What's On at UWA

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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)

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]

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.

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.

Presentation 1:

In the wake of choice: Perth’s autonomous women’s engagement with the discourse of choice via post-abortion narratives presented by Dorinda ’t Hart.

Pro-abortion discourse generally presents abortion as an unproblematic event in the course of a woman’s reproductive life. However, pre-field discussions with women confirm that an abortion experience is a significant episode in an individual’s life and not easily forgotten. Further, current research tends to present some women as autonomous agents who have unobstructed access to abortion services while empirically examining barriers to access for those women who are considered less autonomous. However, this research fails to examine the intersection of women’s perceived autonomy and the internalisation of social norms that guide and inform a woman’s abortion decision. Via this research project, I aim to engage with women’s post-abortion narratives, shared through in-depth interviews throughout Perth. Through the recruitment of those women who consider themselves to be autonomous, I seek to understand each woman’s engagement with the discourse of choice and their ongoing negotiation of meaning of their abortion experience.

Dorinda ’t Hart is a PhD student in Anthropology and Sociology.

Presentation 2: Growing older overseas: How older Vietnam-born people are experiencing ageing and aged care in Australia presented by Hien Thi Nguyen.

Older Vietnam-born people (OVP) make up the sixth largest migrant community in Australia; however, they are under-researched. To help address this gap in the literature, this study will examine OVP’s experiences of ageing and aged care, using qualitative research methods, including ethnographic interviews, participant observation, social media fieldwork, video recording, and social network analysis tools guided by an interpretive phenomenological paradigm and grounded theory. The central research question is “How are Vietnam-born parent migrants and parent visitors experiencing ageing and aged care in Australia and what is the role of their local, virtual and distant support networks?”. The research will be conducted in Perth and Melbourne, cities which have a large number of older Vietnam-born residents (ABS, 2016b). The research will target two groups: (i) parent migrants and (ii) parent visitors that represent a mix of past and recent Vietnamese migration to Australia.

Hien Thi Nguyen is a PhD student in the Anthropology and Sociology Discipline. Her research interests include domestic and transnational migration, ageing and aged care, women and gender and new media.

All across social sciences and humanities, “home” has emerged as a unique research topic, despite its inherent ambiguity, as it bridges a variety of divides - public vs private, material vs immaterial, descriptive vs prescriptive, “us” vs “them”. However, under conditions of displacement and large-scale migration home is no more what it used to be. From an apparently natural background to people’s lives, it turns into something to be achieved, or recovered, from scratch. Struggling for an adequate and ideally better home, successfully or not, is a process that irremediably parallels migrant life trajectories. Likewise, retaining some aspects of all that used to stand for home, while adapting to the views, emotions and practices associated with home in the countries of destination, is critical to migrant and refugee integration over time. Whether for practical purposes or in a more existential sense, coping with home anew is part and parcel of the migrant condition. Parallel to that, home - as a set of emplaced relationships and emotions, not just a place - is a key analytical tool for researching migrant trajectories and the attendant social transformations. Based on an original sociological understanding of home, and on the European Research Council HOMInG project, this lecture invites you to appreciate the significance of home for displaced and migrant people, as an often unaccomplished experience and as a balancing act between past, present and future. The methodological implications and the policy relevance of research on home and migration will also be discussed, against the backdrop of “homing” as a universal and often unmet human need.

Paolo Boccagni’s main areas of expertise are international migration, transnationalism, social welfare, care, diversity and home. His current research is on home-making and home-feeling processes, as a critical question for the everyday negotiation of boundaries between native and foreign-born populations. As the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project HOMInG and of MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) HOASI (Home and Asylum Seekers in Italy), Paolo is leading a team of seven postdoctoral researcher fellows, doing multi-sited fieldwork on the experience of home among migrants and refugees in nine different countries. Based on these large-scale collaborative projects, Paolo is elaborating on “homing” as a lifelong set of processes through which individuals and groups try to make themselves at home. In recent years he has also done fieldwork on the ways of framing and approaching immigrant and refugee clients among social workers; on the lived experience and the sense of home of international students; on the built environment, material cultures and thresholds of domesticity in refugee reception initiatives.

Please RSVP online via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/boccagni

Ensure that your literature searching is effective, efficient and thorough. Learn how to:

Develop a search strategy; identify relevant, scholarly information sources and; use tools and techniques to track the literature related to your research. This session has a Humanities and Social Sciences focus.

