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Today's date is Friday, March 29, 2024
School of Social Sciences
 July 2019
Tuesday 23
11:00 - SEMINAR - UWA Centre for Muslim States and Societies (CMSS) Seminar : 'The Rise of Islamism in the Maldives' More Information
This presentation examines the spectacular emergence of Islamism in the twenty-first century in the island nation of the Maldives, where Islam has existed for about 800 years. It problematizes the conventional view that political Islam is the other of the modern state or an outcome of an aberrant understanding of Islam. As counterintuitive as it is, the chapter argues that the genealogy of Islamism goes back to the institutional and discursive politicisation of Islam through modern nation building since 1930s by state actors with Islamic modernist orientations. Those nation building projects transformed Islam into a modern religion in two primary ways. First, instead of jettisoning Islam from the polity, Islam was institutionalised into modern institutional forms – constitutions, codified laws and rules, centralised state authority, a bureaucratised judicial system. Second, Islam was also transformed into an extra-institutional public political discourse of collective national identity. Both forms of statist political Islam in many ways conformed to the liberal expectations and sensibilities consistent with Islamic modernist orientations. However, instead of weakening Islam in the polity, it was deeply embedded in the political domain. The paper shows that Islamism in the twenty-first century was unwittinglynourished by those forms of political Islam in the polity, as Islamism finds the right ‘language’ already in the political domain. While Islamism agrees with the modalities of the forms of political Islam that emerged through modern nation building, it deeply contests the content, as it were, of them. Oppositional Islamism wants more substantive institutionalisation of Islam and more substantive religious identity for the people, threatening even the liberal aspects of statist political Islam.
Thursday 25
13:30 - FORUM - The UWA Institute of Agriculture Industry Forum : Finding Common Ground: Bringing food, fibre and ethics to the same table Website | More Information
With increasing public scrutiny of agricultural practices in food and fibre production, rebuilding trust between innovative primary producers and ethically informed consumers is becoming more important than ever before. Join us for a lively discussion on finding common ground and moving forward together.

The event program is as follows: 1.30pm Registration and refreshments, 2.00pm Event start, 5.00pm - 6.30pm Sundowner

For more details, view the flyer: http://www.ioa.uwa.edu.au/publications/industry-forum
Friday 26
14:30 - SEMINAR - Anthropology & Sociology Seminar Series : The Thermal Complex: Air conditioning Urban Asia in an era of Climate Change More Information
As cities across the world endure increase extremes of heat, indoor comfort has become a key vector in the debate about sustainability and energy consumption. Across Asia the carbon footprint of buildings continues to rise because of the widespread adoption of air conditioning. Current trends are unsustainable, and alternative, less energy intensive comfort regimes need to be maintained or cultivated.

This presentation examines such challenges as a thermal complex, an approach that seeks to move the debate beyond questions of engineering and smart-city solutions. In this informal presentation we want to outline our struggle at conceptualising a book, and the challenges of imparting socio-cultural histories and political analyses into a domain dominated by techno-scientific discourses.

Jiat Hwee Chang is Associate Professor at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, and is author of a number of books, including A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience. He is also co-founder of Southeast Asia Architecture Research Collaborative (SEAARC).

Tim Winter is ARC Professorial Future Fellow in the School of Sciences, UWA and was Lead CI on 2 international research collaborations on air conditioning and urban development in Southeast Asia (ARC DP) and the Middle East (QNRF).

 August 2019
Friday 02
11:00 - SEMINAR - The Clash of Ideologies � How? Making sense of the Christianity-related protests in contemporary China : This talk about decoding the State-religion contention in contemporary China will be followed by a seminar in the afternoon hosted by the Anthropology and Sociology group More Information
This talk aims to offer an analytical framework to make sense of the abundant empirical materials regarding the Christianity related protests in contemporary China. It argues that the inherent ambiguity in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) religious policy is fundamentally responsible for the many Christianity-related protests in contemporary China. However, while many Christianity-related protests in contemporary China are closely associated with the clash of ideologies, the specific causes of protests differ significantly among Catholic churches, Protestant churches, and Christian-inspired groups. The ideological incompatibility between the ruling CCP and the Catholic Church in China is epitomised by their struggle for authority and influence over the Chinese Catholic community. On the contrary, some influential Protestant church leaders have turned their progressive theology into social activism since the turn of the 21st century, leading to various forms of protests against the authoritarian policies and politics in contemporary China. In addition, ideological and theological conflicts between different religions or religious schools may also trigger the CCP’s suppression of certain religious groups and activities, which often in turn cause protests.

