News and Events
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’.
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:
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Dr Shigeru Sato - Histories and memories of the birth of the PETA
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Dr Mary Ida Bagus - From isolation to invisibility: West Bali, East Java and the Bugis diaspora
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Caroline Campbell - The complexities of 'justice': an Indonesian case study
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