Julia:
Hey, everyone. First off, we at The Familiar Strange want to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose lands we are recording this podcast, and pay our respect to the elders of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, past, present and emerging. Let's go.

Julia:
Hello, and welcome to The Familiar Strange, brought to you with support from the Australian Anthropological Society, the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific, and the College of Arts and Social Sciences, produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association, and coming to you from the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. I am your Familiar Stranger today, Julia Brown, together with my fellow Familiar Strangers, Kylie Wong Dolan.

Kylie:
Hello.

Julia:
Jodie-Lee Trembath.

Jodie:
Hi.

Julia:
And Alex D'Aloia, who is our newest TFS member and running our Facebook Chats group.

Kylie:
Yay!

Jodie:
Woo!

Julia:
Welcome, Alex, do you want to give us a quick one liner about what your PhD is about?

Alex:
In short, I'm looking at a concept called the popular solidarity economy in Ecuador, particularly, its economic and political anthropology and ideas of the state. What it is and how people kind of think of it.

Jodie:
Welcome.

Alex:
Thank you.

Julia:
Okay, so I'm going to kick us off today, and I have been thinking about the attachments that we have to things in our home environment. This has been prompted by the fact that I'm currently moving house, which means doing a big declutter and reevaluation of the things that I want in my next home environment. A prominent anthropologist who has written on material culture and people's attachment to things is Danny Miller. He's written a book called The Comfort of Things, looking at how it is that material things matter to people and help us to make sense of our lives. So I was thinking about that idea at the same time as thinking through the Marie Kondo technique, which is about essentially getting rid of things that don't spark joy in your life. I did try this technique out, but I felt a bit conflicted because it just seemed a little bit too simple. It was also feeding into this new reevaluation of what the material home environment should be, very minimalist, et cetera. I just wondered what you guys think of the emotional attachment that people have to things in their environment, in light of this new kind of minimalism movement.

Jodie:
I think that it's been a really interesting movement and it's one that I have thoroughly embraced. I watched every episode of the Netflix series and cried every episode. They're giving me really like "What the hell" kind of looks right now.

Julia:
No-

Alex:
I haven't watched it.

Kylie:
[crosstalk 00:00:02:50].

Julia:
I haven't watched it, but this is really interesting. The emotion that comes with-

Jodie:
Yeah, so much emotion.

Julia:
... dealing with stuff in the home environment.

Jodie:
Yes.

Julia:
What is that about?

Jodie:
I think for me, it was about particularly the way that Marie Kondo took people through a journey of saying, "This home has been a safe space for you. It has given you a lot of things. It has given you joy in your life. It's protected you from the elements." Now is an opportunity to thank your home for everything that it's ever given you, so that you can release the items you no longer need in a way that is grateful and ... it was beautiful. It was just beautiful.

Julia:
It's beautiful.

Jodie:
It was so beautiful and I just couldn't stop crying.

Julia:
That is lovely Jodie, did you-

Jodie:
Thanks Jules.

Julia:
So do you guys practice that-

Jodie:
Yes.

Julia:
... that technique at home now?

Jodie:
Yeah. So we're going through systematically and trying to curate the things that we do have.

Alex:
Did you sincerely thank each thing as you ... because that's one of the steps that I was actually really intrigued by. Sincerely thank each thing that you're going to dispose of.

Jodie:
Yeah, but it's not just thanking it, it's thanking it for its service. Its service in your life. And it's doing that more for you, right? I feel guilt over everything. If I've got gifts, or I feel guilty about throwing things out because that's terrible for the environment or because it makes me feel like I'm too privileged. By thanking the object, I can kind of release myself of that guilt. I can say, "I know this is going to go to a better place. I'm going to make sure it has a new life in a new context."

Alex:
I'm terrible at throwing things out. I feel that guilt, so reading the steps and saying that, "Thank the thing for its service." I was like, "Oh wow, that could work."

Jodie:
Absolutely.

Julia:
What about things that you just have to take to the tip? Because they're of no use to anyone else.

Jodie:
Suddenly everybody is overwhelming the op shops. For our American listeners, we're talking about thrift shops. And they've just been overwhelmed with stuff.

Kylie:
Wow, and nobody is going to buy it anymore?

Jodie:
No, because they're trying to declutter.

Alex:
They're also getting rid of that stuff.

Julia:
Yeah.

Kylie:
Yeah.

Kylie:
The other thing that gets me about this is the idea of introducing new commodities into the home. With the introduction of this minimalist aesthetic comes the introduction of other minimalist type things, products that order our spaces, and white walls. I think something that maybe we don't do when we think about decluttering is think about how that might be kind of an implant of something else. It's not always maybe getting rid of things, but it's introducing something new.

Julia:
Yes, and you know what? I would go so far as to say that it's almost a denial of the consumerism that has come about in the last 30, 40 years. Because if you think back to even mid 20th century, the home environment was still quite minimalist. Even in our lifetimes, the accumulation of stuff has increased so much that-

Jodie:
And disposable stuff.

Julia:
and disposable stuff, exactly.