Dr Yu Tao teaches and researches contemporary China at the University of Western Australia. A political sociologist by training, he conducts theoretical and empirical analysis into the intersections and interactions among religious groups, civic organisations and local state agencies in contemporary China and overseas Chinese communities.

14:30 - SEMINAR - Anthropology and Sociology Seminar Series : Why do Chinese cadres worry about religion? Findings from a list experiment More Information
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is often portrayed in the West as hostile towards religion, and the Party indeed still prohibits its members from joining any religion. How should we understand the apparent incompatibility between the CCP and religion? Is the CCP hostile towards religion because of the atheist ideology of a Communist Party? Or is the CCP, as an ‘organisational emperor’, is concerned with the strong organisational capacity that religious groups have in mobilising contentious politics? Moreover, if we were to study this topic through direct interviews, could we believe what Chinese cadres tell us in the first place? In this work-in-progress presentation, we will report findings revealed by a simple, yet sophisticatedly designed, list experience with 170 junior CCP cadres in Beijing. Our result demonstrates that the problem of social desirability exists in some, but not all, dimensions of the perceptions that Chinese cadres have on religion. We also revealed that Chinese cadres tend to perceive different religions with different levels of concerns, while in general they have much stronger concern over the frequency of religious congregation (i.e. the organisational aspect of religion) than over individual religious participations (i.e. the ideological aspect of religion).

15:00 - SEMINAR - The Formation of Grass-roots Heritage Movements In Iran More Information
In this presentation, I examine the activities of a group of heritage enthusiasts in Iran. Grass-roots heritage activism is a relatively recent phenomenon that appeared in Iran since the late 1990s. Activists often operate collectively, as NGOs that focus on heritage. They represent a range of cultural and socioeconomic origins with different political views. However, they share a certain ambivalence towards and critical approach to official, state definitions of heritage and identity. By referring to data collected through fieldwork I argue that these activities constitute a form of heritage movement and outline some of the characteristics of this movement.

Ali Mozaffari is a Fellow of the Australian Research Council with the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University. Through his research, he seeks to understand the uses of the past in contemporary discourses of heritage and built environment in Iran and West Asia. His publications include Forming National Identity in Iran: The Idea of Homeland Derived from Ancient Persian and Islamic Imaginations of Place (2014) and World Heritage in Iran: Perspectives on Pasargadae (2016), and “Picturing Pasargadae: Visual Representation and the Ambiguities of Heritage in Iran” (Iranian Studies, 2017).
Tuesday 06
13:00 - SEMINAR - Asian Studies Semiar Series : Being Japanese, Indigenous Australian, and 'mixed' in Broome More Information
This conversational presentation will consider both the process and the implications of intermittent research conducted by Associate Professor Yamanouchi since 2009 in the vibrant, northern, coastal town of Broome, in Western Australia's Kimberley region. Via a focus on emphases such as a Japanese diaspora, identity, history, ethnicity, food, place‐naming and making, the complex extent to which Indigenous Australians and persons with Japanese heritage identify and interact in Broome, will be explored, alongside an interest in theories of contemporary identity.

Dr Yuriko Yamanouchi is an Associate Professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). She finished PhD (Anthropology) at the University of Sydney. She has been visiting Broome and conducting research with Indigenous people who share a Japanese heritage since 2009. Dr Yamanouchi lectures in Oceania Studies Course at TUFS (The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies).

13:00 - SEMINAR - Political Science and International Relations Seminar Series 2019 : Title:Environmental Populism: The Politics of Survival in the Anthropocene More Information
Populism is popular but generally gets a bad press—for good reasons. But could populism actually be a progressive force in domestic and even international politics? Recent movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the abortive Arab Spring suggest it might. This presentation previews my forthcoming book and considers—more in hope than expectation—whether a populist upsurge could actually mobilise around the issue of climate change. We will undoubtedly be forced to respond to climate change eventually, but thoughtful, constructive responses may no longer be possible by the time we do. Yet public pressure to make policymakers act in environmentally sustainable ways is still just about possible. Progressive forms of populism, especially in democratic states, could compel even the most conservative politicians to take climate change seriously before it is too late. As Mrs Thatcher might have said, as far as the majority of us who have no influence over policy are concerned, there really is no alternative. This presentation is based on Mark’s new book of the same name.

Thursday 08
12:00 - EVENT - Asian Studies Semiar Series : Towards a framework for (re)thinking the ethics and politics of international student mobility More Information
In recent years, scholarship on international student mobility (ISM) has proliferated across various social science disciplines. Of late, an interest in the ethics and politics of ISM seems to be emerging, as more scholars begin to consider critically questions about rights, responsibility, justice, equality, etc., that inhere in the thorny relationships between ISM stakeholders. To date, however, these discussions remain largely scattered. Bringing together these scattered conversations in literature, this paper outlines elements of a framework for (re)thinking the ethics and politics of ISM. The proposed framework identifies eight key ISM actors between whom various ethical and political relationships arise, where these relationships range from the social to the institutional. Furthermore, the framework discusses four sets of concepts from the literature deemed pertinent in thinking further about ISM ethics and politics. This proposed framework is aimed at stimulating further conversations and efforts to make ISM more socially equitable and sustainable.

Dr Peidong Yang (DPhil Oxford) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies Education at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. With a background in sociology of education, Dr Yang’s research interests are mainly located at the intersections between education and migration/mobility. He is the author of International Mobility and Educational Desire: Chinese Foreign Talent Students in Singapore (Palgrave, 2016) and various international peer‐reviewed journal articles and book chapters.


16:00 - SEMINAR - Baler shell knives in northern Australia : A comparative study of archaeological, experimental and ethnographic data More Information
This paper explores the archaeological evidence for the making of baler shell (Melo spp.) knives found in the late Pleistocene/early Holocene deposits in Boodie Cave on Barrow Island, northwest Western Australia. While such knives have been reported in surface midden contexts the archaeological signature of baler shell knife manufacture as not been described and these artefacts are rare. This study aims to determine how the knives were made, characterise the manufacturing debris and investigate how they were used using three sets of data – Barrow Island knives, knives made by Kaiadilt people and experimentally made knives. This presentation will discuss these three data sets in detail. In the 1960s Tindale both filmed and collected knives and their manufacturing debris made by the Kaiadilt on Bentinck Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In late 2018 Fiona Hook and Sean Ulm recorded the collected knives held in the South Australian Museum. Using this ethnographic information, a series of knives were made by Kim Akerman. The experimentally made knives were used in butcher and woodworking experiments to capture usewear patterns. The ethnographic and experimental data was then compared with the Boodie Cave knives. This paper will discuss the initial results of the analysis showing that the experimentally made knives have been key to understanding manufacturing debris patterns, providing the basis for possible identification of shell knife manufacture in the Boodie Cave deposits where whole knives were not found.
Friday 09
11:00 - SEMINAR - Linguistics Seminar Series : Linguistics in High School: Building the curriculum More Information
This talk investigates the process of creating a 24-lesson syllabus for a secondary school linguistics course. Doing this has required a fine balance between student needs, student interest, availability of existing materials, teacher skillset, and the requirements of the language curriculum.

Initially, materials from the yearly OzCLO competition — the Australian Computational and Linguistic Olympiad — were selected for their wide availability and appeal. This appeal, while evident in a competitive situation, has not translated to the classroom. Speedy analysis is one useful skill in linguistics, but other skills have taken precedence in this curriculum, including knowledge about language, code-switching, and the ability of students to analyse their own language behaviour.

Daniel is working on this project with Amy Ward, a teacher at Scotch College.

