SEMINAR: Anthropology & Sociology Seminar Series 2014 - Gemma Bothe & Marc Schmidlin, PhD Candidates Anthropology & Sociology

Gemma Bothe - What about the Conversation? The Lack of Social Interaction in Kindle Worlds

Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, established in May 2013, is the most recent project seeking to commercialise fan fiction (fanfic). This paper seeks to show that the Amazon platform of Kindle Worlds does not allow for the underlying and constitutive dialogues that exist during the creation of fan fiction that are as important as the product for many writers. In light of this I argue that the inherent sociality of fan fiction is unsuitable for consumerist contexts, and that it is unlikely that fiction writers will adopt the Kindle Worlds platform.

Marc Schmidlin - Moral Distinction and Transnational Identity among Hyper-Mobile Expatriate Professionals

Recently, the interest in ethics and morals in social contexts has sparked rich discussions among anthropologists. This paper discusses the social use of ethics and moral positions among expatriate fly-in fly-out heritage professionals based on 2 years of ethnographic research in Western Australia’s resources industry. As such, it is not a judgment about the morality of heritage work, but an introduction into how these highly qualified and experienced professionals apply ethical discourse and moral positions to frame their social world and develop a transnational identity in reflexive modernity.