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Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS)

2009 Seminar Abstracts

 18 March : The Epistemic Problem for Potential Contributors to Aid Agencies

Dr Keith Horton

Abstract:
Should those of us who live in developed countries give some of our money to aid agencies – to non-governmental organisations, that is, dedicated to international relief and development? Plausibly, the answer to this question depends, in part, on how good or bad the effects of the kinds of work such agencies do are. It is very difficult, however, for individuals who are not experts on aid to know what to think about this matter. This is the ‘Epistemic Problem’. I show that this problem may have certain very bad consequences, and then consider a number of measures that might be taken to make it easier for potential contributors to find out about the effects of the work aid agencies do

Bio-note:
Keith Horton joined the Philosophy Program at the University of Wollongong in January 2009. His main research interests are in moral and political philosophy, especially the moral implications of world poverty. He has co-edited two books, Global Ethics: Seminal Essays (with Thomas Pogge, Paragon 2008) and Globalisation and Equality (with Haig Patapan, Routledge 2004), and is currently working on a third, Ethical Questions and International Non-Governmental Organisations (with Chris Roche). He is also working on an authored book, Should We Give to Aid Agencies? (under contract with Edinburgh University Press).

 1 April : Do Women have a Right to Mine? Women, Gender and Work in Coal Mining in India

Dr Kuntala Lhira-Dutt

Abstract: 
Investigating the causes behind the drastic fall in the numbers of women workers in Indian coal mines in India, this presentation will explore a grey area in feminist theory – that of a woman’s specificity as a worker in her biologically based attributes and her sameness in demanding gender equity. Collieries are commonly perceived as seeped with attributes of masculinity, hard work and rough men, turning them into masculine sites. Women's work in mines, however, illuminates the conflicting discourses of womanhood around women’s labour in India.

Bio-Note:
I grew up in the lower Damodar area of Bengal, India, near the eastern collieries, from where I went to Lady Brabourne College and Calcutta University and did my PhD in 1985. During my teaching career at Burdwan University, I wrote a number of books, one of which, In Search of a Homeland, an exploration of the search for identity of the marginal community, Anglo-Indians, was the basis of a documentary made by the BBC.

I became involved, since 1990s, with local struggles over rights on resources and livelihoods. Consequently, my research turned towards examining environmental changes in a coal mining region and women living in marginal and resource-constrained situations.

I joined the Resource Management in Asia Pacific Program in 2002 since when I have received several grants, successfully undertaken projects, and consultancies. I teach a course on Gender and development (ANTH 8038/39) in Masters of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development.

 7 April : Taijiquan: a traditional Chinese martial art of philosophy

Professor Chen Yiping

Bio-data
Chen Yiping (1968- ), PhD, Professor, Masters’ Supervisor, is interested in linguistics, rhetoric and contrastive studies of English and Chinese. He got his BA in the English language and literature at Central China Normal University in 1989, his MA in translation at Tianjin Foreign Languages Institute in 1995, and PhD in linguistics with focus on the Chinese language at Wuhan University in 2004. His publications involve mainly linguistics and translation. In particular, he published an academic book entitled A Study on the Address Forms of the Red Chamber Dream in Chinese in 2005. He began to work as an English teacher in 1989 and has been teaching in the English Department, College of Foreign Languages and Literature, Wuhan University since 1995. He is currently chairman of the English Department.

 22 April : Multiple Realities: Prevalences and Causes of Factory Women Moonlighting in Sex Work in Cambodia

Dr Kasumi Nishigaya

Abstract:
In this seminar, I will explore which women in garment manufacturing workforce moonlight in sex work, why and under what working conditions, and whether the current institutions are adequate for their social protection. The research project which informs this paper took place in a highly hierarchical patron-client society which accepts ‘inherent inequality’ and conservative gender and sexuality norms which idealize the confinement of women’s sexuality within the realm of marriage. These two cultural characteristics pose significant challenges for women to admit the sexual lifestyles which are considered to be deviant and for researchers to obtain honest responses. In order to enhance the reliability of data, I thus applied multiple research methods, combining the survey, focus groups and in-depth interviews in collaboration with an international NGO. In this seminar, I will compare and contrast the results from these different methods to highlight a possibility that potentially more women actually moonlighted in sex work than estimated to compensate their low wages. Finally, I will discuss some identified gaps in social protection institutions.

