New Centre for Study of Muslim Societies

Next month the University of Western Sydney will be launching a new Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies.  Here are the details of the Centre and the launch:

Launch of the new Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies

The University of Western Sydney is its new Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies on the 16th of July, 2009 (Sydney, Bankstown Campus, Lecture Theatre 4, Building 23)

Prof. Jim Beckford (Warwick University, UK), Prof. Riaz Hassan (Flinders University), Prof. Fethi Mansouri (Deakin University), A/Prof. Gabriele Marranci (UWS), and Prof. Bryan Turner (UWS) will be
speaking on the day.

A copy of the program for the launch can be downloaded at

http://tinyurl.com/mqkwrj and the invitation can be found at the following URL http://tinyurl.com/nceisinvite

For more information or to RSVP, please contact Judy Crabb, Executive Officer, College of Arts: j.crabb@uws.edu.au, or (02) 9772 6765.

Attendees are welcome to attend the dinner but bookings for this are essential.

The development of this Centre has been assisted by a Federal Government grant of $8m which established the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies and brings together the University of
Melbourne, Griffith University, and the University of Western Sydney. Collaboration between these institutions has already established a new undergraduate program in Islamic studies.

The Director of the Research Centre is Professor Bryan Turner,Professor of Social and Political Thought in the School of Humanities and Languages in the College of Arts.

The Research Centre is essentially concerned with the contemporary world and will seek to foster comparative studies of Muslim communities both within and outside Australia.

Upcoming symposium on Islamophobia

While I am in announcement mode, here are the details of an upcoming symposium that may be of interest to some CM readers.

SYMPOSIUM:    Sunday 19th of July

CONFERENCE:   Mon-Tue 20-21 July

Under the broad theme of ?Challenging Islamophobia: towards social
justice & inclusion?, National Social Cohesion Conference will explore
the following themes in six plenary sessions.

Muslim experiences, settling in Australia

Media and its Role in Public Hysteria

On the Borderline of Vilification and Freedom of Speech

Politics of Diversity and the Politics of Marginalisation

Muslim Women: Narrated experiences from the margins

Anti-racism: Learning from the past, new strategies

Attached are full conference details and registration form. Please
email filled registration form to info@affinity.org.au, alternatively
you can register online at www.affinity.org.au.

For any other enquiries please email info@affinity.org.au.

We look forward to your attendance and participation in discussions.

Upcoming NT Intervention Protests

We haven’t posted anything on the NT Intervention for some time but the issue is still very much alive.  A report on SBS news last night included some interviews with Aboriginal women from Bagot,  an urban community in Darwin, on their views of the intervention.  Two key points stuck out for me based on those interviews:

1. The prohibitions of alcohol use appear to be leading to new population movements as people attempt to escape regulatory mechanisms.  This means that the effects of the Intervention are uneven, with problems being exacerbated rather than reduced in some areas.
2. The paternalistic nature of the Intervention, with its enforced quarantining and management of all welfare income, means that “model” members of communities — those who are best able to manage their funds independently — are resentful about being treated as though they were not capable of looking after themselves.   If the Government’s goals are pedagogical, i.e. aimed at producing new kinds of subjects closer to the bourgeois ideal of the self-managing individual, it’s problematic that those people most closely resembling that kind of subject are punished and feel disempowered.  The predictable result of such a policy would be the increasing institutionalisation of welfare dependence.

Meanwhile, anti-Intervention protests have been organised for this weekend.  Here are the details:

On June 20, marking two years of the Northern Territory Intervention, demonstrations will be held across the country in defense of Aboriginal Rights .

See the Youtube promo at

http://www.youtube.com/user/solidtv7#uploads/7/9rHbpKEZVco

Darwin: 11am Raintree Park contact Dave 0407209520

Sydney: 10:30 Belmore Park contact Monique on 0415410558

Brisbane: 11.00am Queen’s park contact Rob 0424265730 or Sam 0401227443

Melbourne: 12pm outside the State Library Cnr Swanston/La Trobe sts.

Perth: 12 noon Wesley Church.

