21 | May | 2015 | Anthropology@Deakin

A/Prof. Tess Lea, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

“Can there be good policy in regional and remote Australia? Wait, is that even a question?”

75580 Teresa Lea WS1_2014-11-20 Abstract

This talk pulls together the threads of my ethnographic project ‘Can there be good policy? Tracing the paths between policy intent, evidence and practical benefit in regional and remote Australia’ which I have been pursuing in various ways for quite some years. The ethnography draws on case examples from infrastructure projects on Groote Eylandt, schooling efforts in the Victoria River Downs, a film collaboration with the Karrabing Indigenous Corporation from the Anson Bay region in the Top End, and the leadership dilemmas embedded within a community controlled health centre in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of northern South Australia. The research had two elements—pursuit of that policy question, and pursuit of communication modalities for sharing any findings. This talk pushes into these research aims to explore the confusions that its experiments with modes of fieldwork and of communication inevitably generated. Matching my sense of policy’s inherent fragmentation with disjointed study sites, and the desire to suture the answers into a redemptive project either of critique or resolution, are some of the confounders to be discussed.

Bio

Tess Lea is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. As an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellow, she is currently pursuing ethnographic research across housing, infrastructure, community development and education domains to explore the question “can there be good social policy in regional and remote Australia?” She has previously worked as a senior bureaucrat in the Northern Territory Departments of Health and Education, and operated as a ministerial advisor. Her work focuses on conditions of enduring racial inequality in Australia and the material and affective dimensions of how these conditions are reproduced and inhabited.

Where: Deakin University, Geelong Waterfront Campus, John Hay Building, Video Conference Room D3.321 (please note the non-standard room). A map of the campus can be found here: http://www.deakin.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/330364/waterfront.pdf. The session will also be video-linked to the Burwood Campus, room C7.06, via Virtual Meeting Point (VMP) 5223 9354.

When: Thursday, June 4, 5.00-6.50pm

All welcome. After the seminar, please join us for drinks/dinner at the Max Hotel, Gheringhap Street.

Here is just one of the calls for paper for the 2015 conference. Please go to the AAS website for details of other panels calling for papers.

Call for papers for the panel

“The private/public politics of intimacy”

Australian Anthropological Society 2015 Conference

The University of Melbourne, 1-4 December, 2015

Convenors: Hannah Bulloch (Australian National University) and Lara McKenzie (The University of Western Australia)

The term ‘intimacy’ evokes a sense of private, personal relations. It is sometimes construed as conceptually distinct from supposedly public realms of economics, work, policy and politics; or intimacy is depicted as corrupting or being corrupted by these. Yet, as the feminist slogan articulates, ‘the personal is political’. Intimate relations are enabled and constrained by broader power structures but so too these are reworked through intimate relations. Norms of intimacy constitute fundamental aspects of these supposedly public realms. For example, through relations of reciprocity intimacy is fundamental to economy. Meanwhile, through spreading consumer culture and mass media, ideals of love, romance and companionship are transforming intimacy the world over.

Focusing on various sites of intimacy—families, friendships, romantic or sexual relationships—we invite papers that consider articulations between ‘private’ and ‘public’ aspects of intimacy. The panel considers issues such as:

How might we define intimacy in the context of anthropological research? What does the examination of social relations through the lens of intimacy bring to the discipline?
How are the public/private boundaries of intimate relationships formulated and challenged in different contexts? How does interrogating the multiple meanings of ‘private’ and ‘public’ further the study of intimacy?
How are changing economic norms, new communication technologies and/or transnational media reshaping, and being shaped by, intimate relations?
What do the contradictions and complexities in the way intimacy is experienced and understood tell us about broader social change and continuity?
Can public policy be improved by a more intimate understanding of intimacy?

To propose a paper go to: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/aas/aas2015/panels.php5?PanelID=3669

Paper proposals must consist of: