The Familiar Strange

Simon [1:00] begins our chat by asking what happens to your identity when you become a dependent spouse; that is, when your partner is supporting the household financially and you are not, especially in a new country. “For the last maybe 20 or 30 years, the assumption has been that both men and women will probably work together to support a household [financially], what does it mean to be a spouse that works at home? And what does it mean for the masculinities that we will see in the future…?” [Note: this is coming from a middle-class, Australian context]

Next, Kylie [6:09] turns our conversation towards fieldwork, as she has just come back from the Northern Territory where she hopes to conduct her PhD research (very exciting!). Because this is the first time doing anthropological fieldwork, she asks us: what does a typical day in the field look like, specifically regarding how to spend your time? Jodie reflects back on her first month of fieldwork, in which she found scheduling breaks for herself to be somewhat ‘away’ from her fieldsite was highly beneficial, especially since she found it exhausting constantly absorbing other people’s words, thoughts, energy and emotions. Simon reminds us that downtime is something you should expect to have and Julia reminds us that even in those times when it isn’t busy and chaotic, maybe there’s a reason for that – why does it seem quiet? Jodie adds that these ‘quiet’ times offer perfect opportunities to write descriptions about your field, which will help in the writing-up process later.

We move onto a very current issue in Australia, as Jodie [10:35] discusses the recent meeting between Vice-Chancellors from Australian universities and the Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, regarding international Chinese students. There are two key issues that are framing the debate: (1) that Australian universities are relying too heavily on international Chinese students for funding, and (2) that there is a security risk posed by having international Chinese students who could potentially be spying at Australian universities (for more information see Links & Citations below). Jodie poses the question: where do you find that space between what is purely racist and racist policy and actual security threats, and how do you know the difference? Kylie asserts that “When we use those two lines of arguments, we overlook people’s experiences and think of them as either ‘security risks’ or ‘cash cows’”.

Julia [15:13] ends our chat on an unusual note – that some people think anthropologists are ANGRY! This comes after she recently listened to an episode of the Making Sense podcast by Sam Harris featuring Jarod Diamond, in which they were having a laugh about angry anthropologists; Julia had also experienced feeling disgruntled after coming across a book that did not include the rich depth of research it needed, by failing to engage with the wide literature on the topic (the same criticism Diamond had come under). Can we really be mad, if we don’t put in the effort to communicate our research? Does this come from a failure of anthropologists to engage with a wider audience and – especially – scholars from other disciplines on the same topics? How does the issue of this image of the angry anthropologist impact on engagement and communication, which in turn impacts on the issue of representation?

To see our Links & Citations, go to thefamiliarstrange.com

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto

Podcast edited by Matthew Phung and Kylie Wong Dolan

This is the 7th episode in our Science and Technology interview series. This time, Jodie is interviewing Annalisa Pelizza, Professor in Technology Studies of Communication at the University of Bologna in Italy, Visiting Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and lead investigator on the project "Processing Citizenship: Digital registration of migrants as co-production of citizens, territory and Europe". They talk about the way that digital infrastructures, such as the databases used to collect information from migrants when they first arrive on European soil, actually help to shape these people into migrants, basically constructing them as a different category of person than perhaps they were before they arrived.

“Migration issues in Europe are a hot topic right now - it's not news that they have been used in the last 50 years as a way to steer public opinion into right wing positions... They are mobilised as elements in a narration of invasion, losing cultural specificities - not only individuals are mobilised, but there are also infrastructures that createpeople as migrants - not having access to proper work, or being put into certain infrastructures from which it’s virtually impossible to get out, createspeople as migrants, as outsiders to society.”

The project uses multi-sited and multi-scale ethnographic methods. A team of 4 persons including Professor Pelizza conducted research in Greece in 2018 at 4 Hotspots (registration centers), then in Germany, and are now going to work in Italy and at the EU Commission. They are the first researchers to have such access after the Turkish-European agreement.

