Friends, colleagues, please join us for this fourth instalment in the Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2017, presented by Frederic Keck (EHESS, Musée du Quai Branly). The seminar will be followed by drinks at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

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

(Also: Burwood C2.05; Melbourne Corporate Center, enquire at desk; VMP 39384)

Biosecurity in museums of virology, ornithology and anthropology

If biosecurity can be defined as a recent paradoxical injunction to circulate living material for the production of knowledge while securing its uses because of the instability of this material, it can help us revisit the history of museums as places where material is stored and conserved for the public display of knowledge. This talk will compare the history of virology since the discovery of the flu virus in the 1930’s, the history of ornithology since the voyages of Captain Cook and the history of anthropology since the foundation of the Museum of Man in Paris. It proposes a genealogy of the current analogies between the management of bird flu at Hong Kong University and the management of non-European artefacts at the musée du quai Branly in Paris.

Biography: 

Frédéric Keck is a researcher at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and Director of the Research Department of the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. After studying philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, he has investigated the history of anthropology and contemporary biopolitical questions. He published Claude Lévi-Strauss, Une Introduction (Pocket-La découverte, 2005), Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Entre Philosophie et Anthropologie (CNRS Editions, 2008) and Un Monde Grippé (Flammarion, 2010). He has co-edited (with N . Vialles) Des Hommes Malades des Animaux (L’ Herne, 2012) and (with A. Lakoff) Sentinel Devices (Limn, 2013).

Friends, colleagues, please join us for the latest seminar in the Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2017, presented by Cris Shore, of the University of Auckland. (See below for a description of Cris’ research.) The seminar will be followed by drinks at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

Date: Thursday 27th April
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Location: Deakin Waterfront AD1.122

(Also: Burwood C2.05; Melbourne Corporate Center, enquire at desk; VMP 39384)

Symbiotic or Parasitic? Universities, Academic Capitalism and the Global Knowledge Economy

The health of social anthropology as a discipline has long been connected to its position as a university-based subject. However, changes in the political economy of higher education, including cuts in public spending, rising student fees, the privileging of STEM subjects over the arts and humanities, and the proliferation of new regimes of audit and accountability, pose challenges for social sciences as well as the university itself. In countries such as Britain, Australia and New Zealand, academics are being urged to be more entrepreneurial, to focus on ‘impact’, and to engage proactively with business and finance in order to create a more commercially-oriented ‘innovation ecosystem’. The idea of forging a ‘triple helix’ of university-industry-government relations has become part of the new common sense that now drives government policies for higher education. But how positive is this supposed symbiosis between universities and external financial interests? What are the costs and benefits of this collaboration? And what are the implications for the future of the public university?

Biography: 

Cris Shore is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Auckland. His main research interests lie in the interface between anthropology and politics, particularly the Anthropology of Policy, Europe, and the ethnography of organisations. He was founding editor of the journal Anthropology in Action and is a founder member (and co-President) of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy, a Section of the American Anthropological Association. His published work covers a range of issues of anthropological, theoretical and public policy interest including the European Union, the State, elites, corruption, ‘audit culture’ and higher education reform. He currently leads two projects: an EU Centres Network study of the effects of austerity in the Eurozone, and a Royal Society of New Zealand-funded project on ‘The Crown and Constitutional Reform in New Zealand and Other Commonwealth Countries’. His most recent book, co-edited with Susan Wright, is Death of the Public University? Uncertain Futures for Universities in the Knowledge Economy (Oxford: Berghahn Press, 2017).

