Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series #7: In and out of place – Ethnography as ‘journeying with’ between Central and South Australia

Anthropophiles, colleagues, friends, join us for the October instalment of our Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2018, presented by Deakin Anthropology’s own Dr Melinda Hinkson. The seminar will be followed by drinks at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

 

Date: Thursday 4 October

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)

 

Abstract

In and out of place: ethnography as ‘journeying with’ between Central and South Australia

This paper explores the case of an Aboriginal woman from Central Australia who has in recent years experienced a radical shift in her life circumstances. It pursues a writerly approach that makes legible the variety of forces and relationships that she now navigates, including that of the anthropologist-friend. ‘Journeying with’ is proposed as an ethnographic method as well as an ethical stance well attuned to the turbulent circumstances of the present – in the Warlpiri life sketched here, and globally. Destabilisation and displacement are increasingly common features of contemporary experience, and this paper proposes that ethnography anchored at the level of the individual person is well placed to engage unsettling transformations in the world at large, in social relationships and modes of personhood, as well as in anthropological production.​

 

Biography

Melinda Hinkson is a social anthropologist with wide ranging interests in visual culture. Her current research explores intersections between modes of governance, cultures of seeing and creative practice in central Australia. The first stage of this project resulted in the book Remembering the Future: Warlpiri Life Through the Prism of Drawing (Aboriginal Studies Press 2014) and an associated exhibition for the National Museum of Australia. The next phase of the project explores the turbulence of displacement. Wider research interests include postcolonial placemaking, the politics of intercultural recognition and the conceptualisation of person-image relations in contemporary society.