14:30 - SEMINAR - Anthropology and Sociology Seminar Series : Rich universities, poor education and the growing precarious academic class More Information
This paper deals with causes and impacts of casual teaching staff exploitation at Australian Universities, with a case study from UWA. Casualisation of employment relations is a measure of improving economic efficiency and profitability of businesses. The number of unstable jobs has been increasing globally across industries for the last ten years and resulted in a new socio-economic class, precariat (Standing 2011). At the same time the pressure on the remaining permanent staff to perform increases without any guarantees of continuing job security. Ironically, top management and a growing class of technocrats are the main beneficiaries of this organisational restructuring with seven figures salaries at the VC level becoming the standard. The impact of these new employment arrangements for the precariat is often devastating at various levels: financial, professional, social, personal and health-related. Paradoxically, the long-term impact of growing work casualization has a negative effect on the restructuring organisation: high employee turnover, loss of knowledge and skills, and poor consumer (students) satisfaction.

Dr Andrzej Gwizdalski is an independent researcher and multi-award winning ‘freelance’ lecturer who explores global issues related to the impact of emerging technologies and politics on work, economy and society. Andrzej has been involved in supporting and representing casual teaching staff at various levels of industrial dispute resolution at UWA since 2013.
Tuesday 13
13:00 - SEMINAR - Political Science and International Relations Seminar Series 2019 : Changing approaches to development aid in Africa More Information
This presentation will consider some of the emerging challenges for official development assistance (ODA) in Africa. After a brief overview of three bilateral donor programs (Australia, Denmark and UK), the new frameworks for supporting economic development will be presented. These frameworks present new challenges to donors, development partners and recipient countries, which will be discussed.

Simon White obtained his PhD from the UWA School of Political Science and International Relations in 2005. For the last 30 years he has worked as an independent consultant in economic and business development in Australia and throughout Africa and Asia.

Thursday 15
15:00 - SEMINAR - Centre for Muslim States and Societies Seminar Series 2019 : India's Gamble in Kashmir: Implications for Stability and Militancy More Information
On 5 August 2019, in a highly controversial decision, the Indian government revoked the special status given to the Indian-administered, Muslim-majority Kashmir. This move brought an end to the internal autonomy given to this disputed region under the Indian Constitution, sparking fears of increased instability, if not confrontations, in the region. This seminar by Professor Samina Yasmeen, Director at the Centre for the Muslim States and Societies, will assess the implications of revoking special status for Kashmir for regional and global stability as well as militancy in the region.

Professor Samina Yasmeen AM is a teacher and researcher in UWA’s School of Social Sciences, and director and founder of the University’s Centre for the Muslim States and Societies. She focuses on understanding perceptions of and by Muslims and Islam around the world and seeks to make an impact on Australian and global politics. She is a specialist in political and strategic development in South Asia and the role of Islam in World Politics. She has published articles on the position of Pakistani and Middle Eastern women, the role of Muslims in Australia and India_Pakistan relations.

ENTRY: Free, but please RSVP to [email protected]

16:00 - SEMINAR - Archaeology Seminar Series : The future of archaeology and heritage politics in an era of Belt and Road More Information
Incorporating two thirds of the world's population and more than 70 countries, the Belt and Road Initiative has been described as the most significant and far-reaching initiative that China has ever put forward. Framed as a 'revival' of the Silk Roads for the 21st century, Belt and Road rests on a compelling, romanticised idea of pre-modern globalisation; a story of peaceful trade, of East meets West and of civilisations in harmonious dialogue. Such Silk Road themes were fashioned by explorers and scholars in Central Asia in the late 19th century, and in the aftermath of World War II and Cold War the Silk Road emerged as a platform for fostering intercultural dialogue, peace and tolerance. Today Beijing takes up such themes for its own strategic purposes and to link continents and partners by land and sea. This presentation explores how the political economy of Belt and Road connectivity is transforming long-standing ideas about culture and history, reframing and displacing discourses of archaeology and heritage rooted in national and ethnic categories with a language of routes and shared pasts. Belt and Road is creating new ways of imagining Eurasia's past, giving visibility to much neglected themes and regions; but, in doing so, it is also transforming the politics of the past, entangling academics and cultural policy institutions in new, unfamiliar forces. The talk considers such issues and the degree to which GIS, world heritage and archaeological collaborations are unwitting agents in the accumulation of new forms of state power.

Bio: Tim Winter is a Professor of Critical Heritage Studies and Australian Research Council Fellow at UWA. He is the former President of the Association of Critical Heritage STudies and has conducted research across a number of countries, primarily in Asia. Interdisciplinary in nature, his work addresses how the past comes to be mobilised in the present for political and economic purposes.