Friends, colleagues, please join us for the second seminar in the Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2017, presented by Eben Kirksey, of UNSW. (See below for a description of Eben’s research.) The seminar will be followed by drinks at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

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

(Also: Burwood C2.05; Melbourne Corporate Center, enquire at desk; VMP 39384)

 

Lively multispecies communities and deadly racial assemblages in West Papua

Indigenous people from West Papua, a territory under Indonesian rule, are foraging for food in spaces by the side of the road, in the ruins of recently logged forests. Living on the margins of market economies and transportation infrastructures comes with opportunities as well as risks. Emergent ecosystems are teeming with grasshoppers, katydids, praying mantises, and other edible insects, as well as marsupial game animals. Children are finding happiness in the hap of what happens in these multispecies worlds. At the same time, plans by technocrats in distant metropolitan centers to turn nomadic hunter-gatherers into a governable population have gone awry. Infrastructures and modern medical practices protect some people in Indonesia from tropical diseases like malaria, while Papuans die. Black lives matter. But some black lives matter more than others. The case of one black boy who was shot dead along the side of the road in June 2015 while hunting with friends is part of an ongoing process of genocide in West Papua. Race, nationality, and class all help determine who has full personhood before the law. In pursuing the elusive promise of justice in West Papua, indigenous people are pushing back against powerful assemblages and infrastructures, creating the conditions for continued life in multispecies communities. 

 

Biography: 

Eben Kirksey studies the political dimensions of imagination as well as the interplay of natural and cultural history. Duke University Press has published his two books—Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015)—as well as one edited collection: The Multispecies Salon (2014). Dr Kirksey is perhaps best known for his work in multispecies ethnography—a field that mixes ethnographic, historical, ethological, and genetic methods to study spaces where humans and other species meet. He has been working in West Papua, the Indonesian-controlled half of New Guinea, since 1998. Princeton University hosted Dr Kirksey as the 2015-2016 Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor and he is currently Senior Lecturer and the Environmental Humanities Convener at UNSW Australia.

Friends, colleagues, we would like to invite you to come along to the first seminar in the Deakin Anthropology Seminar Series 2017, presented by our very own David Boarder Giles. (See below for a description of David’s research.) The seminar will be followed by a start-of-the-series drink at The Edge, 6/8 Eastern Beach Rd, Geelong.

Date: Thursday 2nd March
Time: 4:30-6:30pm
Location: Deakin Waterfront AD1.122

(Also: Burwood C2.05; Melbourne Corporate Center, enquire at desk; VMP 39384)

 

Towards an Anthropology of Abject Economies

Where do things go when they are lost, discarded, or forgotten? What social afterlives do they lead? And perhaps more importantly, whose lives are constituted among the detritus? Through an exploration of such questions, and the larger patterns that emerge from them, I sketch out new directions for an anthropology of value, one that looks beyond the horizons of capital towards the futures that lie in its ruins.

To that end, we will explore what might constitute an abject economy—an economy built precisely on the abjection and abandonment of people, places, and things. What pathways of devalorization and desuetude might be its conditions of possibility? What emergent forms of life endure, for example, in the interstices of capital? What non-market practices and regimes of value are possible within its folds?

Giles develops both a theoretical framework for future research, and an ethnographic description from his own work with dumpster-divers, squatters, and other scavengers in several “global” cities in North America. These scavengers cultivate, in a very real sense, minor economies, putting into circulation those surpluses—people, places, and things alike—discarded by the prevailing markets and publics of these cities. They present us with one model of an abject economy: non-market forms of surplus value and labor, simultaneously made possible and necessary by the vicissitudes of capital accumulation.

These economies are paradoxes, neither separable from, nor commensurable with the logic of market exchange. Such economies hold profound lessons for the anthropology of the twenty-first century—in which market-centric, “neoliberal” regimes of value seem to have eclipsed so many other forms of economy. In a moment when there seems to be no “outside” to capitalism, we may yet discover its margins, and there may we not only learn a great deal about the ontological grounds of capital itself, but also discover existing and emergent modes of valuing otherwise. Giving an account of these dynamics and paradoxes, I will argue, will be one of anthropology’s key challenges in the coming years.

 

Biography

David Boarder Giles is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He writes about cultural economies of waste and homelessness, and the politics of urban food security and public space, particularly in “global” cities. He has done extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Seattle and other cities in the United States and Australasia with dumpster divers, urban agriculturalists, grassroots activists, homeless residents, and chapters of Food Not Bombs—a globalized movement of grassroots soup kitchens. You can read excerpts of his work at his blog.