Bio-Data: 
Dr. Kasumi Nishigaya received a Ph.D in Epidemiology and Population Health from ANU in 2006 with a thesis entitled Gender, Mobility and Premarital Sexuality: A Case Study of Women in the Garment Manufacturing Industry in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Originally trained as an area specialist in mainland Southeast Asia and International Relations through ANU’s two masters programmes in early 90s, Kasumi has worked extensively in Southeast Asia as a social development specialist. She has held posts in UNHCR, both protection and programme management, and in JICA as a principal technical advisor on gender equality in large country programs and at its headquarters in Tokyo. Most recently, she has worked as an evaluation consultant for UNFPA and Acting Team Leader for an ADB project in Lao PDR. Her current research interests are: fertility decline and policy responses in Japan; gender-based violence in post-conflict societies, especially its prevalence and responses, gender mainstreaming in comparative perspectives, and feminist research methods. She is currently updating her thesis for publication as a book and journal articles.

 6 May : State of Emergency: The Violence of the Sydney 2007 APEC Meeting

Nick Southall

Abstract:
In this paper I discuss the global state of emergency which has become increasingly evident since September 11 2001. My aim is to help understand how and why this state of emergency was manifested during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) week in Sydney September 2007.  To shed more light on the implications of the state of emergency and its relation to APEC I trace a history of confrontations between those advocating neo-liberal globalisation and those opposing it.

Bio-note:
Nick Southall, PhD.(University of Wollongong). My thesis is a theoretical study of the strengths and limitations of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's strategic vision as outlined in their collaborative books Empire and Multitude and its relevance to contemporary political practice. My research seeks to fill out Hardt and Negri’s theories by connecting them to practice and by revealing their complexities and contradictions as well as elucidating their advocacy of the multitude’s self organised struggles for democracy, peace and love.  While global in scope, the research focuses particular attention on Australia and the Asia Pacific region in relation to international capitalist development policies, practices and effects and how individuals and communities can and do challenge state and transnational forces.

 20 May : Sadistic women and masochist men: The fad for ryōki or ‘curiosity hunting’ in Japan’s early postwar press

Associate Professor Mark McLelland

Abstract:
Much English-language scholarship on the impact of the US Occupation on Japanese ideas about gender and sexuality has had two main emphases: (1) the exploitation and commoditization of Japanese women’s bodies by the Occupation forces and (2) the conservative nature of gender reform that continued to define women in terms of their roles as wives and mothers. Recent scholars have further developed this second angle: reading occupation-time sexual dynamics as symptomatic of Cold War containment politics. These readings have tended to focus on the impact of ‘top-down’ policies and initiatives enacted or supported by the Occupation authorities (and inherited by the Japanese government). However a ‘bottom-up’ reading of popular culture texts of the period reveals a far more anarchic situation in which gender and sexual identities and practices were more complex and fluid than conventionally assumed. Of particular interest is a genre of ryōki or ‘curiosity hunting’ stories and reports that explored the worlds of the ‘sadistic woman’, the ‘male-dresser’, and the ‘Lesbos lover’ – identities that expressed female agency at the expense of their male analogues, the ‘masochist man’, the ‘female-dresser’ and the ‘Sodomite’. The widespread interest in and endorsement of ryōki in the early postwar media evinces considerable popular resistance to official Occupation and Japanese government attempts to regulate sexual and gendered interests, practices and identies.

Bio-data:
Associate Professor Mark McLelland is a sociologist and cultural historian of Japan specialising in the history of sexuality, gender theory and new media. Mark is based in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communication at the University of Wollongong and was the 2007/08 Toyota Visiting Professor of Japanese at the Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan. His recent publications have focused on the postwar history of Japanese queer cultures and the development of the Internet in Japan, especially the use of the Internet and other new media by minority communities in Japan and throughout Asia. This presentation is part of a developing book manuscript currently entitled ‘Kissing Is a Symbol of Democracy!: Love, Sex and Romance during the Occupation of Japan’.