For a list of key terms mentioned, check out our website: https://wordpress.com/post/thefamiliarstrange.com/2556

Links and Citations

Project’s website: http://processingcitizenship.eu and @ProcessCitizens

Latest publication from Project: “Processing Alterity, Enacting Europe” out open access on Science, Technology and Human Values: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0162243919827927

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Jodie-Lee Trembath

This month, we were devastated to discover that the audio file of the awesome podcast panel we had recorded for you was completely corrupted (cue sounds of wailing and gnashing of teeth!). Not to be defeated, we decided we would re-release one of our early episodes, and chose this one because a) it has one of the lowest listen-counts of any of our episodes (and yet is awesome) and b) it is pretty relevant right now, considering its discussion of deepfakes. All the major social media platforms are considering changing their deepfake policies right now, after a doctored video of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was left on Facebook - this was recorded just as the term "deepfake" was coming to be known in the public consciousness.

It's also good timing considering that we are in the midst of an STS season with our interview episodes. So, apologies that this is not new material, but we hope you enjoy it anyway!

Check out the full show notes here!

https://wordpress.com/post/thefamiliarstrange.com/2525

Feature image - screenshot of a YouTube video by The Fakening - https://youtu.be/cVljNVV5VPw

"All of these questions deserve...just that little bit extra thought about what would openness look like for my study and in my discipline? What would it achieve? What effects would it have? And you know that when you have research interview data it's never going to be as simple as just 'publishing it on the internet'. There are all the ethical considerations"

This episode 6 of our STS season, Rosalind Attenborough, who is currently completing her PhD at the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies centre at The University of Edinburgh, talks with our own Julia Brown. Having done her undergraduate training at the ANU, Ros worked for PLoS journals, before retraining in the social studies of science at University College London and then University of Edinburgh. Since 2015, she has been researching how scientists view the idea of scientific openness, which she has explored through numerous interviews with scientists, and policymakers and advocates.

As you are about to hear, the meaning of openness in science is multidimensional and is becoming an increasingly critical topic. Openness in science can refer to open access publishing, open methods and data, and interpersonal openness. Ros explains what has driven open access policy changes in the UK in particular, the funding inequality this produces, and cultures of value and trust economies in science. Ros encourages us to consider the question of openness in ethnographic methods. As a case study of cultural influences on openness, Ros and Julia contemplate the CRISPR-baby scandal.

DISCLAIMER: Ros, nor Julia, know much about the technicalities of the CRISPR case, they were merely discussing it as a way into thinking about cultural differences in value when it comes to ethical codes of scientific conduct.

For the list of our links and citations used in this episode, head over to our website https://thefamiliarstrange.com/

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

If you'd like to support The Familiar Strange, you can find our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Julia Brown and Deanna Catto

Simon (0:48) kicks off this panel by asking us about mediocrity. He reflects on his fieldwork in Iran, where he observed – particularly in the education sphere - that there was a very small difference between being ‘perfect’ and being a ‘failure’. “In Australia we…have this kind of uncomfortable-ness, I think, with excellence and the idea that people who are very good should blow their own trumpets…but in a lot of other societies, there is this real idea that excellence is something that should be shown, demonstrated.” Given the neoliberal culture of competitiveness, Simon asks: do you think it’s okay to be just ‘good enough’? Should we embrace mediocrity or strive for pure perfection?

Next Jodie (6:13) – who has just come back from a wedding in Germany – shifts our conversation towards shared cultural understandings. Or rather, what happens when your expectation of having “coffee and cake” is very different from those around you. She mentions John Law’s concept of the Hinterland, which is (to drastically summarise) about the world being interpreted in different ways by different cultural groups. Thus Jodie’s understanding of “coffee and cake” was drawn from a different cultural ‘Hinterland’ than her German colleagues was, even though the words “coffee and cake” were the same. Simon laughing says that’s his everyday experience. Julia suggests that it’s more about expectations that don’t become explicit until something goes wrong and we need to reflect on it. Kylie reminds us that this is all a learning experience, albeit uncomfortable, and it’s about making the strange…familiar.

