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- Convenors:
-
Catherine Earl
Robbie Peters (University of Sydney)
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- Stream:
- Immoralities
- Location:
- Old Arts-155 (Theatre D)
- Start time:
- 3 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel explores transforming urban neighbourliness. By examining everyday practices of social exclusion as moral boundary making, papers focus on the privatisation of morality, exploitation of the vulnerable, and balance of individual self-interest with community participation and belonging.
Long Abstract:
In 2011, footage of a busy market lane in the industrial city of Foshan in Guangdong Province captured 18 unperturbed people passing by the body of a fatally injured toddler who had been run over twice by a van. The incident provoked observers to question whether the nation had become one of self-absorbed individuals unconcerned for one another. Other child deaths received far less attention. In 2014, neighbours in Surabaya, Indonesia did not intervene as a 6-month-old girl starved to death, claiming her parent's lack of community participation made him unworthy of assistance. Outrageous to some, unnoticed by others, these examples highlight a tension in contemporary urban Asia between the power and agency of individuals and communities to harm and/or protect. Choosing to disregard or exclude may involve planned and deliberate actions, such as installing padlocked gates to prevent outsiders presumed thieves entering laneways of previously open neighbourhoods; policing urban worker dormitory curfews to conform to a growing sexual conservatism; or guarding exclusive malls and housing estates to distance strangers from comfortable middle classes. These everyday practices of harm and protection establish moral zones delimited by real physical boundaries that limit free circulation of individuals. Yet the urban Southeast Asian street too has become more exclusionary, offering people little claim to it other than as disengaged flaneur-like consumers caught in private worlds. This panel calls for analytical papers based on empirical case studies that extend our thinking about the interplay between individuality, community, belonging, incivility and immorality in urban Asia.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Christina Birdsall-Jones (Curtin University of Technology)
Paper short abstract:
In WA,the state government has ordered the closure of several Aboriginal communities in response to the discovery of child sexual abuse.This paper provides a case study of one such community in the context of competing moralities the state’s failure to intervene over a period of 13 years.
Paper long abstract:
In 2003 the state government of Western Australia ordered the closure of a gazetted Aboriginal community located in the eastern Perth suburb of Lockridge as part of the state government's response to reports of entrenched child sexual abuse within the Community. The situation and the main perpetrator was known within the Perth Aboriginal community from at least 1989, but only sub rosa. Whether police or any government agencies were aware of this situation of child abuse is not known. The leadership of the community was able to conceal the situation through an insistence that visitors could enter the community grounds only with the permission of the appropriate authority within the leadership group. The former community membership continues to deny that any child sexual abuse was committed within the community. In the years following the closure, the former community membership protested and entered into litigation with the state seeking the re-opening of the community, however in 2014 the state demolished the community housing and infrastructure. Why did no member of the Community or the Noongar community in general speak out in defence of the children? Why did the state respond to the situation of child abuse by closing down the community? This paper represents a preliminary examination of the ways in which both the state and the community failed to protect the children of the Community, the nature of the state's eventual response to the situation and the competing moralities involved in the story of this community.
Robbie Peters (University of Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
This paper tells of how neighbours in an urban slum allowed a baby to die of neglect because its grandfather, and sole carer, did not deserve their help due to him not 'participating' in the community. The paper highlights how such a moral good as participation can have such immoral consequences.
Paper long abstract:
In February 2014, in a large inner city slum of Indonesia's second largest city, Surabaya, neighbours stood-by as the impoverished grandfather and sole carer of a 6 month old girl fed her only sweetened water. Despite being fully aware that the child's life was in jeopardy and despite the exhortations of visitors to the slum that the community should act, the neighbourhood leader, reflecting a general community view, reasoned that the grandfather did not deserve help. He had not 'participated' in the community, failing to assist in neighbourhood working bees and failing to register the child's birth or have her weighed on family planning day. The child died of neglect some weeks later amidst a community that prides itself on communal self-help, inclusiveness and participation. Although participation has been a foundation stone of the developmentalist state in Indonesia, and although it has been central to Western development discourses of poverty alleviation applied in the country, it worked here to exclude and kill rather than include and save. This paper interrogates this death to highlight how such a moral and taken for granted good as participation can have such immoral consequences.
