducted with the objectives of assessing situation of Kamlahri and their parents, who were also bonded labour (Kamaiya), in post-freedom after 2000. Mixed method approach was used to elicit information between 2010 and 2017. Household survey was carried out in 120 randomly selected households in two villages namely Janatanagar-Tesanpur, Bardia District and Kohalpur Municipality, Banke District of Nepal. Direct observation and personal interviews were also accomplished with five Kamlahri to understand the issue in-depth. Moreover, interviews and discussions were also done with the staffs of non-governmental organizations working in Kamlahri child labour issue. The study showed that there was remarkable decrease in the number of Kamlahri whilst some young girls are still working. Their parents sent their daughters with a dream of better education, quality of life and wages than their own house. Unfortunately, the realities are mostly opposite where majority of young Kamlahri had to work very hard in extended hours with no or minimum pay without going to school. It also observed that the household with large family size, higher economic and child dependency ratio and illiteracy rate has comparatively more chance of sending their girls as a Kamlahri than those who are not sending their daughters in Kamlahri. The rescued/ returned Kamlahri have started education and trainings with support from the government of Nepal that needs to be continued for their empowerment and employment. Child labour should strictly follow national and international standards so that domestic labourer can also employ and earn with dignity.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

When academics move to new countries for work, as is increasingly common, academic identities can be challenged. This paper explores the invisible identity work I observed foreign academics in Vietnam undertake, in order to successfully navigate their new international environments.

Paper long abstract:

Global competition for academic jobs is intensifying, and as it does, academics are increasingly required to shift their dominant places of residence across national borders in order to remain in academia. My research explores this global phenomenon through an ethnography of the invisible work (Star & Strauss, 1999) being undertaken by the foreign academics at an international university campus in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (the International-Vietnamese University, or IVU). Invisible work — the work that must be done in order for a task to be completed successfully, but is not necessarily accounted for in job descriptions or work plans — comes in many forms, and in this paper I will focus on one in particular: Identity Work.

By privileging the descriptions given by the academic participants in my anthropological study during fieldwork in 2016, I will unpack both what is meant by the notion of academic identity in this environment, and what 'work' the academics of IVU are doing to produce and reproduce their identities in relation to their new, highly internationalised professional context.

Drawing together the literatures on invisible work, identity work and academic identity, and placing these within the context of the anthropology of academia, this paper asks "how do academics' self perceptions change when they move countries for their jobs, and what work do they have to do under these circumstances to maintain, repair, strengthen or adapt a coherent sense of self?"

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses migration stories from Christians in Melbourne. It discusses their simultaneous sense of loss and gratitude about coming to Australia. It probes the interplay between their shifting emotional states and a secular public discourse which often conflates gratitude with happiness.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the everyday emotional response of Christian migrants to being in Australia. Based on research with migrants who worship at three Christian churches in suburban Melbourne, it focuses on how these migrants simultaneously articulate their experience of loss and of gratitude. In particular, I will interrogate the interplay between these emotional states and politics on the one hand and theology on the other.

In Australian political discourse, there is a sense in which we demand migrants be 'grateful' for their residency here and that all forms of remembrance should be happy or celebratory. Many of my research participants, however, simultaneously express thankfulness and sorrow. I will explore how this troubles the notion that thankfulness/gratitude necessarily corresponds with happiness. I will also seek to conceptualise a joy that is more complex, allowing space for grief and loss.

I will consider the faith-full way in which my participants tend to hold together struggle and gratitude. While not always explicitly theologised, this tendency reflects a deeply-embedded 'theological disposition' that results from Christian liturgical formation. The effect of such formation raises tantalising questions about the moral valuation of emotional responses to experience.

This study involved two multi-cultural English-speaking congregations (one Catholic and one Seventh Day Adventist) and one multi-cultural Arabic-speaking Baptist congregation. Drawing on participant observation, interviews and photography, this paper presents reflections on the intertwined sense of joy and grief, gratitude and loss, experienced by my research participants.