 3 June : “And I am also gay”: Non-normative Sexualities, Internet Technology, and the Reconfiguration of the Singaporean Public Sphere

Dr Robert Philips

Abstract:
In this talk, I use a blog entry, in which a Singaporean school teacher “comes out” as a gay man, as a starting point in exploring how and why the use of technology has been so crucial in the process of opening up discussions on topics that heretofore had not been spoken of in the public sphere. I argue that through the use of blogs, forums, and other interactive online sites, Singaporeans of all persuasions are able to express opinions, which are leading to productive debates regarding issues surrounding the nation, citizenship, and uses of the public sphere. I analyze the various tactics and strategies, such as claims of religious prohibitions on same-sex relations and issues of “nature” versus “nurture” utilized by the opposing sides of debates. I conclude by discussing the complicated relationships that exist between the oftentimes-utopian promises of “liberation” that come with the use of the Internet and the always complex and unintended consequences that result from the use of such technology.

Bio-data:
Robert Phillips received his Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine in 2008, and is currently a postdoctoral writing fellow at CAPSTRANS at the University of Wollongong. His dissertation, Queering Online: Transnational Sexual Citizenship in Singapore, is based on fieldwork conducted in 2005-2007 and explores how the globalization of the Internet shapes national and sexual identity in Singapore. Research interests include the utilization of anthropological and feminist theory and methodology in examining the intersections of technology, gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, and migration/diaspora in the Southeast Asian context.

20 July : “From Decolonization To Globalization To Regional Integration – A Costly Price To Pay By The Acp Group Of States In The Worst Economic And Financial Crisis In History”

Sir John Kaputin

Bio note:
Sir John's official position is Secretary-General of the at the Brussels-based secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group, a 79-country inter-governmental organisation of the European Union's partners under the Cotonou Convention. The address is likely to interest not only people in our Faculty, but in economics too - and, possibly, students from ACP countries.

22 July :  Surfers and surf spots in Australia and Japan: a comparison of relations with place among surfers in two countries

Dr Alex Leonard

Abstract:
In this presentation I will show video footage and still images from a visual anthropology project I began three months ago at Sandon Point, a well-known surf spot in the northern suburbs of Wollongong, NSW. The project explores surfers' identification with and attachments to the surf spot, interaction among the various groups of surfers who use the spot, and interaction between people and the environment around the surf spot. Eventually (over the next 12 months) I intend to produce a series of short films on these themes, from 3 to 30 minutes in length. I will also discuss and show footage and still images from a similar project I conducted in 2005-06 in Kamogawa, Chiba prefecture, Japan, where surfers place similar importance on relations with place (surf spots) but talk about relations with place quite differently and have different understandings of rights to, connections with and responsibilities for place.

Bio:
Alex Leonard graduated with a PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University in 2008. His thesis examined the tradition of surfboard riding in Kuta, Bali, as it developed over the period 1969-2001. From April 2005 to March 2007, Alex lived in Japan and did research in a surfing community in Chiba prefecture, using video to explore locals surfers' ideas about, feelings for and ways of being in the place they love. In 2009 he has been doing similar research at Sandon Point, a surf spot in Wollongong's northern suburbs. With Clifton Evers and Stu Nettle, Alex is founder and co-editor of Kurungabaa, a journal of literature, history and ideas for surfers.

 19 August: ‘Being There: Tapping the Global Power of Local Culture from Inside the United Nations’

Abstract:

‘Being There’ is based on case-studies in Stephen Hill’s forthcoming book of the same title. As theoretical starting point the seminar addresses the way in which culture, meaning and action are constituted in one’s immediate local world within reach within the context of the received culture of globalisation. This starting point forms the platform for arguing for the empowerment that can follow from international development assistance targeting full community participation at local levels and ‘listening’ to what the people want. Stephen then demonstrates the results that followed from his putting this philosophy into practice when leading the United Nations Agency, UNESCO, in field programs across Asia and the Pacific for the decade from 1995 to 2005. The case studies used stretch from jungle communities to modern cities and from building national education and free press systems to dealing with revolution and disasters.