Kenneth Finis (Macquarie University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the impact of disrupted history upon traditional understandings of the relationship between the individual and the community, and how changed moral ideas of responsibility and self are passed on, appropriated and re-interpreted between generations in urban Phnom Penh.
Paper long abstract:
Intergenerational anxieties about changing morals of the young and the death of community seem common in many places worldwide. Yet in Cambodia, increasing individualism may not solely result from urban consumerism but rather lie in an intentional transmission of these changed values following periods of mass violence. For many of these young people, a commonly stated expectation is that one must look after the interests of self and family before those of others. The link to parental experiences of insecurity and scarcity in the past is explicit, as what developed as a necessary survival tactic was instilled in following generations to equip them for the realities of a harsh world. However the implication of this change in values is interpreted variously, some speaking of 'self first' as a positive necessity if they are to position themselves to help others in the future. Here the interests of the individual and those of the community are seen sometimes as hostile, and at other times as one in the same.
Drawing on initial fieldwork in Phnom Penh, this paper presents perspectives from young Cambodians on individual responsibility and the relationship between self and community. Exploring how moralities are transmitted and appropriated, intentional utility in these transformations is suggested as well as the importance of narrative in how young people interpret and take on their own understanding of what has been taught. An aspirational aspect to chosen moralities is suggested, and the role of future agency in community and national healing is discussed
Catherine Earl
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the moralisation of disability by exploring interactions between normative and non-normative bodies in public spaces. Surprising behaviours among mass transit bus users reveal the exclusionary influences of pervasive social conformity and rising incivility in Ho Chi Minh City.
Paper long abstract:
The interaction of strangers in Vietnamese public spaces is not a new experience. But a growing culture of individuality in the increasingly wealthy and socially segregated context of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, formerly Saigon) makes stranger interaction a more rare experience. The introduction of a mass transit bus system in contemporary HCMC has opened up new mobile public spaces. Riding on the bus and waiting at the bus stop offer new places to encounter others socially, particularly as gentrification has limited the public spaces where people from different backgrounds can, or must, interact. The encounters of bus commuting involve a stop-start mobility that generates ethnographic moments and instances rather than sustained interactions. This paper explores ethnographic moments that reveal im/moral pacts between commuters in public spaces and it contributes to a discussion of the moralisation of differently abled bodies and disability. I analyse interactions on Saigon Buses and at bus stops between bus users with normative and non-normative bodies, including three commuters with physical disability (cerebral palsy, amputation, polio); a heavily pregnant middle-class professional; a newborn baby being taken home; and an obese farmer on a long-haul journey. Surprising behaviours among mass transit bus users reveal the exclusionary influences of pervasive social conformity coupled with the rise of everyday incivility in Ho Chi Minh City.
Nonibala Rajkumari (University of Delhi)
Paper short abstract:
The study is a reflection of the people towards the phenomena of violence prevailing in a society.The paper is a result of the individual's opinion on violence related to insurgency, counter insurgency, public protest in the society of Manipur.
Paper long abstract:
The present study is a reflection of the people towards the phenomena of violence prevailing in a society. The state of Manipur has been under the realm of violence and social disorder since time immemorial. There have been man incidences of social movements and ethnic violence that the state has experienced. One of such is the insurgency movement that has been in the state of Manipur for the last half century or so. The individual concept of right and freedom to speech in a society has been under the shadow of community feeling and oneness in the state. When one comes in the community level, the individuality of the person becomes unexposed; be it in terms of their thought or expression of ideas on the act of violence. The paper is a result of the individual's opinion on the ongoing violence related to insurgency, counter insurgency, public protest in the present society of Manipur. There is a paradigm shift on the minds of the people towards uncivil movements, and the value of the individuality on the part of building a peaceful society.
Keywords: Violence, Insurgency, Individuality, Community, Manipur, North east India.