Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Sarah Quillinan
(University of Melbourne)
Andrew Dawson (University of Melbourne)
Send message to Convenors
- Stream:
- Immoralities
- Location:
- Old Arts-155 (Theatre D)
- Start time:
- 2 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel calls for papers on the broad theme of the misuses and utilities of large-scale human suffering. It is envisaged that these will be discussed in relation to both the anthropology of morality and, reflecting on disciplinary practice, a moral anthropology.
Long Abstract:
This panel calls for papers, and especially ethnographically grounded papers, on the broad theme of the misuses and utilities of large-scale human suffering. Illustrative examples that we consider discussing include: the role of the Holocaust in rationalizing organ harvesting and trafficking; forced marriage, honor violence and female genital mutilation in the rhetoric of the Right; the value of anti-trafficking for exploiters of human misery; and the political economies of war rape identification. It is envisaged that these will be discussed in relation to both the anthropology of morality and, reflecting on disciplinary practice, a moral anthropology.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Larissa Sandy (RMIT University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper undertakes a narrative analysis to consider the politics of human suffering and misery in the anti-trafficking movement and construction of the victim subject/suffering female body.
Paper long abstract:
In 2009 The New York Times published an account of trafficking in Cambodia written by the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, Nicholas Kristof, that featured the title: 'If this isn't slavery, what is?' In this paper, I undertake a narrative analysis of trafficking stories, exploring some of the very powerful rhetoric and use of melodrama in these narratives. I argue that the use of melodrama as a mode of story-telling serves as a form of emotional coercion forcing audiences into uncritically accepting the logic of trafficking, and which has allowed the anti-trafficking movement to avoid addressing the philosophical and definitional problems surrounding trafficking. I consider some of the narrative devices used as rhetorical strategies designed to establish female innocence and construct victimhood, including the almost exclusive focus on abduction and extreme tortures stories, and explore the extraordinary rhetorical and persuasive power of these narrative strategies. Ultimately, the paper explores the 'politics of pity' shaping the global anti-trafficking movement and argues that Cambodian women's raw, physical suffering is used as a means of creating solidarity in global audiences with the movements aims and conservative anti-sex work agenda.
Sarah Quillinan (University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
The presentation traces the production and release of the 2011 feature film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which faced heavy criticism from certain local survivor-activists for its perceived usurpation and distortion of the accepted and value-laden rape victim identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Paper long abstract:
The status of war rape 'victim' has become increasingly politicised in the almost two decades since sexual violence was formally recognised as a war crime and a crime against humanity. Attention paid to the phenomena has been unprecedented during that period, paralleled in part by the resources invested into post-conflict societies for victim support, rehabilitation, welfare, and judicial development. A consequence of such attention has been the development of a dominant victim identity and meta-narrative that typically represents women survivors as traditional, culture-bound, and passive. The identity has been adopted, embodied, reproduced, and eventually 'owned' by certain survivor-activists as a strategy to access increasingly limited resources, and build local-level authority in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The presentation traces the production and release of the 2011 feature film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which faced heavy criticism for its perceived usurpation and distortion of the value-laden rape victim identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The film follows the relationship between a Bosnian Serb man and Bosnian Muslim woman whose connections to one another become increasingly complicated by the onset of war. The initial hostile reception from certain local rape survivors towards writer and director Angelina Jolie, and her eventual acceptance as a courageous advocate reflect the politics of ownership where the status of 'rape victim' is concerned. The production of the film, and the rumours and gossip that circulated about the original script were experienced by some as a threat to local control of the accepted 'storyline' of wartime rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Vesna Jurjevic (N/A) Andrew Dawson (University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
In this ethnography of white water rafting in the ethnically homogenised town of Foča we explore the submerging and resurfacing of the violent pasts of eastern Bosnia's waterways.
Paper long abstract:
As it did so, albeit in violent ways during war water now plays a central role in the post-war reconstruction of eastern Bosnia's borderlands. For example, the rivers where ethnic Others were drowned and disposed of are now rebranded as sites for experiencing the near death thrill of white water rafting. In this ethnography of rafting in the erstwhile majority Muslim and now majority Serbian town of Foča we explore the strategies deployed by hosts and the complicities between hosts and guests to render submerged the rivers' pasts. However, we describe also how these pasts resurface in unpredictable ways that, ultimately destabilise the town's dominant narratives of post-war reconstruction.
James Barry (Deakin University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the use of the Armenian Genocide as an ‘ancestral valuable’, an intangible tool that unifies Armenians. It focuses on the moral discourse of the Genocide, the conceptualisation of denial as immorality and denier as perpetrator, crystallising the moral obligations of commemoration
Paper long abstract:
Armenians around the world observed the centenary of the Armenian Genocide in April 2015. The official slogan of the commemoration was 'hishum em yew pahajum' (I remember and demand). This slogan was deliberately ambiguous so as to include all potential demands from every faction. Although the demand of recognition of the event as genocide by the Republic of Turkey remains a central theme, Armenian expectations of what Turkey owes in compensation or apology is hardly uniform.
This paper argues that the best way to understand the Armenian Genocide as a unifying event is as what Keane (1997) termed an ancestral valuable. The Armenian Genocide as a historical memory, a political cause and a social commemoration is an 'enduring, concrete manifestation of the ancestors' enacted through rituals aimed at tying the present to the past. It is heavily laden with the language of loss which in turn creates a significant motivation for social solidarity and action.
This paper focuses on the moral discourse of the Genocide, the conceptualisation of denial as a state of immorality, and the portrayal of the denier as perpetrator, as well as crystallising the moral obligations of commemoration.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork performed in Australia since 2007, and among Armenian communities in Iran in 2010 and 2014, this paper discusses mass human suffering as lived experience, a dialogue of generational trauma, and the construction of a moral economy based on recognition and acknowledgment.