Download anu agenda - ANU The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences

NTU-ANU RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
19 – 20 September 2016
HRC Conference Room, A.D Hope Building
 Jacqueline Lo, Associate Dean (International), CASS
 Ann Evans, Associate Dean (Research), CASS
 Paul Pickering, Interim College Dean, CASS
 Catherine Waldby, Director, Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS), CASS
ANU PARTICIPANTS
 Will Christie, Interim Director, Research School of Humanities and the Arts
(RSHA), CASS
 Amanda Laugesen, Director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, School
of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, CASS
 Paul K Jones, School of Sociology, CASS
 Laurajane Smith, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, CASS
 David Bissell, School of Sociology, CASS
 K.K. Luke, Associate Dean (Research), College of Humanities, Arts and Social
Sciences
 Andres Carlos Luco, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
 Lisa Onaga, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Humanities,
Arts and Social Sciences
 Yong Wernmei, Division of English, School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
NTU PARTICIPANTS
 Wang Jue, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Humanities,
Arts and Social Sciences
 Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir, Division of Sociology, School of Humanities and
Social Sciences, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
 Natalie Pang, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, College
of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
 Elke Reinhuber, School of Art, Design and Media, College of Humanities, Arts
and Social Sciences
ANU College of
Arts & Social Sciences
Monday 19 September 2016
10.00 – 11.00
Chair: Ann Evans
Workshop opening and Introductions
Paul Pickering
K.K. Luke
11.00 – 11.30
11.30 – 1.00
Chair: Ann Evans
Morning tea
K.K. Luke - Talking, Thinking and Doing things: A unified approach to the
study of language and communication
Will Christie - ‘Gratifying a liberal curiosity’: James Wathen’s Journal of
a Voyage, in 1811 and 1812, to Madras and China (1814)
Amanda Laugesen - Dictionaries and Lexical Heritage
1.00 – 2.00
Lunch
2.00 – 3.00
Yong WernMei - “Quiet Dream”: Vietnamese Women and Marriage
Migration
Chair: Lisa Onaga
Elke Reinhuber - Counterfactuals in Media Arts
3.00 – 3.30
3.30 – 4.30
Chair: Lisa Onaga
Afternoon tea
Paul K Jones - Rethinking Populism and Demagogy
Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir - The September 11 Generation, Hip Hop
and the Pursuit of Authenticity
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Arts & Social Sciences
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Tuesday 20 September 2016
9.00 – 11.00
Chair: Jacqueline Lo
Wang Jue - A tale of two cities: innovation in Singapore and Hong Kong
David Bissell - Robotics, AI and employment futures in the Asia-Pacific
Catherine Waldby - Global oocytes: medical tourism and the transaction
of fertility
Lisa Onaga - Blueprints for Biocurating Laboratory Life in Asia
11.00 – 11.30
11.30 – 12.30
Chair: Kamal Nasir
Morning tea
Andres Carlos Luco - Reasons Pluralism and the Functions of
Normative Systems
Natalie Pang - Different platforms, different uses, different implications?
Social media in social movements and civic engagement
12.30 – 2.00
2.00 – 3.00
Chair: Kamal Nasir
Lunch
Laurajane Smith - Visitor Emotion, Affect and Registers of Engagement
at Museums and Heritage Sites
Yujie Zhu - The politics of cultural heritage in China
3.00 – 3.30
Afternoon tea and close
Ann Evans and KK Luke
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K.K. Luke
Talking, Thinking and Doing things: A unified approach to the study of language and
communication
Talking, thinking and doing things are often thought of as distinct processes, and in a sense they
are. However, there are at the same time fundamental connections that bind them together into a
unitary whole. In this talk, I will explain how talking, thinking and doing things work together in
everyday conversations. Using Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis as a distinctive
research method, and video recordings of naturally occurring interaction as data, I will show how
language, thought and action can be investigated within a unified framework through careful
observation of the details of word choices, grammatical structures, prosody, tone of voice,
gesture, eye gaze, body postures, and the totality of the communicative situation.
