CAPSTRANS News & Events Archive

CAPSTRANS Director visits China

Linda Connor was in China from 11th to 21st September as a participant in the China Australia Executive Leadership Program (CAELP), under the auspices of Universities Australia and the China Educational Association International Exchange. She attended the CAELP Alumni Conference held at Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, Ningxia province, which was a celebration of the 10th Anniversary of China Australia educational partnerships. The culmination of the reunion was the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding by the UA and CEAIE CEOs to facilitate further exchange and cooperation.

Linda then travelled to Beijing where she participated in the CAELP Executive Shadowing program at Beijing Institute of Technology. She had the opportunity to meet with many senior university administrators and academics (see above pictures), as well as to become familar with the BIT campuses and facilities, including the expansive new satellite campus at LiangXiang (see above pictures). She also visited Beijing Foreign Studies University, which was hosting the University of Newcastle Bachelor of Communications Olympics and Paralympics volunteers and enjoyed a banquet lunch with the BFSU President and staff, as well as the Newcastle students and their accompanying teacher, Paul Scott.

The trip also provided an opportunity to visit many fascinating archaeological and historic sites in Ningxia Province and Beijing, including the Western Xia tombs, (see abopve pictures),Helan Shan Pass petroglyphs, the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian, the Great Wall at Bedaling near Beijing, and the Forbidden City.

Deputy Director Dr Alex Broom invited to present at International Cancer Conference

The Clinical Oncological Society of Australia (COSA) will this year host a landmark cancer meeting in Sydney, in conjunction with the International Association of Cancer Registries and the Australian and New Zealand Gastro-Oesophageal Surgery Association. The conference will be held on the 18-20th November, 2008 at the Sydney Convention Centre. Click here to go to conference website

 

CAPSTRANS Deputy Director Dr Alex Broom, has been invited to present on the following topic: ‘The role of the Internet in cancer patients’ engagement with complementary and alternative treatments’.

 

Click here for abstract

Congratulations to CAPSTRANS Director Professor Linda Connor, recent appointment as President of the Australian Anthropological Society

An election for the Australian Anthropological Society Executive Office Holders was held during late July and August 2008. CAPSTRANS Director Professor Linda Connor was elected as President, and will take up her position following the Annual General Meeting in December. 

Read more about this story in the AAS Newsletter

CAPSTRANS Deputy Director Alex Broom to present paper at 40th Anniversary Conference of the BSA Medical Sociology Group.

The 40th Anniversary Conference of the BSA Medical Sociology Group will be held from the 4th to the 6th of September 2008 at the University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. The Conference will focus on over 20 streams but also examine international links netween the UK and Australia, exploring and comparing developments within Medical Sociology.  The conference will also celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the SHI Foundation. Click here for more information on the Conference

The title of the paper to be presented by Dr Broom is, ‘I’d forgotten about me in all of this’: Discourses of self-healing, positivity and vulnerability in cancer patients’ experiences of complementary and alternative medicine

Abstract

Drawing on in-depth interviews with Australian cancer patients, this paper examines their experiences of utilising complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) within disease and treatment processes. Results illustrate the complex and often contradictory roles played by CAM within patients’ therapeutic trajectories. On the one hand, their accounts illustrate the liberative and positive impacts of CAM engagement, including perceived increases in feelings of control, power and individual autonomy within therapeutic processes. However, the interviews also revealed problematic notions of self-healing and hyper-positivity engendered in much CAM practice, involving the imposition of restrictive notions of self-discipline on these cancer patients. On the basis of the results it is argued that CAM sociology must refocus on the grassroots experiences of different patient groups, rather than grandiose notions of wider socio-cultural shifts in therapeutic practice.

UoN CAPSTRANS strongly represented at 2008 ASAA Conference

University of Newcastle CAPSTRANS were out in force at the 17th Biennial Conference: Is this the Asian Century? held in Melbourne recently, from the 1-3 July. Presenters included CAPSTRANS member, Dr Shiguru Sato, CAPSTRANS associate, Dr Mary Ida Bagus, and CAPSTRANS postgraduates Ms Hedda Askand and Ms Caroline Campbell. CAPSTRANS director, and recently promoted to Professor, Linda Connor was also in attendance, as she is supervisor to both postgraduate students. Professor Connor was also on hand to take some photographic evidence (see above slideshow). 

