Events

Harmful care, careful harm: relational entanglements in migration

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

This timely event will bring together experts from the diverse corners of the field of migration studies to consider the complex and dynamic relationship between care and harm in international migration. Scholars of migration have documented the multivarious forms of harm that arise from the systems, institutions and interactions surrounding the movements of people across borders. Researchers have also explored the many forms of local and transnational care that are created by, or persist despite, international migration. In this event, we explore the ways care and harm are interwoven, interdependent and mutually constitutive in diverse migration contexts. Relationships of care (for example, between migrants or between migrants and ‘allies’ in civil society) may arise in response or resistance to the harms imposed by exploitative policies and practices. Equally, policies and practices that appear to be ‘caring’ may reproduce, obscure or naturalise harm, at times perpetuating the very inequalities and injustices they purport to address. Grounded in diverse settings including immigration detention, aged care, temporary labour migration schemes, the family home, and media platforms, the speakers will present brief talks drawing on their specialist research. The speakers will then come together for a panel discussion of harmful care, careful harm, and the imperative to pursue more meaningful forms of care […]

Free

An introduction to Computational Social Science

Virtual , Australia

University of Melbourne

Computational social science (CSS) frequently uses Agent-based models (ABMs) to model social phenomena. ABMs are ‘bottom-up’ representations of individuals (computational agents) who exist within a society of other agents and who interact on a local scale based on sets of rules that govern their behaviour. When used like this, ABMs are attempts to create ‘Artificial Societies’ that we can study. The advantage of creating artificial societies is that imagined policies or interventions can then be made within these representations and the outcomes of those policies can be observed prior to implementation in the real world. The models can be anywhere between instructive or predictive, with the sophistication and detail of models often geared toward their purpose in this regard. In general, the most interesting models are those that try to replicate the generation of a large-scale social phenomenon when the mechanisms that create that phenomenon are currently unknown or contested (e.g., crowd behaviour, social behaviour, health behaviour, political behaviour, etc.). This session will introduce the audience to example agent-based models used in Computational Social Science and show how they can be used to augment existing research agendas, test theory, and trial simulated policies. We'll provide some very brief introductory 'how […]

Free

How did humans live before modern societies?

Virtual , Australia

Deakin University

This session, as part of Social Sciences Week 2024, will illuminate key aspects of modern societies and compare them with pre-modern perspectives and worldviews. In this session we will discuss how modern societies were formed and their key aspects before then exploring what our ancestors can teach us about how they lived through topics such as primordial freedoms, egalitarianism, ritual, ceremony, orality and more. Professor Yin Paradies is an Aboriginal animist anarchist activist who is Chair in Race Relations at Deakin University where he conducts research on topics such as racism, anti-racism, cultural competence, Indigenous knowledges and decolonisation. Yin has authored over 250 publications (cited over 20,000 times), been awarded grants worth $49 million and is an invited reviewer for more than 125 journals. Please RSVP to adi-events@deakin.edu.au, you will then receive the Zoom password.

Free

UTS Translational Criminology Seminar Series

UTS UTS City Campus, Building 10 Level 03, Room 470, 235-253 Jones St., Ultimo, NSW, Australia

UTS Criminology

Not just 'Herding Cats'- Vietnamese cannabis gangs and law enforcement Join UTS Criminology and the Crime and Security Science Research Group for our third seminar of 2024 Vietnamese-born prisoners have been considered at the highest rates among most serious offences/charges excluding Australia and New Zealand, almost drug-related offences, higher than the UK-born and Chinese-born. Appearances of Vietnamese-ethnicity groups involved, either directly or indirectly, in cultivating, manufacturing, and trading cannabis. The illegal employment of Vietnamese 'crop-sitters' in Australia, who are employed to stay in the grow house to take care of cannabis plants, is ongoing. Based on previous empirical studies, Luong (2014, 2017, 2019, 2020) tested and clarified family ties and fellow-countrymen associations as the most prioritised forms of those Vietnamese drug trafficking networks. Currently, many authorities are considering those Vietnamese groups in Australia to set up three levels – head (whom they organise and manage the whole process), facilitator (whom they provide spiritual or material assistance in cultivation), and crop-sitter (whom they look after cannabis plants). In contrast, the Herding Cats (dân chăn mèo in Vietnamese) – a memoir of former Vietnamese cannabis insiders, described the most insightful details of why and how dân chăn mèo arrange and design inclusive […]

Free

SSSWARM Seminar Series | Ethnography in the archive: listening, being, and doing in archival collections

Room 203, RD Watt Building, Science Road, University of Sydney, Camperdown Science Road, Camperdown Campus, Sydney, NSW, Australia

School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney

Hosted by Sydney Staff & Student Workshops on Anthropology, Research, and Methods (SSSWARM) and the School of Social and Political Sciences. Speaker: Henrietta Byrne (University of Sydney) This presentation utilises reflections from Henrietta's 2021 doctoral fieldwork to explore how anthropologists can bring ethnographic attention to archival materials. As part of her study on the legacies of nuclear testing on Anangu lands and peoples, she spent time in the National Archives of Australia (NAA) and Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) archives, examining documents from the 1984 Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing. She considers how archives can be rich sites for ethnography and how anthropologists can engage with colonial archival collections without upholding their epistemic power. Contact Michael Edwards with any questions about the SSSWARM Seminar Series: michael.edwards@sydney.edu.au For more info on SSSWARM: https://sophiechao.wixsite.com/ssswarm

Free