Will Christie
‘Gratifying a liberal curiosity’: James Wathen’s Journal of a Voyage, in 1811 and 1812, to
Madras and China (1814)
Given the severe limitations on access to China imposed by the Qing government in the
eighteenth century, ‘Sino-European encounters in this period were mediated more by things than
by people’, as Kristel Smentek has remarked. The rare sociable encounters between Chinese and
Europeans that did take place, however, still mattered and offered insights that often ran counter
to the official narrative as it developed over the decades in the lead up to the outbreak of the
Opium War in 1839. When the artist and pedestrian, James Wathen, published his account of his
travels to India and China in 1814, the reviewers made much of his generosity of spirit and
disinterestedness. By then, the popular account of China written by John Barrow in the wake of
Lord Macartney’s anti-climactic embassy had conditioned the British reading public to expect tales
of inhumanity and dishonour. What they got instead was thoughtful deference towards the
unfamiliar and a rare essay in affection and respect. This paper, part of a larger effort to recover
and interpret individual encounters between the British and the Chinese, offers a close reading of
Wathen’s account of his sojourn in the East India Company factory outside Canton in the opening
months of 1812, including his relationships with the Chinese merchants he met.
Amanda Laugesen
Dictionaries and Lexical Heritage
Dictionaries are currently in a state of transition. As print dictionaries increasingly disappear,
digital platforms offer a means of not only delivering lexical information in a variety of innovative
ways but also making such information accessible to a broad audience. Quality lexical resources
remain of vital importance to the survival of languages. Yet there are real issues in the world of
lexicography. Aside from the problems of financial support, delivering sustainable resources that
can assist in the documentation of languages, including varieties of English, remains a challenge,
especially in a culture that increasingly devalues the dictionary, and when there is a dominance of
large publishers/lexical resources based in the UK and US. This paper draws on lexicography,
information history, and cultural heritage to explore some of the issues scholarly lexicographical
projects face, and argues the importance of thinking about lexicography as a form of cultural
heritage.
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Yong Wernmei
“Quiet Dream”: Vietnamese Women and Marriage Migration
My presentation will focus on two aspects of Oh’s photographs: the technique of stitched
photography, and the composition of the photograph, particularly the choice of dress worn by the
subject. Half of the portraits are stitched photographs, a technique that merges together several
photographs to form a unique piece, with the aim of providing a wider view of the environment of
the subject. This method of stitching also bears testimony to the stitched futures of these women;
the hopes and dreams they harbor as foreign brides, as well as the familiar landscapes and
identities they leave behind, all “stitched” together as it were, to constitute a hopeful, but also
unsure and resigned, imagined future.
Elke Reinhuber
Counterfactuals in Media Arts
The concept of counterfactuals, which has appeared in past decades in science and humanities,
has become popular as a genre in fictional time-based and non-linear media and the fine arts.
Therefore, I intend to expand the term, which describes retrospective considerations after turning
points in life, in order to include the fine arts and encapsulate the research with the expression
counterfactualism as a hypernym for a contemporary phenomenon, which is inherent for a society
satiated with abundant choices for nearly everything in life.
As the term cannot be generalised, I have devised three categories which describe the
relationship between artist, counterfactual thoughts and audience. With this presentation, I will
provide an overview of my research and its influences on not only my artistic practice.
Paul K Jones
Rethinking Populism and Demagogy
Populism, famously, is a phenomenon that refuses left/right compartmentalization. The recent
resurgence in academic interest in populism has largely followed the rise (and rise) of rightwing
European parties rather than the sense of ‘people’s power’ sometimes invoked in social
movements and democratic transitions such as the 1986 overthrow of the Marcos regime in the
Phillipines. Latin America has provided many enduring ‘classic’ cases, and, in Argentina, some
would say, the paradigmatic case of ‘modern populism’.
Yet the very use of the term ‘populism’ to signify both social movements and parties is usually
sourced to the progressive ‘producerist’ Populist movement of the 1890s in the USA. Until very
recently, the international scholarly orthodoxy – dominated by US scholars – held that while
European and many other populisms were democratically problematic, the US case was not. To
put this another way, US populism was often ‘present in its absence’ in the pathologization of
populisms.
In this paper I’ll outline this curious doubletake that has been achieved by the expenditure of
enormous intellectual energy in quarantining any suggestion that the USA has a ‘problematic’
populist legacy. The key, I suggest, both conceptually and to some extent practically, is the
recognition of the significance of not just ‘modern populism’ but ‘modern demagogy’.