Julia (11:14) dives straight into her question: “Where does your expertise end when you become publicly accountable?” She recently attended a masterclass about researcher involvement in public policy making, where it was emphasised that researchers should aspire to conform themselves to a certain ideal of ‘expert’ – such not speaking beyond the boundaries of their field and remaining humble – yet this doesn’t always play out in action. Given this, she adds: How can we effectively use our own expertise in the best way to impact change? Kylie shares her experience of feeling too platformed as an 'expert' in a field where she was only mediocre, while Jodie says it should be more about the skills and broad knowledge that we, as experts, can bring to the table.

Finally, Kylie (16:08) digs a bit deeper into the concepts of giving, receiving, reciprocity and relationships. This has been on her mind with the launch of TFS' Patreon account (Yay!). Kylie wonders whether a relationship can exist before acts of reciprocity are introduced or are they established only through this giving and receiving? Julia says, "It really puts strangers to the test, in terms of how much they will oblige one's request [of giving]" but that "it always requires some kind of reciprocal exchange [for the relationship] to continue." Jodie shares that when it comes to savvy savings during shopping sprees, she feels more comfortable asking for a discount from a stranger whom she struck up a conversation with than a close friend. Simon suggests "If Mauss is right - giving is a relationship, [where] you enter into a relationship by giving something ... I think if you give a gift to someone, you are entering into a relationship with that person ... a relationship of obligations... Is there such a thing as a 'free gift'?"

LINKS AND CITATIONS can be found at thefamiliarstrange.com

Our Patreon can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto and Matthew Phung

In episode 5 of our STS Series, Inger Mewburn, Associate Professor and Director of Research Training at the Australian National University, founder of the popular blog The Thesis Whisperer and author of How to Tame Your PhD, Becoming an Academic, How To Be An Academic, and How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble, chats to our own Jodie-Lee Trembath. They talk about what it means to be a post-disciplinary or interdisciplinary scholar using ethnography to understand social phenomena, about machine learning and the values that are reflected through the machines we create, and how sometimes these values are ones that we don’t really want to see, and about the future of research and work where algorithms and technology form a collaborative effort between humans and robots.

QUOTES (full list on thefamiliarstrange.com)

“[Machine learning] is a broad area of study, and that’s one thing you don’t see from a distance is how broad it is. We like to do what we call human-in-the-loop type of machine learning, which is a co-creation of something. So, what we’re using is the machine to, sort of, both capture our knowledge and reflect it back at us, but at the same time the machine’s training us … When a social scientist or an anthropologist or anyone for that matter, who’s looking to collaborate with a machine, it’s a collaboration: they shape you, you shape them, what you make is this nexus in between.”

“Ethnography is just a really considered look at what’s right in front of your face – the familiar strange, right. As soon as you slow things down, start to take things apart, you notice things that, in the moment, just pass you by.”

LINKS AND CITATIONS (full list on website)

If you'd like to read Inger's blog The Thesis Whisperer, you can find it here: https://thesiswhisperer.com/

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto

On this month’s panel, we welcome Will Grant from The Wholesome Show onto the podcast and introduce Kylie Dolan, one of TFS' Editorial Board members who is making her podcast debut!

Julia [1:01] dives straight into the Heart Foundation’s latest campaign ‘Heartless Words’, which has caused a bit of controversy in Australia. Julia elaborates: “the message is basically that if you love your kids, you’ll take better care of your heart. Now… [it’s] irresponsible…to suggest that all heart conditions are caused by people’s behaviours” since it portrays the victims of heart disease as selfish. One thing that this campaign does highlight is the radical change in thinking about and approaching health problems from an individual-focus (which has dominated Australian medicine) to one of a collective-body-focus (i.e. your health affects your kin and you do not stand isolated from them). Given this scenario, Julia asks if there is a more effective way that health organisation can demonstrate this shift in thinking about the collective body WITHOUT turning to victim-blaming portrayals?