Please join us this Wednesday for the first Contemporary Cultures & Societies seminar for Semester 2, 2015.  I have also attached an updated seminar program for the semester.  This series is convened by the Anthropology and Development Studies programs at the University of Melbourne, but many of the seminars are likely to be of more general interest.  Everyone is welcome, so please forward this message – and the attached flyer/list – to anyone you think might be interested.  I have also attached an updated seminar program.

 

(If you know anyone who would like to be added to the mailing list for these seminars, please ask them to contact me at [email protected])

 

 

Date/time:   12 August, 5:15-6:45pm

Venue:          Old Arts Theatre D
__________________

 

Feminist Political Ecology and the Economics of Care: ­ In search of Economic Alternatives

Wendy Harcourt (Erasmus University, The Hague)

Since the recent financial crisis in 2008 analytical and practical alternatives to the capitalist economy have seen a revival not only in different practices but also in theory. Especially under the umbrella term of “degrowth” alternative modes of economic experience and thinking have found a new life. The ideas linked to the concept of degrowth or post-growth are putting into question the coupling of economic growth and social welfare, which is foundational for the capitalist economy. Real life experiences suggest that this coupling is a fiction. To put it bluntly, economic growth does not remedy social inequality and it is no guarantee for individual and social well-being.

Feminist analysis has made important contributions to critiques of capitalism and the debate about what constitutes a good life. Core to this analysis is the economic and social value of social reproductive work done by women, in the paid care sector as well as in the private sphere of families and interpersonal relationships. To date, it is troubling that the conceptual frameworks of economic alternatives that combine green and non-capitalist approaches have failed to deal explicitly with gender issues around care. They neither take into account the importance of care work in the private sphere nor do they reflect critically on the gendered character of work as a whole. The symbolic order of masculinity and femininity that legitimizes gender hierarchies remains beyond their conceptual reach.

In her talk, Wendy Harcourt suggests how feminist political ecology presents alternatives to the capitalist economy that take feminist issues about social reproduction and care as central to environmental and economic alternatives.

Wendy Harcourt is Associate Professor at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University, The Hague. She received the 2010 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association’s Prize for her book Body Politics in Development: Critical Debates in Gender and Development (2009). She was editor of the journalDevelopment from 1988 to 2011 and has published 10 edited collections that latest of which is Practicing Feminist Political Ecology: beyond the green economy with Zed Books. Her writings and research as a feminist political ecologist and post development scholar explore critical approaches to global development, feminist theory and sexual health and reproductive rights.

 

Click here to see the rest of the stunning images.

You are cordially invited to attend the next ethno-forum which will be held at 3.30pm on the 14th of August. Please note that this ethno-forum will be held in room 519 of the John Medley Building.

The theme of the ethnoforum is‘Development Ethnography? Concerns and constraints of qualitative development study’

Development studies and ethnographic techniques have a problematic connection, with significant qualitative research used to justify development interventions and with the development community funding and enabling much ethnographic work. This month we will consider the relationship between these fields of study, practice and employment. Tamas Wells will reflect on his work in Burma, considering how he negotiated working in an environment of close developer friends who were engaged with his academic practice.Matthew Gmailifo Mabefam will consider the transition from development professional to development academic. While neither of them describe their work as ethnographic, both examine the implications of long-term involvement in communities where the researchers’ presence can address or exacerbate power inequalities.

Tamas Wells

My research is exploring narratives of democratization in Myanmar, looking specfically at the Burmese democracy movement and its Western donor supporters. I had previously lived in Myanmar for seven years – working in the aid sector – and returning to do ‘research’ I felt as though the tools of traditional political ‘science’ (eg surveys) would miss the nuances of political thinking that I had come to perceive during my time living there. While I am not using the term ‘ethnographic’ in describing my methodology, I was attracted to participation, informal interaction and extended interviews as a way of building more nuance in describing meanings given to democracy in Myanmar. But this also raised the question for me of whether research or ethnography can be ‘switched on’ when returning to a familiar place, language and community? Research is inevitably shaped by previous experiences and relationships in that place. But is there also something different in intentionally exploring a research question.