To view the abstracts of presented papers, please click the links below:

• Dr Shigeru Sato - Histories and memories of the birth of the PETA
• Dr Mary Ida Bagus - From isolation to invisibility: West Bali, East Java and the Bugis diaspora
• Caroline Campbell - The complexities of 'justice': an Indonesian case study
• Hedda Askland - Circulating storied, ruptured collectivities: East Timorese in Australia and questions of post-independence identity

CAPSTRANS is pleased to announce the recent appointment of Dr Alex Broom as Deputy Director.

'Timothy Asch Ethnographic Film Retrospective'

CAPSTRANS Director, Professor Linda Connor is currently overseas, travelling to Estonia to give a plenary lecture at the Worldfilm Festival and Conference, hosted by the Estonia National Museaum and the Worldilm Society, from the 24th to the 30th March, in Tartu, Estonia. Professor Connor’s lecture is entitled: ‘Timothy Asch Ethnographic Film Retrospective’.

Abstract

The work of Timothy Asch has been the subject of many reviews and scholarly discussion since the famous Yanomami films made in the late 1960s and 1970s. Tim Asch went on to several other productive collaborations with anthropologists, including four anthropologists who worked in Indonesia – James Fox, Douglas Lewis, Raharjo, and Linda Connor. These films were mostly filmed in 16mm, prior to the ready availability of cheap digital recording equipment, which has created a revolution in ethnographic documentation. It is important to reflect on the aesthetic and anthropological qualities of Tim Asch’s films made in Indonesia in the 1970s and 1980s, and on the opportunities that his participation in Indonesian fieldwork provided for Tim to experiment with different sorts of anthropological representation. The Bali films exemplify the ways that relationships between ethnographers, filmmakers and local people become shared stories that are an intrinsic part of the filmmaking process and the works produced, creating continuities that are a counterpoint to the ironies of ethnographic research.

Click here for more information on the Worldfilm Festival and Conference

The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century

CAPSTRANS is proud to announce the March release of CAPSTRANS Research Associate, Professor Geoffrey Samuel's sole-authored book; The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century

Conjoint Professor for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and CAPSTRANS Research Associate Geoffrey Samuel is currently seconded to a tenure position as a Professorial Fellowship at the School of Religious and Theological Studies, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K.

About the Book

Yoga, tantra and other forms of Asian meditation are practised in modernized forms throughout the world today, but most introductions to Hinduism or Buddhism tell only part of the story of how they developed. This book is an interpretation of the history of Indic religions up to around 1200 CE, with particular focus on the development of yogic and tantric traditions. It assesses how much we really know about this period, and asks what sense we can make of the evolution of yogic and tantric practices, which were to become such central and important features of the Indic religious scene. Its originality lies in seeking to understand these traditions in terms of the total social and religious context of South Asian society during this period, including the religious practices of the general population with their close engagement with family, gender, economic life and other pragmatic concerns.

For more information please visit the publisher's website

The 8th Conference of the Asia Pacific Sociological Association, "Asia Pacific Region: Societies in Transformation" 19-21 November 2007

CAPSTRANS members will have a strong presence at the Annual Conference of the Asia Pacific Sociological Association. This year's conference, entitled, "Asia Pacific Region: Societies in Transformation, is being held from the 19th to the 21st of November 2007, at the Evergreen Laurel Hotel in Penang, Malaysia.

This conference aims to explore the various dimensions of the rapid social transformation of the Asia Pacific. Rapid globalization, coupled with economic liberalization and financial deregulation, has opened-up the economics of the Asia Pacific region. Increasing wealth generation is heralded as a sign of great personal and notional success, while large numbers of people remain marginalised in poor paying a insecure jobs. Youth are under extreme pressures in terms of successful education and gaining secure employment. The media glorifies the consumer revolution, and we see increasing use of new technologies which are changing forever the very fabric of work, family life, health and culture in the countries of the Asia Pacific. The region is seemingly now more integrated, with unprecedented levels of tourism, migration, and economic and cultural linkages. But, are the nations of the region, and their populations, becoming more divided, united or are they fundamentally unchanged over the past two decades?