Friday 16
11:00 - SEMINAR - Construction and Infrastructure in the Philippines at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century More Information
Infrastructure and construction are the two physical aspects of village life discussed in this seminar. Roads and trails, where they existed, were located near or within towns since the lack of wheeled vehicles and the availability of waterways for easy travel by boat made these unsuited and undesirable for long distance travel. For towns to be viable, they needed supplies of fresh water for drinking and clean water for cooking. A location near natural springs or shallow sources of water for access by wells was essential. Construction required both wood and tools and those with the expertise to use them. The wood of magnificent trees supplied the material for posts and beams, and the grasses, palms and bamboo the material for cladding. Temporary structures were built in the fields or in the forest to provide shelter, and in the trees for defense, but it was the house which provided a permanent home. Discussed are the parts of the house and its construction from planning and measurement to completion. Emphasis will also be on the sources which provided the needed information, and on an explanation of the linguistic changes needed to relate terms across languages.
Tuesday 20
12:50 - SEMINAR - Political Science and International Relations : PhD Seminar Series 2019 More Information
Presentation 1: Title: Assembling, Deploying, and Contesting Social Impact Bonds in Australia

Speaker: Jacob Broom

Research Proposal Presentation)

Presentation 2: Title: The Political Economy of Post-Crisis Financial Stability Governance: A case study of macroprudential framework implementation in Australia

Speaker: Peter Thomsett

(Chapter Presentation)
Thursday 22
15:00 - SEMINAR - CMSS Seminar : Family Violence and Your Visa More Information
Family violence and violence against women remain a major issue globally and in Australia. This affects migrant communities, including Muslim families, in Australia. In this presentation, Rachel Mathewson will outline the Home Affairs provisions and support provided for visa-holders affected by family violence. The information is practical and explains when and how people contact the Department and the types of information required.

Rachel Mathewson is the Assistant Director of the WA Community Engagement team with the Department of Home Affairs. She has worked in the Department since 2007 in a variety of roles from Learning and Development, Student Visas and Refugee and Humanitarian.

ENTRY: Free, but please RSVP to [email protected]

16:00 - SEMINAR - Past sea-level changes, environments and coastal demography. Is archaeology missing some critical factors? And if so, why? More Information
Abstract: This talk has three main sections: 1. An outline of the main sedimentary processes controlling coastal and marine archaeological sites, with a focus on Australia's NW shelf. This is relevant because it is a critical control upon much archaeological work in NW Australia, but it is poorly dealt with or, at worst, ignored. 2. A critique of the ongoing mis-use of radiocarbon dates as data in studies of past human demography. 3. An analysis of why these and other critical issues can become overlooked by some in archaeology, with a view of how it can be resolved to improve the quality of everyone's research.

Bio: In western Europe and Australia, Piers Larcombe has had 30 years of fun in sedimentary research, trying to understand how sedimentary systems work. His aim is that research and applied studies should use more information about the relevant physical systems.
Friday 23
11:00 - SEMINAR - UWA Linguistics Seminar : The challenges of community- led language and country maintenance More Information
What are the realities and challenges of community-led, on-country language-revitalisation/maintenance of Martu languages in the Western Desert today?

After graduating from the ANU in 2015 with Honours in Language Studies, Duke (Garry Earl-Spurr) moved to the East Pilbara in mid-2016 to work as an applied linguist for Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa (KJ) – a Martu organisation that aims to keep country and culture strong, and to build sustainable Martu communities. Since then, KJ’s language program has been steadily gaining momentum as language increasingly becomes integrated into all facets of KJ’s work.

Duke will speak about the realities and challenges of working as an applied linguist and a part of KJ’s Martu language team on the revitalisation and maintenance of Martu languages in the Western Desert. He will discuss the integral role of language in underpinning the fundamental and amorphously intertwined Martu aspirations of strong culture, right-way land-management, and sustainable community development.

Key themes will include: Language policy & management; working and learning together in a cross-cultural setting; language and caring for country; language and cultural empowerment; language and sustainable development in the Western Desert; intergenerational transmission; decolonisation; and Western Desert Languages.

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