Next, Will [5:13] changes our focus to stories, since recently he’s been grappling with the questions of what a story is, what a story means to us, how a story works and how it has worked throughout history. After trying to define what a story is, Will alters his question to us: “We engage with stories so much, why is it hard to articulate what it is?” Kylie shares, “for me, when you brought up stories, I thought that the most resonating stories that I’ve ever heard are moral tales… fables … And I feel like maybe they’re supposed to communicate something that can be interpreted and emplaced and taken on differently [by] whoever hears them. And different stories can have different effects on people as well.” Simon contests that “It’s a very hard question Will!”

Kylie [11:05] moves our discussion onto Reconciliation Week, which marks and celebrates two very important moments in Australia’s history – the 1967 referendum to improve services available to Indigenous Australians and include them in both federal protection laws and the national census, and the 1992 Mabo decision that overturned the myth of terra nullius, which held that Australian land belonged to no one prior to British colonial arrival and occupation (obviously NOT TRUE). This year’s Reconciliation Week theme is ‘Grounded in Truth, Walk Together with Courage’, about truth-telling and grounding the relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait people and non-Indigenous Australians. So Kylie asks: what does it take to tell the truth about something you’re afraid of or ashamed of?

Lastly, Simon [17:15] concludes our discussion by asking what happens when prophecy fails? Referring to the recent Federal Election in Australia, in which the predicted outcome of the election - which had received a lot of hype leading up to it - ended up being incredibly incorrect, Simon questions what happens when you invest strong ideas into something which is predicted to come about, but then it doesn’t come true? What happens next? Julia suggests maybe we should lower our expectations, Will tells us a story about balloons, the Trump election and coming to terms with outcomes, and Kylie offers that maybe after the prophecy fails, we naturally try to gain control over whatever we can, such as cleaning our bathroom.

LINKS AND CITATIONS - full list on our website https://thefamiliarstrange.com

If you'd like to listen to the witty banter of The Wholesome Show, check them out here: http://wholesomeshow.com/

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto

“I went into this thinking that objectivity and neutrality were the Name of the Game. That you couldn’t do good research if you were in any way biased or if you had your own opinions or experiences or values that might influence the research.”

In episode number 4 of our STS Series, Dr Jacqui Hoepner, an early career research fellow at the Australian National University. They begin by discussing Jacqui’s PhD experience, where she originally set out to navigate the tricky landscape of wind turbines and public health, with good intentions to be a neutral researcher in a very politicised realm, but after receiving some serious push-backs she chose instead to turn her attention to silencing in academia. Then they unpack further what it means to have academic freedom and question where you draw the line around what research should and should not be done. They end by talking about reflexivity and what value anthropology has in studies of science.

LINKS AND CITATIONS

If you’d like to read the blogpost that Jacqui wrote for TFS last year, you can find it here: https://thefamiliarstrange.com/2018/05/24/academic-freedom/

And you can listen to Jacqui’s podcast ‘You Need to Shut Up’ here https://www.youneedtoshutup.com/ or here https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/you-need-to-shut-up/id1367884727

If you’d also like to be inspired by the incredible work of Simone Dennis, you can read more about her here: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/dennis-sj

Mary Douglas (1966) Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Purity_and_Danger.html?id=QGRUTH8hnQ4C

QUOTES (for full list see our website)

“I was quite naïve thinking that all I had to do was have good intentions and that was enough to… do research in this highly politicised area.”

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto

This month, we’d like to welcome and thank special guests Dr Jill Sheppard and Martyn Pearce from Policy Forum Pod for joining our semi-themed panel discussion, inspired by the upcoming Australian Federal Election.

Jill [1:16] starts us off with a very topical issue right now in Australia – voting for the upcoming Federal Election. Jill tells us that “in Australian politics and the study of Australian politics, we’re really interested in this idea of election day as a ritual”. In Australia, most of the polling booths are set up in local school halls and it’s common for schools to take the opportunity to fire up a BBQ, sell baked goods and raise money for the school. This is where the term ‘democracy sausage’ has come from, as it is customary to buy a sausage on bread after voting and engage in community activities. Given that around half of the voters will be voting at pre-poll booths, Jill poses the question: is that going to change something about the ritual nature of Australian elections and what are we going to lose from that? “What happens when we lose the community spirit?”