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Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir
The September 11 Generation, Hip Hop and the Pursuit of Authenticity
This presentation discusses the culture and consciousness of a particular generation of Muslims,
termed as the September 11 generation. Specifically, it deals with Muslim hip-hop’s struggle for
authenticity. At one level, hip-hoppers struggle with the authenticity of their Islamic piety. Does
practicing hip-hop make an individual less Islamic? Hence, summoning the images of courage
from personalities in Islamic history in their music, for example, confers upon the youth a symbolic
status and a legitimacy derived from a connection with a glorified Islamic past. Secondly, the
conflicts over authenticity also exist in the form of hip-hop that is produced and consumed. Hiphop jargons are thus mainstreamed to take a more “authentic” connotation both at the level of
satisfying Sunni Muslim requirements or even made ambiguous to refer to a plurality of religions.
Muslim or “Islamic” hip-hop, as seen from its Nation of Islam and Five Percenter beginnings has
been co-opted by young Muslims from a movement that is subversive even within the domain of
Islamic theology to a more consumerist and palatable medium to voice their discontent.
Wang Jue
A tale of two cities: innovation in Singapore and Hong Kong
Government is a key player in the innovation system and its involvement takes various forms
including directive intervention by actively advising industrial policy and investing in selected
areas, and facilitative intervention by creating positive environment and providing public goods for
industry. This study uses Singapore and Hong Kong as two cases to explore the influence of
government intervention on innovation dynamics. Singapore is known as a government-made city
with strong government intervention while Hong Kong is famous for its positive non-intervention
policy that minimizes the power of government in influencing the market. Using USPTO patent
statistics as evidence, the study found that innovation activities in Singapore are largely policy
driven and dominated by big players, while in Hong Kong industry innovation is not active but the
local industry has a dynamic innovation base contributed by small firms. The comparison could
shed light on the implication of government involvement in innovation.
David Bissell
Robotics, AI and employment futures in the Asia-Pacific
From driverless lorries to self-driving cars, and from automated surgery to robotic solicitors, we
are presently on the verge of a technological revolution like no other. Doom-laden predictions
warn that almost 50% of current jobs are at risk of replacement by robotics and automation
technologies. Unique to this ‘third’ round of automation is machine learning and artificial
intelligence. Yet current debate on the social and cultural impacts of robotics on work remains
limited. Against this looming spectre of mass unemployment, and renewed social struggles, the
purpose of this paper is to suggest ways in which sociologists might contribute to debates about
the relationship between robotics and labour along more nuanced lines. Its aim is to suggest how
sociologists are well-placed to unpack the complexities and richness of the relationships of
robotics and labour, emphasising the value of dwelling with their ambivalences, rather than
slipping into the easy caricature of overdetermined moral panic.
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Catherine Waldby
Global oocytes: medical tourism and the transaction of fertility
Since the early 1980s, IVF procedures allow one woman to donate her oocytes (eggs) to another,
and so enable women with poor fertility to conceive. As IVF treatment becomes more and more
common and global, the demand for fertile oocytes has expanded dramatically. However different
jurisdictions adopt widely different approaches to regulation, ranging from complete prohibition
(e.g. Germany), through strictly altruistic gifting (e.g. Australia), to regulated and unregulated
markets (e.g. United Kingdom/Spain and USA). As a consequence, oocytes have acquired
enormous scarcity value and developed a complex social and economic life. The ways they are
produced, circulated and negotiated has become an important dynamic in considering the ways
reproductive capacities are distributed and biomedically enhanced, and the ways power relations
between different groups of women play out.
In this paper, I will present some fieldwork interviews with Australian and British women who have
travelled overseas to purchase oocytes. Like the more notorious practice of international
surrogacy, this kind of fertility tourism allows women and couples to circumvent regulations and
obtain kinds of third party fertility services that may be illegal in their resident jurisdiction. I will
focus in particular on the ways the women negotiate the issue of the donor’s legal and biological
identity in the process of assisted family formation. I will discuss the imperative to ‘match’ the
donor with the recipient’s ethnicity, and hence to conceal the donation, and the emergence of an
alternative ethic among Australian couples that publically celebrates the trace of the south-east
Asian donor in the formation of a ‘rainbow’ family.
Lisa Onaga
Blueprints for Biocurating Laboratory Life in Asia
The reliance upon electricity to manage the indoor environments of scientific laboratories came
under scrutiny among members of the National Bioresource Project shortly after the earthquake,
tsunami, and nuclear power plant disasters took place in northeastern Japan in 2011. Discussions
grew in this consortium about how to better prepare for calamity and "back up" the stocks of cell
lines and model organisms that facilitate the material exchanges that define life sciences research
both within and beyond Japan. Among these model organisms, the lucrative silkworm is an
emblematic creature cultivated for its silk, and more recently, for its genetic mutations. A focus on
the domesticated insect raises an opportunity to examine the historical formation and
maintenance of the silkworm as bioresource in the 21st century. This in turn generates and
opportunity, if not responsibility, to understand how efforts to build structures for biocurating
silkworm strains in the postwar period lent to the foundation of the National Bioresource Project of
Japan. The "triple disaster" of 2011 spurred a phenomenon of reflexivity about laboratory life. This
operated both in terms of the organisms maintained, and in terms of altering blueprints for the
physical and metaphorical architecture of a network of university and national laboratories
connected by a common interest to maintain or create Japan's research relevance globally.
