2008 Department of Anthropology Overview

People

The department saw the retirement of two senior members early in 2008, Professor Diane Austin-Broos and Associate Professor Daryl Feil. Diane was the Radcliffe-Brown Professor of Anthropology from 1995-2008, with an active program of theoretical innovation and field research in Jamaica and Arrernte, Central Australia that has led to distinguished scholarly publications and inspired many undergraduate and postgraduate students. Diane continues her association with the Department as Emeritus Professor. We also received the sad news that Dr. Michael Nihill, who retired in 2007, passed away in July 2008. An obituary for Michael was published in The Australian Journal of Anthropology (19:3). Jadran Mimica and Neil Maclean held the position of Chair of Department in Semesters One and Two respectively.

Professor Isabelle Rivoal, from the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris, was a visiting scholar in the department for the whole of 2008. Professor Rivoal conducts research with the Druze in Lebanon and while here undertook fieldwork with the Lebanese community in Sydney.

Professor Linda Connor was appointed as the new Professor of Anthropology, and has also taken up the position as Chair of Department. Linda has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Sydney (1982), and her previous position was Professor of Anthropology and President of Academic Senate at the University of Newcastle, NSW. She has over thirty years research experience in Indonesia and other parts of Asia, and has authored and edited a number of books and many articles, as well as ethnographic films, on religion, ritual and healing traditions in Asian societies, and on the application of anthropological concepts and ethnographic methods in the fields of development and health. In recent years she has also started a large program of research on development and change in the Hunter Valley, and is currently an investigator on an Australian Research Council-funded project on Climate Change, Place and Community: A Regional Ethnography of the Hunter Valley.

The Department is set to take a strong role in the Australian Anthropological Society, with Linda Connor elected as President and Holly High as Secretary, taking up office from December 2008.

Teaching Programs

Undergraduate student numbers continued to increase steadily in 2008, and two new lecturer positions were advertised in October, with appointments to be made early in 2009. Erin Taylor and Sebastian Job were employed in short-term lecturing positions. The Master of Development Studies enrolments have also grown, and the degree, which has a strong anthropological foundation as well as interdisciplinary perspectives, is attracting a diverse range of international and domestic students from social science and related professional backgrounds.

Research, Publications, Conferences

Academics and research students in the Department maintained very active programs of research and publication in 2008. Jadran Mimica produced a series of works on psychoanalysis and anthropology based on his ethnographic field research in New Guinea and dialogue with Jungian analysts, including a major work on “the dialectics of selfhood in Yagwoia transgendered persons” in Oceania 78(2). Gaynor Macdonald published widely on Indigenous politics and health policies, and continued work on her ARC Linkage grant on Indigenous culture, heritage and economy in rural NSW. Holly High published several articles and book chapters related to her research on poverty and development in Laos. She made two field trips to Laos in 2008. The first, an ethnographic analysis of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, is the subject of a current ARC Discovery Project application. In December, she made a second trip the main purpose of which was to strengthen collaborative links with the National University of Laos, a collaborative partner on the Ho Chi Minh Trail project. Sheleyah Courtney published a major article on aging women in Varanasi, India, in Social Analysis (December) as well as contributions on the Mumbai terrorist attacks. She returned to Varanasi for two months in December 2008 to initiate a new research project, an ethnographic analysis of Brahmins associated with Varanasi’s Golden Temple and related fundamentalisms, politics and power struggles, the subject of a current ARC Discovery project application. In 2008 Sheleyah presented two conference papers introducing this new research entitled: “Remittances For Rama: Temple Building as Development of a Hindu Nation-State’” and “Plundering the Golden Temple: From Princes to Paupers in Post Nation-State Varanasi.” Erin Taylor submitted her PhD thesis, titled Abajo el Puente: Place and the Politics of Progress in Santo Domingo, for examination, and in December 2008 returned to her original field site in a poor barrio of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to learn what changes have occurred since her original PhD research there in 2004-5. Neil Maclean is opening up a new area of research on The Autistic Lifeworld: Leaving School.

There was strong representation of Department academics, honorary associates and postgraduate students at the Australian Anthropology Conference in Auckland, 6th to 9th December. This conference was jointly sponsored by AAS, the UK-based Association of Social Anthropologists, and the NZ Anthropological Association, with the theme “Ownership and Appropriation.” Papers were presented by Diane Austin-Broos, Jeremy Beckett, Linda Connor, Sheleyah Courtney, Gaynor Macdonald, Isabelle Rivoal, Erin Taylor and Kylie Tobler.

At the AAS conference, there was a launch for the book Emeritus Professor Jeremy Beckett co-edited with Dr. Melinda Hinkson, An Appreciation of Difference: WEH Stanner and Aboriginal Australia (Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2008). Emeritus Professor Diane Austin-Broos launched a new book by Yasmine Musharbash: Yuendumu everyday: intimacy, immediacy and mobility in a remote aboriginal settlement (Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2008).

The Department’s Thursday seminar program continued to thrive, coordinated by Holly High, and the enthusiastic participation of the Department’s Honorary Associates is greatly appreciated.

Neil Maclean and Jadran Mimica continued to edit Oceania, the leading international journal of the ethnography of Island Pacific and Australia. Oceania received an “A” rating in the initial round of the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) ranking of Humanities and Creative Arts journals, complementing the existing “A” rating from the European Science Foundation Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH).

Awards and Graduations

Sheleyah Courtney was awarded national finalist status and was included in the top ten lecturers at Sydney in the UniJobs sponsored Lecturer of the Year 2009 competition in which 2500 lecturers from universities around the country were nominated and voted for by 63,000 lecturers and students.

Yuriko Yamanouchi was awarded her PhD for the thesis Searching for Aboriginal Community in South Western Sydney, and is now working as a lecturer at Tama University, Tokyo. She has been awarded funding to undertake research on the Japanese pearling industry in Australia.

Kylie Tobler was awarded the Australian Anthropological Society 2008 prize for best honours thesis, for her thesis titled Sons of Beaches: Incarnations of Australian Agnosia, and is now enrolled in a PhD in the Department under the supervision of Jadran Mimica, on the topic Locas e Internacionalés: Subjectivity and Social Relatedness in Mexico City.