UoW's Deputy Director of CAPSTRANS, Dr Tim Scrase is on the Conference organising committee, with CAPSTRANS Wollongong also representing two additional members and four Postgraduate presenters;

Dr Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, "Ethnographies of Neo liberal Globalisation: Women and Forced Migrations in South Asia"
Dr Vicki Crinis, "Malaysian Garment Industry: Brand Name Manufacturers, Codes of Conduct and Foreign Workers"
Nichole Georgeou (PhD student) "Doing Development in East Timor: Aus Aid Policy, Australian volunteers and the meaning of development"
Sophie Williams (PhD student) "Transformative Tourism"
Emma Dalton (PhD student) "Why Women Choose the LDP: Motivations of Conservative Japanese Female Politicians"
Belinda Green (PhD student) "The Tourist Site of Kovalam: Paradise Found and Lost"

Bon voyage Linda and Pam!

Professor Linda Connor and Associate Professor Pam Nilan will be representing CAPSTRANS Newcastle at the Asia Pacific Conference, presenting the following papers:

Linda Connor (with Nick Higginbotham and Sonia Freeman) "Hunter Valley localities, environmentalism, and the Asia-Pacific coal economy"

The latest Asian economic boom has had a down-side for rural residents of the Hunter Valley in NSW, Australia. The demand for energy resources to fuel the coal-fired power stations that support factories in China and other growing Asian economies means open-cut coal mines have become a highly profitable prospect for Australian and multinational companies, and have brought significant new wealth into all levels of the economy. However, many new mines are under development in the relatively densely inhabited area of long term rural settlement defined by the fertile and coal-rich catchment of the Hunter River. This paper explores the ways in which environmentalist discourses have become an important, contradictory and contested element of the tactical practices focused on mining of residents, industry and government in the Hunter Valley. Local practices incorporate increasingly globalised perspectives that parallel the transnational growth of coal production and combustion in the Asia-Pacific region.

 Pam Nilan "Media and Culture in Indonesia: Youth Trends"

Using some data from a 2007 research project, this paper addresses Islamic media as an example of contemporary youth culture trends in Indonesia. Local Indonesian media culture offers all kinds of directions for consumption as visible identity. Any bus rider in rush-hour Jakarta, will witness soberly-clad young women with all parts of the body covered except hands and face sitting beside heavily made-up young women in hipster jeans and clinging shirts, with dyed hair and high heels. Moreover, they are often colleagues, even friends. Young men wearing the iconic Muslim cap, wispy beard, and flowing shirt and pants mingle at rush hour with other young Indonesian men of the same age dressed American 'gangsta' style, or sporting the latest European suit and tie. Such mediated variations in the appearance and personal style of Indonesian young people signal new connections, new desires and new directions, as contemporary youth identities are being reworked.

Congratulations Hedda!

Current PhD candidate and CAPSTRANS postgraduate, Ms Hedda Askland has recently been awarded the School of Humanities and Social Science Publication Prize for 2007. In order to qualify for this prestigious award, applicants are required to have their work published in an internationally recognised journal (see link below). Hedda will be awarded $300 at the upcoming NUPSA dinner to be held at the Bella Vista at 7pm on 26th October 2007.

Askland, Hedda Haugen (2007) 'Habitus, Practice and Agency of Young East Timorese Asylum Seekers in Australia' Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Volume 8, Number 3, pp.235-249. [Winner of School of Humanities and Social Sciences Postgraduate Award for Excellence 2007] Available here

CAPSTRANS success in latest Australian Research Council round

On the 26 September 2007, The University of Newcastle received a record $10.3 million from the Australian Research Council under the highly competitive Discovery Projects Scheme. While eighteen of the 31 projects which received funding were secured by the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Barney Glover, stated "We are particularly pleased that 20 per cent of the Discovery Projects funded, totalling approximately $1 million, are in the fields of humanities, social sciences and education."

This includes two major grants awarded to CAPSTRANS,

"Climate Change, Place and Community: An Ethnographic Study of the Hunter Valley, New South Wales", 2008–2011 (Connor, L., Albrecht, G.A. and Higginbotham, N.)

"Government, Religion and the Problem of Moral Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea", 2008-2010 (Andrew Lattas)

To discover more about our exciting new research at CAPSTRANS, as well as ongoing research projects, please click on the above links