Paper short abstract:

This paper reports on an ethnographic study in Greyhound racing and rescue communities. Through analysis of community representations of self and other, I consider the tense relationships between people and how they navigate their relationships with non/humans of these interspecies communities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the political contestation and ensuing tense relationships between people who consider greyhounds to symbolise a distinctive aspect of their life and their construction of selfhood. I report on an unfolding ethnographic study with the Greyhound racing communities in NSW, in which I explore how identities, communities and boundaries of belonging are created and negotiated through inter-species relations.

Initial analysis of the ethnographic material raises questions about attributions of stigmatised personality traits, such as stupidity and irrationality, to people who live alongside animals in multi-species communities. While both communities of greyhound racing and rescue rally around the symbol of 'the greyhound', community members have vastly different notions about 'who' the greyhound is. These differing interpretations and community discourses around the Greyhound as a symbol lead to politically tense divisions and interactions. In my research, I explore not only how the dogs themselves are treated as a result of these different imaginings, but also how the people involved navigate their relationships with one another. These differing constructions of what constitutes value within a self, both nonhuman and human, are an essential part of understanding the conflict that occurs between the communities of greyhound racing and greyhound rescue in New South Wales, Australia.

Paper short abstract:

Women in Australia today are frequently critiqued for their mothering choices, and their mothering values may put them at odds with (powerful) others. This paper explores the implications for women when "doing what feels right" may mean mothering against the grain.

Paper long abstract:

Women are frequently critiqued for their mothering choices, whether by their families, other mothers, or Australian society more broadly. It is a fraught endeavour, often accompanied by strong opinions about the 'right' (and 'wrong') ways to do it, and mothers are 'doing it' amidst an ever increasing amount of 'expert' advice and surveillance over their bodies and those of their children. But what happens if women value other forms of knowledge over the 'experts', or they want to limit surveillance? What happens if their mothering values put them at odds with (powerful) others? For some mothers, following their intuition or instinct and "doing what feels right" for themselves and their child(ren) may mean questioning conventional wisdom or constructions of the child. Prioritising embodied knowledges and trusting in the body's ability to heal or birth may mean their reproductive choices and/or approaches to (and understandings of) health and wellness challenge biomedical norms. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Greater Adelaide region, this paper explores the implications of "doing what feels right" for a number of women who identify their style of mothering as natural or holistic (or similar). It foregrounds their perspectives and experiences as they navigate mothering in what can be difficult terrain, and considers the ways that they respond to and manage situations in which their values diverge from (powerful) others; where "doing what feels right" may mean mothering against the grain.

Paper short abstract:

The complexity around notions of 'creative labour' is explored in the context of contemporary electronic music production. Value becomes a flexible negotiation between integrity and enterprise, underpinning a path to commercial acceptance while not undermining a sense of ethical autonomy.

Paper long abstract:

Creative work is often valorised in Australian society, associated with freedom, flexible work conditions and self-realisation. Entrepreneurial artists and designers feature in colour supplements and airline magazines, set against a stylish backdrop of studios and exhibitions. Yet for many electronic musicians, the studio is the bedroom, and events can be poorly attended. In a context of music streaming, file sharing and festival culture, positive notions of meaningful and sustainable creative labour can translate into a fragile financial reality of derisory royalties and complimentary drink tickets. The ethnographic demands for 'telling it as it is' can conflict with bureaucratic and industry conceptions like the 'creative economy', revealing a gulf between the aspirations and actuality of peoples' lives and careers. Based on research among electronic music producers in Adelaide, this paper presents music making as a complex patchwork of contradictory motivations and outcomes. While digitalization has made it easier than ever to make music, the difficulties of getting heard amidst a flood of product have served to bolster mainstream broadcasting, performance and distribution models. The independence and authenticity of creative labour are often challenged by the promotional requirements of self-branding and the obligatory sociality of online marketing methods. Faced with a choice between 'selling out' and selling anything, value becomes a place of pragmatic compromise in strategies of personal and commercial satisfaction.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the different values assigned to biomedicine and Indigenous traditional health beliefs and practices. It focuses on the values underlying biomedicine that often remain invisible, and on traditional healing's invisibility as a valid health care modality.

Paper long abstract:

All medical systems, including biomedicine, should be understood as cultural systems that are built on particular worldviews and values. They can, however, not be considered as completely coherent and independent from the wider global context. They need to be researched in their historical and social context, including an evaluation of their relative power differences. Rather than conceptualising Australia's health care system as a pluralistic model, which has the connotation of all sub-systems being relatively equal to each other, it should be understood as a plural or dominative model (Baer, 2008), in which biomedicine is placed at the top of the system and folk healing systems, including Indigenous traditional healing, are found at the bottom.

Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Katherine (NT), this paper explores how the biomedical system and traditional Aboriginal health beliefs are valued by Indigenous women and public health professionals, and in government documents such as Closing the Gap and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2013-2023. It argues that the government and professionals are overlooking the cultural values underlying biomedicine and its expressions, such as the focus on "evidence-based" health care, while only valuing traditional healing as "culture" rather than as a legitimate form of health care. It shows how this different valuation manifests in Indigenous people's engagement with health professionals.

Finally, this paper will discuss the implications for researchers, public health professionals, and most importantly: for Indigenous health, of these different valuations of health care modalities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores valuing practices and value in diabetes care. It is based on ethnographic research in clinical settings, everyday life and support groups. Situating values in care practices illuminates conflicting values and the work that goes into negotiating and sometimes bridging them.

Paper long abstract:

Diabetes care demands the balancing of different valuing practices and their resultant values. This paper stems from ethnographic research that follows different valuing practices involved in diabetes care within an urban Aboriginal Australian community. Diabetes is often first defined through clinical values; values derived from a drop of blood and numbers on a glucose monitor. Yet this practice of valuing diabetes is one of many. By situating values within different care practices, we can illuminate the conflicting values that must be negotiated in everyday diabetes care. Diabetes, or 'sugar' as it is often called by my interlocutors, can be valued through the blood placed onto a small machine. It can be valued through feelings of dizziness or fatigue, or its impact on social practices such as sharing food. Diabetes care can trigger new ways of valuing food, sociality, personal biographies and even Aboriginality and colonisation. Moving between clinical settings, everyday life, and diabetes care groups, I attend to the different values embedded within diabetes care practices and discourses of self-determination. By highlighting conflicting values, we can begin to understand why people often do the things that they know don't benefit their health, or that don't correspond to clinical normativities. I ask how such conflicts are negotiated and sometimes bridged by practices and tools. The glucose monitor is one such tool, attempting to produce an immutable numerical value, while practices of cooking exercising and socialising during support groups work to bridge or homogenise conflicting values between clinical and everyday care.

Paper short abstract:

A conflict of learning values exists between Yolngu in Homelands and current education delivered in Northeast Arnhem Land. This paper addresses this issue, focusing on community wishes, knowledge transmission, raising children on ancestral lands, and the perspectives of children.

Paper long abstract:

Australian Indigenous values on learning frequently conflict with past and present modes of education delivered by the Australian Government. The nation's lowest education rankings and outcomes are found in the Northern Territory (NT), where the NT Education Department faces more obstacles than other states and territories in their duty to deliver education to young Australians. In particular, the NT Education Department struggles to cater to young Indigenous Australians, who represent the fastest growing population sector, and are also the most culturally diverse, distinctive, and disadvantaged group in the country.

Young people living in Northeast Arnhem Land experience multiple obstructions to accessing what the wider Australian population would consider a basic service. The inability - or reluctance - of government departments to accommodate their services to the extreme remoteness of communities, multilingualism and cultural obligations, only widens the gap young people face in gaining equal opportunity regarding their education.

This paper will discuss Yolngu values of learning by drawing on the data and perspectives of approximately 100 Yolngu contributors from Homelands across Northeast Arnhem Land, including Elders, teachers, parents, and students. The data was ascertained through community consultations on behalf of Laynhapuy Homelands Aboriginal Corporation, as well as during child-centred ethnographic PhD fieldwork conducted in 2018. This paper will highlight the ways in which the current educational environment conflicts with the needs and wishes of Yolngu communities and what can be done to remedy some of these issues.

Paper short abstract:

The authors of the paper on 'Developing Northern Australia: Our North, Our Future' (2015) appear to be unaware of the contradictory values raised by linking the Aboriginal future to northern industrial development built on native title and what this might mean for Indigenous community development.

Paper long abstract:

In granting recognition to Aboriginal property rights very little thought has been given to the consequences of the way that we have done this or could have done it. We have just let our legal processes, practices and thinking run their course and only subsequently started to think about how these property rights can benefit Aboriginal people collectively. The white paper on 'Developing Northern Australia: Our North, Our Future' (2015) takes native title land as central to its vision. This vision, and the specific matters identified in order to make possible its realisation, raise a number of questions including what is wanted from development by the various affected parties. The authors of the white paper appear to be unaware of the contradictory values raised by linking the Aboriginal future to northern industrial development built on native title and what this might mean for Indigenous community development. In this paper I want to address some of the issues raised by these contradictory values as they relate to improving the circumstances of Aboriginal people's lives and helping to support them in their life projects.