Bio Data:

Stephen Hill is Emeritus Professor and has been Honorary Professorial Fellow within CAPSTRANS since 2006 when he returned to Australia from his post based in Indonesia as Regional Director and Representative or Ambassador of the United Nations Agency UNESCO 1995-2005. Following a background in physical science, business administration and sociology, he originally joined the University of Wollongong in 1974 to found the Department of Sociology and later, from 1990 to 1995 served as Foundation Director of the ARC Special Centre for Research Policy at the University. He has published very extensively across 12 disciplines, is fellow of three engineering academies, has been awarded several State Honours from Indonesia, Vietnam and Australia, including an Order of Australia for services to research and Australia’s Asian relations, and was made an honorary chief of the Dani Tribe in West Papua and awarded the honorary name, Purba, in the Batak Ulos Naming Ceremony of North Sumatra

 27 August : The automobile and subversive mobility;
Western and subaltern mobile modernities confronted.

Dr Ing Gijs Mom

Abstract
The automobile has been treated, by historians of mobility and technology, as the quintessential vehicle of modernity creating a picture of twentieth-century automobility as a fundamentally diffusionist model, radiated from the United States over the ‘civilized world.’ Through this process of diffusion, so the master narrative goes, the automobile was appropriated without much resistance as an icon of individuality and personal independence.

This presentation questions the easy identification of modernity and the car by investigating some ‘countermobilities’such as: American jitneys during WWI as a form of collective black semi-public transport, women as occupiers of the backseat instead of the driver’s seat and drivers of so-called wildcat buses and trucks in the 1920s and 1930s.

It is argued that the desired complexification of the process of modernization is enhanced through the study of subaltern mobilities, such as rikshaw fleets in Shanghai and Calcutta. The rough outlines of a new research project confronting Western and subaltern mobilities will be sketched, in order to start a discussion on how such a project could be formulated, and to interest the audience in taking part in the project.

14 October : Japan Red Cross Nurses: From Manchukuo to Detention in the Soviet Union

Rowena Ward

Abstract
In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo on 9 August 1945, an estimated 594,000 Japanese were captured and transported to the Soviet Union. Among them were around 215 women, including 20 Japan Red Cross nurses from Relief Detachment no. 467. This paper, based on a small number of jibunshi (self-histories) written by the nurses themselves looks at the experiences of these nurses from the time of the invasion through to their repatriation in 1946/47. It aims to highlight both the presence of nurses in a war zone and to recognise their existence amongst the Japanese detainees.  The paper suggests that it was a combination of the fact that the nurses were employed in their own profession and their JRC training that accounts for their relative lack of bitterness towards their period in detention.

Bio- Data
Rowena Ward is a Lecturer in Japanese in the Language Centre, Faculty of Arts. She undertook her PhD on 'Theorising Migrant Labour: Racism and Nationalism and the Japanese Labour Market' at UNSW. Her present research interests focus on wartime civilian internment in Australia and the repatriation to Japan of Japanese citizens, especially women, in the early post-war years.

 21 October : Balibo and Reporting War

Tony Maniaty and Ross Tapsell

Abstract:

Tony Maniaty was the ABC reporter in East Timor in 1975, and met the Channel 7 and Channel 9 crew before they arrived in Balibo. His recently published book Shooting Balibo: Blood and Memory in East Timor discusses his experiences in East Timor immediately before the Indonesian invasion, and the filming of the new motion picture, Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly and released earlier this year. Tony became European Correspondent for SBS Television’s Dateline and Executive Producer of ABC TV’s 7.30 Report. He has published two acclaimed novels, The Children Must Dance (1984) and Smyrna (1989, short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award), and a memoir All Over the Shop, (1993). He holds a Masters Degree in Media and is currently senior lecturer in international journalism at University of Technology, Sydney. 

Dr Ross Tapsell recently completed his PhD entitled, ‘A History of Australian Journalism in Indonesia’, with CAPSTRANS and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong. He teaches ‘War Reporting: A History’, in the Department of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong. From next month, he will undertake an Australian Government Endeavour Post-doctorate Fellowship to research in Indonesia for six months on the nature of journalism in the archipelago.

 4 November : Implications of the Samoan Tsunami

Professor Paul Sharrad - UOW
Debra Gough (Post Graduate) - UOW

Please note that the this session is intended to be an informational session aimed at promoting informal discussion

Bio Data
Professor Paul Sharrad has worked in Pacific literatures for a number of years while Deborah Gough has worked in Samoa and recently submitted her PhD entitled “Cultural Transformation and Modernity: A Samoan Case Study”. Both are from the Faculty of Arts, UOW.

Abstract
This talk will sketch out some of the broader implications of the tsunami that struck Samoa in late September vis out-migration; levels of fear and discontentment; demand on families (on and off the island); future land use; pressure on cultural systems and the economic future of Samoa.