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Wednesday, 29 June 2011

The biggest anthropology conference to be held in the southern hemisphere has attracted more than 500 delegates from 30 countries.

Hosted by The University of Western Australia, it is the first combined conference of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES), the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) and the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand (ASAANZ).  The conference is entitled Knowledge and Value in a Globalising World: Disentangling Dichotomies, Querying Unities.

One of the conference organisers, Dr Greg Acciaioli from UWA's Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology, said the role of anthropologists in studying daily life was often overlooked.  They are instrumental in work as diverse as designing human-friendly machines, to understanding the global financial crisis, he said.

Keynote speakers are Professor Jean Comaroff of the University of Chicago, whose research has focussed on the religion of the southern Tswana peoples of southern Africa and public order, policing, and the commodification of ethnicity in postcolonial contexts, and Professor James Ferguson of Stanford University, whose work in Lesotho and Zambia has focussed on development, modernisation and social justice.  Plenary speakers include: Professor Shiv Visvanathan of the Centre for the Study of Developing societies in Delhi; Distinguished Professor Dame Anne Salmond of the University of Auckland; and Professor Alberto Gomes of La Trobe University.

Thirteen concurrent sessions will be held during the four-day conference covering areas as diverse as globalisation, Indigenous knowledge and resource use, neoliberalism, migration, food, creativity, religion, medicine, climate change, education, and developments in psychological anthropology.  There will also be an ‘anthropology through film' schedule, with ethnographic films from countries including Nicaragua, Arctic Canada, Serbia and Kosovo, Brazil, Italy and Denmark.  Titles include: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change; The Bagyeli Pygmies at the Fringes of the World; Releasing the Spirits:  A Village Cremation in Bali; and Roma Boys - the Love Story.

A pre-conference native title workshop on 4 July, provides an opportunity for applied anthropologists to discuss developments in native title anthropology and heritage.  Professor Tim Rowse will deliver the AAS Distinguished Public Lecture that evening exploring themes in the history of Indigenous political thought.

The conference will be held at UWA from July 5-8.

Media references

Dr Catie Gressier (UWA Conference Secretariat)  (+61 8)  6488 2742
Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716

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