February | 2018 | Anthropology@Deakin

Friends of Deakin Anthropology, you may be interested in this event convened by our colleagues at the University of Melbourne Anthropology Seminar Series:

FRESH CONTACT: YOUTH, GHOSTS AND ATMOSPHERE IN INDIA

Friday, 2 March, 3:30 – 5:00pm John Medley Building Linkway (level 4)

Dr Jane Dyson, University of Melbourne

I use long-term research in an Indian village to examine how a generation of young men re-evaluate their local environment following a period of migration. I develop Karl Mannheim’s notion of ‘fresh contact’ to argue that young men aged between 25 and 34 who have lived outside their home re-appraise their village economically, physically and spiritually when they return home, with particular emphasis on how young people re- engage with ghosts and the problem of spirit possession. I highlight the spatial nature of ‘fresh contact’, drawing attention especially to young men’s focus on developing a good ‘mahaul’ – a Hindi word meaning ‘atmosphere’. I also examine how earlier experiences inform the actions of a relatively ‘old’ set of youth aged 25-34, highlighting the temporal nature of fresh contact. My research highlights the value of examining young people’s histories and undertaking long-term ethnographic research.

Biography

Dr Jane Dyson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, University of Melbourne. She has worked for 15 years in the Indian Himalayas, examining issues around gender, work and social transformation with a focus on children and young people. Her research has been published in a book, Working Childhoods: Youth, Agency and the Environment in India (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and in journals including American Ethnologist, Economy and Society, and JRAI.

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Friends, colleagues, please join us for the very first instalment of our Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2018, presented by our very own Dr Rohan Bastin (Division of Anthropology, Deakin University). The seminar will be followed by drinks at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

Date: Thursday 1 March
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Location: Deakin Waterfront AD1.122

(Also, by videoconference, at Deakin Burwood F2.009, Deakin Downtown, and VMP ARTSED SHSS 39354)

An Obscure Desire for Catastrophe: The Moral Anthropology Turn

This paper addresses the relation between the so-called rise of moral anthropology and neoliberal economy broadly defined as an economic ideology where the free market is ostensibly circumscribed by apparatuses of self-surveillance and control. It does so by addressing an essay by Badiou on economy and morality, Lazzarato on indebtedness and morality, and also Nietzsche’s concepts of slave morality and ressentiment. Bouncing off a remark by Fassin on what he sees as the humanist turn in anthropology, which he argues is a profound evolution in the discipline, the paper argues that moral anthropology of this kind is largely novel in its self-representation and with that its awareness of its situation and its past. By tying these developments to the moralism of debt and the thoroughgoing economism of much recent scholarship, the paper also raises questions about other contemporary concepts including the Anthropocene, the assemblage and the ‘post-human’. It asks whether the spread of economy and the morality of necessity are unavoidable elements for contemporary anthropology or essential badges of participation and survival, elements of the brand, in the contemporary academy and its debt/control society.

Biography

Rohan Bastin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Deakin University. He leads a project that proposes comparative research on socio-religious reform movements in Sri Lanka, exploring four separate yet related research foci in the post-war context involving each of the major world religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam). It explores questions of human equality and social cohesion in the setting of post-conflict national reconstruction.