This rally will have a focus on Aboriginal death’s in custody, demanding justice for Mr Ward.

www.rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com

www.stoptheintervention.org

Alfons van Marrewijk’s inaugural lecture on business anthropology

On 14 May, Alfons van Marrewijk, who has been guest blogger on CM during his recent stay in Sydney, gave his inaugural lecture at the Vrije Universiteit as the newly appointed Professor of Business Anthropology, Especially the Anthropology opf Cultural Interventions in Complex and Public/Private Networks. Such lectures are major public events with considerable pomp (I am already planning my own in November!), and the topic signifies a further step in the academic mainstreaming of business anthropology (although the VU has already been in a special situation, having both a social and cultural anthropology department and one that deals largely with organisational anthropology). The lecture broadly outlined the scope of business anthropology in Alfons’ own practice, in which I found particularly interesting the focus on material culture and spatial settings — from office spaces to project locations — which is close to the interests of one of our PhD students at Macquarie, Melanie Uy, who is doing her research in a small Chinese company.

Corporate anthropology as well as the anthropology of business is increasingly in the news in Europe as well, and the collapse of financial institutions may have given it a boost. The simple idea that managers do not always behave rationally suddenly does not need “selling.” Alfons mentioned that British anthropologist Gillian Tett’s book Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophy (a rather un-anthropological title, I must say) received the British Press Award. The book Gezocht: Antropoloog m/v (Required: Anthropologist [m/f]) and the organisation NAGA (Niet Academisch Gebonden Antropologen, Anthropologists Without Academic Affiliation) are testimony to the emergence of the trend in the Netherlands. Unlike in many other academic settings, at the VU, there is no animosity between academic and applied anthropologists, and the institutional conditions for a close interaction between them are at hand. Yet even here, the training of anthropology students (in either department) has not quite kept step with or been able to drive home the fact that anthropologists are in demand in the workplace — despite the fact that Alfons himself, together with another colleague in his department, runs an anthropology consultancy.

CFP: Society for Applied Anthropology

The Society for Applied Anthropology has just released its call for papers for its upcoming conference.  Readers of CM might be interested in attending or presenting.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) invites abstracts (papers and
posters) for the Program of the 69th Annual Meeting in Santa Fe, NM, March
17-21, 2009.  The theme of the Program is ³Global Challenge, Local Action:
Ethical Engagement, Partnerships and Practice².

The Society is a multi-disciplinary association that focuses on problem
definition and resolution.  We welcome papers from all disciplines.  The
deadline for abstract submission is October 15, 2008. For additional
information on the theme, abstract size/format, and the meeting, please
visit our web page (www.sfaa.net, click on ³Annual Meeting²).

If you have a webpage for links, please add the following:

The Society for Applied Anthropology is pleased to announce our 69th Annual
Meeting in Santa Fe, NM, March 17-21, 2009.
For meeting information visit
http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2009.html

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Melissa Cope
Society for Applied Anthropology
PO Box 2436
Oklahoma City, OK  73101
405-843-5113
405-843-8553 (fax)
melissa@sfaa.net

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Here is  a press release regarding a new exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

An exhibition celebrating Australian Indigenous women

Discover Indigenous women’s contribution to the Australian community through a new exhibition – Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey – opening at the Powerhouse Museum on 21 March.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey will take visitors on a journey into the sometimes unknown and often unexplained world of Indigenous Australian women. A world of people, land, law and ritual, of ceremony and celebration, of social order, language, story, song and dance, art, lore, plants and animals.

Through objects, photographs and personal interviews, Yinalung Yenu reveals the many roles Indigenous women have played in Australian society from traditional times to the present.

The exhibition explores areas where a woman’s influence far outweighed those of Indigenous men, from their everyday activities as educators, child rearers, camp builders and food collectors, to their influential role as decision makers, artists, story tellers, peace keepers and healers.

This history is interpreted through a display of beautiful crafts from the Powerhouse Museum collection, including textiles, posters, ceramics and basketwork, each of which reveal the skill and artistry of Indigenous women.

The exhibition also features the stories of six prominent Indigenous Australian women: doctors and twin sisters Dr Marlene Kong and Dr Marilyn Clarke; artist, designer and businesswoman Bronwyn Bancroft; lawyer and university professor Larissa Behrendt; and respected elders Aunty Beryl Carmichael and Aunty Sue Blacklock.

Be inspired by the strength and expression of these Indigenous women who have become successful in contemporary Australian society and who have become role models for a new generation.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey reflects the ways in which Indigenous Australian women’s knowledge and perspectives of their world were often ignored until recent times. Today, they are carving their rightful place in Australia’s Indigenous history and endowing the next generation of women with the knowledge to speak to their future for succeeding generations of women to come.