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Andres Carlos Luco
Reasons Pluralism and the Functions of Normative Systems
Imagine your child is suffering from a serious illness and urgently needs medical care. You live in
a country where medical doctors are overworked and poorly paid. Your doctor tells you that she
has loads of other patients, and she can’t see your child until later in the week. But your child
needs attention now. So you offer the doctor a bribe, which she discreetly accepts. Some magic
happens, and you bring your child to the clinic the next morning.
Was there a good reason to bribe the doctor? Surely! But might there also have been a good
reason not to offer the bribe? Suppose someone else’s child, much sicker than yours, would be
moved down the queue so that yours could be moved up. This seems to be a powerful reason not
to bribe.
I argue that our reasons for action are plural in nature, and they often conflict in this way.
Moreover, we can’t always have the consolation that one choice of action is favored by the
“strongest” reasons. Sometimes, the only way to ensure that we consistently act for good reasons
is to help change the social structures that produce conflicts among reasons in the first place.
Natalie Pang
Different platforms, different uses, different implications? Social media in social
movements and civic engagement
The Internet has evolved much since its inception more than two decades ago, with social media
platforms driving most of the ways people use the Internet in recent years. Scholars who study
social media have studied how and to what extent social media impact lives, but answers remain
mixed and inconclusive. This has to do with the way social media platforms are conceptualised as
units of analysis, and how contexts are defined and measured, and I argue for the importance of
adopting a socio-technical approach to the study of social media. In this talk, I present three
studies informed by a socio-technical approach to the study of social media use in the context of
social movements and civic engagement. The three cases are: 1) social media and the protest of
the population policy in Singapore; 2) heritage activism around Bukit Brown Cemetery on
Facebook; 3) social media use in Singapore’s General Election 2015. Through these cases, I
outline an agenda for future research for discussion.
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Laurajane Smith
Visitor Emotion, Affect and Registers of Engagement at Museums and Heritage Sites
This presentation, drawing on ideas of the cultural performativity of visiting heritage sites and
museums, will outline some of the findings of ongoing research which, to date, has included 4,502
visitor interviews undertaken at 45 sites of heritage in Australia, England and the USA. The work
compares visitor responses to the representation of history and culture at heritage sites and
museums representing national narratives, as well as those museums and heritage sites that
represent challenges to master narratives and/or represent dissonant understandings of history
and the present.
A number of themes emerging from this research are identified, and the role emotions play in
allowing visitors to either engage or disengage with the histories and heritage they are visiting is
discussed. It also introduces the idea of ‘registers of engagement’ and the implications this has for
understanding the emotional and intellectual investments that visitors can make in particular
historical narratives. Documenting the ways in which people use and engage with sites of heritage
allows a greater understanding of the ways in which history and the past are not only understood,
but also actively used in the present by individuals to negotiate contemporary social and political
issues and their sense of self and place.
Yujie Zhu
The politics of cultural heritage in China
Since ratifying UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention in 1985, China has entered a new era of
cultural revitalization. Embracing international heritage policies and norms has allowed the
country to enthusiastically participate in UNESCO’s World Heritage Competition, and to gain
the world’s recognition while legitimatizing its diplomacy in Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific region.
China’s enthusiasm for cultural heritage reveals that heritage policies are used as a nationbuilding strategy of soft power on the global stage, a domestic instrument of governance, and a
resource for spurring local economic development.
Scholarly debates over heritage have been focused on the uncontrolled economic exploitation
of heritage. By addressing the political, social and cultural impacts that heritage has on both
the state and the society, this study moves debate to the less understood questions of how
heritage influences policymaking and governance, and how heritage affects social-cultural
change. In details, this research will 1) analyze the role of cultural heritage in facilitating
China’s diplomacy, nation-building, economic strategy and local governance, and 2)
acknowledge the nature of such discourse that involves negotiation, contestation and
resistance among people and institutions at international, national, and local levels.
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