People of Chinese cultural heritage has been part of the history of Western Australia since the proclamation of the Swan River Colony. They in the past were subjected to certain policies, which were legal but arguably unjust in light of contemporary societal attitude towards equality and fairness. Such policies included the poll tax (also known as the “head tax”), tonnage restrictions, exclusion from goldfields, and the dictation test. The project intends to study the period from the beginning of British settlement to the time around the abolition of the White Australia Policy. Through a cross-disciplinary approach, the project intends to examine in detail, these policies and their impact on people of Chinese cultural heritage in Western Australia during that period.

People of Chinese cultural heritage were subjected to similar policies in other countries and other Australian states around the same time. In recent decades, many of these jurisdictions including New Zealand and Victoria have issued apologies for their past policies concerning their people of Chinese cultural heritage.

During the preliminary research of this project, it is apparent that there are ample literature on the people of Chinese cultural heritage and their experiences during the 1800s and 1900s in Western Australia. There are also an abundance of literature related to the apologies which have been made in the past. However, there is little evidence of any discussion on whether the policies of the governments of Western Australia towards its people of Chinese cultural heritage should be debated. From an academic point of view, it is of significance to address that.

It is worth noting that if there is ever going to be any public debate about this, such debate should be up to all West Australians and West Australians alone.

This project aims to, through a comparative approach, combine the studies of the history concerning the people of Chinese cultural heritage in Western Australia, the apologies delivered to people of Chinese cultural heritage in other jurisdictions for similar policies, and the apologies made to other groups of Australians to analyse whether an apology should or should not be made for its policies towards its people of Chinese cultural heritage in the past. It should always be remembered that this project is about examining whether or not a state apology is appropriate, not about finding ways to justify an apology.

Interested Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers whose research engages with themes of migration, home, identity and belonging are invited to attend a special research workshop with Professor Paolo Boccagni. Participants will give brief presentations summarising their research on these themes for discussion with Professor Boccagni and their academic peers.

About the Presenter

Paolo Boccagni is an associate professor in Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy. His main areas of expertise are international migration, transnationalism, social welfare, care, diversity and home. His current research is on homemaking and home-feeling processes, as a critical question for the everyday negotiation of boundaries between native and foreign-born populations. As the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project HOMInG and of MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) HOASI (Home and Asylum Seekers in Italy), Paolo is leading a team of seven postdoctoral researcher fellows, doing multi-sited fieldwork on the experience of home among migrants and refugees in nine different countries. Based on these large-scale collaborative projects, Paolo is elaborating on “homing” as a lifelong set of processes through which individuals and groups try to make themselves at home. In recent years he has also done fieldwork on the ways of framing and approaching immigrant and refugee clients among social workers; on the lived experience and the sense of home of international students; on the built environment, material cultures and thresholds of domesticity in refugee reception initiatives. Paolo has published in over 30 international peer-reviewed journals in migration studies, diversity, housing, social policy and research methods. Recent publications include Migration and the Search for Home. Mapping Domestic Space in Migrants’ Everyday Lives (Palgrave, 2017) and the articles “Aspirations and the subjective future of migration” (Comparative Migration Studies, 2017), “At home in home care: Contents and boundaries of the ‘domestic’ among immigrant live-in workers in Italy” (Housing Studies, 2018), “Ambivalence and the social processes of immigrant inclusion” (with P. Kivisto,International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2019).

Please RSVP online via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/masterclass/boccagni

This year the Update tackles the important question of belonging, with the theme ‘Belonging in Western Australia: Addressing Migrant and Refugee Inclusion’. Each year around 200,000 people move permanently to Australia, and many more come temporarily for work or education – how are we, as a community, meeting their needs and ensuring they feel they ‘belong’ in Australia? Our program brings together policy makers, not-for-profits, communities and academics to explore questions such as: What does belonging look like? What are migrants’ and ethnic minorities’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion? How can services support belonging? To what extent is Australia’s migration system inclusive? How can we create inclusive spaces for migrants? What are the roles of schools, local councils, the media, and service organisations in generating belonging? Keynote Prof Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento), will speak on “Migrant Home-making: Insights from Europe”, and a range of representatives from community, government and academia will discuss experiences of belonging and unbelonging, and programs designed to promote inclusion, including arts, sports, media, local government and education based interventions.