Matthew Gmailifo Mabefam

My research explored how marriage arrangements affect educational attainments of girls in Bolni Ghana. It has been argued that every child has the right to education but many parents will still not enroll their girls in school or enroll them initially but withdraw them as they advance higher in the midst of efforts made by stakeholders. I did field work and engaged with the community members in FGDs, community forums, In-depth interviews as well as key informant interviews. The study found that marriage arrangement decisions both by parents and girls themselves had negative effects on girls’ education. In this presentation, while I reflect on issues of development both as an academician and development practitioner, I will also highlight some challenges I encountered in collecting data from this community as a native.

What: ‘Development Ethnography? Concerns and constraints of qualitative development study’

When: Friday August 14th, 3:30 – 5pm

Where: Room 519, John Medley Building, University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus

Please join us for drinks and dinner after the event. If you have any questions please contact Tom: [email protected] or Bibiana:[email protected]

The 2015 annual conference of the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) will be hosted by the Anthropology Programme at the University of Melbourne from 1-4 December. This year’s conference “Moral Horizons” will address moral pluralities both within anthropological practice and in the rapidly evolving world the discipline researches.

 

 

Championing Australian seafood industry and calling for balanced debate on management issues. What a legend. Makes me wish I’d become a marine biologist, too. TJK

 

Portarlington fisherman Peter Jenkins and son Ben’s family business will be progressively shut down by the state government over the next eight years. A leading maritime anthropologist fears the mental and physical challenges facing commercial fishers during this time are being ignored. See page 9 for more.

Maritime anthropologist, Tanya King says while the health and well-being of farmers’ remains in the spotlight, the challenges facing commercial fishers has been largely ignored.

Dr King, a Seafood Industry Victoria board member and senior lecturer at Deakin University who has been working on Australian commercial fisheries for more that 15 years, said the plight of our farmers was often described in a sympathetic tone by our politicians but commercial fisher mental health was not afforded the same recognition and support, either financially or in terms of political oratory.

Dr King’s concerns come in response to the state government’s plan to phase out commercial netting in Port Phillip and Corio Bay.

She said the government’s $20 million buyback of the more than 40 commercial fishing licences for the bay was not due to concerns about the environmental health of the fishery but in an effort to promote the region as a “recreational fishing mecca”.

Dr King said the state government’s tendency to conflate its issues and management in policy left commercial fisher and their particular concerns virtually invisible.

“The key difference between the two groups of primary producers is that farmers can own private property, while fishers invest in a resource that is publically owned and therefore subject to government control and strategizing,” she said.

“Australian farmers struggling to cope with climate change have been valued, being offered assistance packages, subsidies and loans in order to keep their businesses afloat.

“In contrast, fishers who are working sustainably in a healthy resource are being told that they are dispensable, and this negative judgement of their role in our society is detracting significantly from their wellbeing.”
Dr King said research published in leading international journal, Marine Policy, and led by Deakin University, presented findings on the physical and mental health of this other primary industry, which reported “widespread anecdotal accounts describing very poor physical and mental health within the fishing industry, including suicide and attempted suicide”.

She said reflecting on the restricting of a lobster fishery, one fisher reported, “The mental health is big”.

“When they did changeover (to management arrangements) in crayfishing, within a two-year period there were six successful suicides and 18 attempted suicides.”

Dr King said this account add
ed to those of other stress-related problems facing fishers around the country, including substance abuse, domestic breakdown, social withdrawal, shaking, sleeplessness and nightmares.

She said despite the efforts of public health campaigns by groups such as beyondblue, “fishers were particularly reluctant to seek and even discuss mental health issues, and indicated that while there was an industry-wide concern, there remained a stigma attached to poor mental health”