On View:          Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Date:                From 21 March 2008

Address:           Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney

Telephone:       (02) 9217 0111 or infoline (02) 9217 0444

Website:           www.powerhousemuseum.com

Hours:              10.00am to 5.00pm (closed Christmas Day)

Admission:       $10 adult, $5 child, $6 concession and $25 family.  Powerhouse Museum members and children under four admitted free.

More Yum Cha exhibition

More Yum Cha, an exhibition featuring several Chinese artists, is currently showing at the Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney. As this image shows, at least some of the exhibition involves an engagement with China’s relationship to globalisation.

The exhibition is running till 16 February.

A round-up of news coverage of the AAA meetings

Usually anthropology is only in the news when some new theory about Neanderthals is announced. But in the past week, anthropology has been all over the news, thanks to the American Anthropological Association meetings in Washington, D.C. which just ended a few days ago.

Before I left for the meetings, I fantasized that every night I would post some news from the day’s events on Culture Matters. I diligently took notes during the sessions on anthropology and the U.S. military, but between the intensity of the perpetual overlapping meetings (at one point I actually ran back and forth four times between two panels that I was trying to follow simultaneously) and the jet lag, I barely opened my computer. Now that I’m back, I see that journalists have covered the AAA meetings better than I possibly could have done, so instead I thought I’d just provide a round-up of the coverage and links to recently published stuff.

The indigenous cabinet minister Marion Scrymgour’s lecture on the Howard government’s intervention plan in Nortern Territory

The indigenous cabinet minister Marion Scrymgour will give a lecture on the government national emergency at Sydney University. The details are below (www.usyd.edu.au):

Australia’s first ever female Indigenous cabinet minister, Marion Scrymgour, will discuss the Howard Government’s National emergency when she delivers the Charles Perkins Oration this week.

Unable to address larger issues such as environmental destruction, or the marginalisation of Aboriginal people, the Howard Government has preferred to focus on Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory, she says.

“Unwilling and unable to resolve these big picture issues, on 21 June 2007 the Howard government seized on a report dealing with the abuse of children on Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to launch a new ‘children overboard’ strategy in an election campaign that looks difficult to win.”

Ms Scrymgour is a Labor member of the Northern Territory’s Legislative Assembly, representing the seat of Arafura which covers western Arnhem Land and the Tiwi islands.

But she also points blame at her federal Labor colleagues who, in “scrambling for power themselves, have proved incapable of doing much more than hang on to the Coalition’s political apron strings.

“From Caboolture to Kirribilli, the crisis within settler society is deepening. That is the real national emergency.”

The Dr Charles Perkins AO Memorial oration was established in 2001 to commemorate the University of Sydney’s first Indigenous graduate, Dr Charles Perkins.

This year’s lecture will be held this Tuesday in The Great Hall at the University of Sydney. Three Indigenous students will also be awarded the Dr Charles Perkins AO Memorial prize on the night.

More information and bookings details are availableonline.
What: Dr Charles Perkins AO Annual Memorial Oration and Prize
When: 6pm, 23 October 2007
Where: The Great Hall, The University of Sydney Contact: Kath KennyPhone: 02 9351 2261

Tariq Ali in Sydney

UK activist, historian and author Tariq Ali, will speak about the political revolution across Latin America and its implications for the Middle East at Sydney Ideas, the University of Sydney’s International public lecture series. Here are the details:

Fresh from a tour of Latin America, the author of Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006) will discuss how the views of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez – the foremost challenger of American foreign policy – have polarised Latin American.

In his engaging and well-informed style, Ali will discuss his first-hand experience with the political leaders and systems of Latin America and show how Latin America is challenging the “Washington Consensus” of US policies that aim to expand the role of market forces and constrain the role of the state.

Ali’s lecture, titled “Latin America and the Arab World: Resistance and Occupation,” will take the Sydney Ideas audience through a world divided between privilege and poverty and will show how the situation in Latin America could not be more different to the Arab world. Both Latin America and the Arab world have sparked intense hostility from the West by challenging neoliberalism, but according to Ali, the resistance in the Middle East is divided and without the social vision to unite people.

Sydney Ideas event details (www.usyd.edu.au):

What: “Latin America and the Arab World: Resistance and Occupation”. Tariq Ali at Sydney Ideas, the University of Sydney’s international public lecture series.

When: 6.30pm, Tuesday, 26 June, 2007Where: The Seymour Theatre Centre, Cnr Cleveland St and City Rd, The University of Sydney.

Cost: $20/$15 concession. A limited number of free tickets are available for Sydney University staff and students. (Contact box office for availability.)

Bookings: (02) 9351 7940