Martyn [7:00] moves our conversation onto the meaning behind belonging to a social group. Quite the football enthusiast, Martyn shares that being a Crystal Palace fan, for him, doesn’t mean he just likes the team, but that identifies strongly as being a ‘Crystal Palace fan’ and encompasses the group values that it entails. He asks us what happens when the values of a group you belong to change? Jill reflects on the Essendon football club after their drug scandal where she previously had been a huge fan and describes her disenfranchisement as being “worse than death”. Simon offers that the embodiment of certain values relates to the degree of social solidarity you have with an institution, suggesting that when you don’t identify strongly as a fan (or voter of a particular Party) then you are less likely to embody the values that come with that fan identity.

Next, Julia [12:40] turns our attention to Australia’s dismal mental health care system, after a conversation she had with Dr Sebastian Rosenburg about accountability and the public focus on 'who pays for it' rather than 'what is an effective treatment'. Jill questions what is good ‘value for money’ and what seems “easy” and “hard” when making government policies and how that impacts on the choices on spending. Martyn asks about BIG numbers and BIG announcements - the chance for publicity - and how that impacts government choices? Maybe this is a bigger social question: How much do we trust the government, the choices they make surrounding funding and how much do we ‘nit-pick’ over these choices?

Simon [19:00] concludes our discussion by asking whether anthropologists have any role to play in diplomacy? Julia answers that “I would like to think there is, but I’m not sure that…the Australian government system is ready for it. Because I think there is a role for being able to have diplomatic conversations that are a little more flexible and acknowledge the shortcomings of one’s home government, but I don’t think that’s something that’s really accepted yet.” Jill thinks about diplomats who travel overseas with specific views, and what effect introducing nuance and criticism would have: “what does the anthro-diplomat talk about when he shows up to the dinner party?”

LINKS & CITATIONS are on our website https://thefamiliarstrange.com/

You can find Policy Forum Pod anywhere good podcasts are streamed!

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto

“The claim was 'isn’t this wonderful that remote controls keep humans safe'. Now, all you have to do is recognise that this is referring only to certain humans. The assumption is the humans that matter are those who are involved in US military operations. And it completely  dehumanises the humans who are of course the objects, the targets of these weapon systems and it’s really indicative of a much wider problem”

In episode number 3 of our STS Series, Lucy Suchman, Professor of the anthropology of science and technology at Lancaster University, recipient of multiple awards including the 4S John Desmond Bernal Prize for Distinguished Contribution to the Field, and previously a Principal Scientist, manager and co-founder of the Work Practice and Technology Area at  Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, Chats with our own Jodie-Lee Trembath at the 4S conference in Sydney last year, which Lucy was President of in 2016 and 2017. They unpack the complex choreography between humans and machines, from an anthropological perspective, including what it means when someone says that using the photocopier is ‘too complicated’ (I’m sure we’ve all had this frustrating moment), the fundamental differences between humans and AI, the ethical conundrums that Google has faced with drones and what is involved in STS for an anthropologist.

QUOTES

“I was really intrigued by this complaint that the machine was too complicated, and … what we need to do is start by understanding what people actually mean when they say it’s too complicated? What are the experiences that they’re really having that lead them to report that trouble?”

“Differences between us and machines make it extremely difficult to create machines that are actually human-like”

“In a way as an academic… and in a way as a US citizen…one of the things I do appreciate about the United States is that you can be pretty outspoken in your position. And relative to a lot of places in the world, you can do that safely.”

“I think one of the things that draws a lot of us to STS is that it’s very much an inter-discipline. So it’s a field that brings together people who are interested in historical and contemporary and to a large extent critical … in the sense of questioning received assumptions in the worlds of science and technology”

LINKS AND CITATIONS available on our website

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Deanna Catto