Kylie:
Yeah.

Alex:
For the record, I am a 31 year old man and I still have way too many of my toys from my childhood.

Jodie:
Attachment, right.

Alex:
Yep, I'm getting a lot of nods from around the table. I know I need to get rid of them.

Julia:
You know what?

Alex:
But my parents have a huge garage.

Julia:
But you don't have to have them in sight. This is the thing. You can have boxes of stuff that you just put up in the roof and you feel better about yourself because it's not there in anyone's vision, but you haven't actually thrown it out. So this really speaks-

Kylie:
...to liminal spaces. [crosstalk 00:06:21]

Jodie:
So hang on, what do you mean by liminal spaces?

Kylie:
If you put your toys in the garage, then you will enable your home space to be free of them. But landfill also to be free of them. And we don't have to think about them in a very attached way or a particularly detached way. They're sort of out of mind, but maybe not on the guilt zone.

Alex:
First time on the podcast and this audience is already getting to know a lot more about than I actually intended.

Julia:
Are you comfortable with this?

Alex:
It's fine. I'll have to be.

Julia:
Kylie, what are you thinking about this week?

Kylie:
I've been thinking about activism. It's mainly because of two massive social and pretty sustained movements that have been happening in and beyond Australia. Firstly in Hong Kong as everybody I think will be very well aware, millions of people have been on the streets protesting the proposed introduction of an extradition bill. The other really exciting thing that's happening is a great deal of community action from the community of Villa Willa in Queensland who are trying to prevent the deportation of an Australian Tamil family from Biloela in Australia to Srilanka. Those two really exciting campaigns and movements got me thinking about what is it that incites social action and especially social action that is done for things that are bigger than us.

Alex:
My mind actually leaps to Benedict Anderson and Imagined Communities. How do we imagine communities or for me belonging? Do you belong to Hong Kong and what makes you belong to Hong Kong in that particular moment? What makes you or those people belong to Biloela and how do you experience that belonging?

Jodie:
How much of that is about that sense of belonging and in groups and out groups and then how much of it is about the way that feeling builds and gathers momentum and then takes people along with that momentum. And I think maybe an example of that was the way that people were protesting about the plebiscite to determine whether or not Australia should have marriage equality for the LGBTQ community. There were many protests about that because basically more than 70% of Australians had already indicated through our vast range of surveys that they believed that marriage equality was a thing. So, that critical mass had already been reached. And because of that, I think it made it easier for people to feel that they were part of an in group that was on the right side of history. If that had come about in my teens, I don't think it would have received the same level of support because I don't think they would had enough people who were already feeling that -- let's use collective effervescence -- So Durkheim talks about the idea of that kind of group, like the spirit moves you as a, as a group. I think that that's sort of what was happening there. And I wonder how much of activism is about that momentum.

Julia:
Yeah. I mean It's interesting to think about whether or not these movements are instigated by single people and often you hear about a group of people starting it. It's not any one person. So therefore it would rely on that a collective effervescence as you say.

Jodie:
Yeah, it's bigger than any given individual. And my question was going to be, how important is a charismatic leader or charismatic individual to lead that? And I guess that question still stands.

Alex:
I reckon it can certainly help, but if we're talking about that actual boots on the ground, I am being teargassed, do I stay or do I go? I think that's close to teal collective effervescence. I think you're quite right. It's that if everyone around me we are just in the mood, I am picking up on that in some almost animal below thinking sort of way.

Jodie:
So affect theory, right? If you take affect theory, the effect theory is the notion that atmospheres can have feelings that kind of swirl about. That's kind of the basic gist of it. Teresa Brennan took that a level further and looked at the way that hormones are released by individuals and how smells affect the way we feel about each other. She looked at the biology of it as well as the effects of affect and showed how they interacted with each other.

Julia:
When we're thinking about whether they have to be individual leaders. I'm just thinking how I heard on the radio the other day, one of the family friends of the temple family who are now on Christmas Island had flown over to Christmas Island because she didn't want them to go through what they were going through alone and she was obviously reporting back and willing to share things on national radio. So keep the community in the loop and keep that effervescence going if you like. So I'm just thinking about how there can be kind of local leaders within these movements that feed things back.

Kylie:
In that case, it seems to me like that person has sort of emerged as a leader from a midst a group. Something that your point made me think about Jodie was about whether in groups things start to feel more right and justifiable with this kind of feeling of effervescence or whether they feel less risky because you're acting in a group.

Julia:
And speaking of diffusing responsibility onto you Jodie, what are you thinking about this week?

Jodie:
Smooth. Okay, so I've been thinking a lot about the bushfires in Queensland and New South Wales. So for those listeners who aren't aware, Australia has had to declare bushfire season -- it's called wildfire in most of the rest of the world -- we've had to declare bushfire season early this year and there are more than a hundred fires burning all over new South Wales and Queensland at the moment. It's been a really serious situation going on up there. But it also made me think quite a lot about how we manage fire. And just to give you guys context on that, my dad was a fiery and he was the head of fire safety for Queensland for a long time. So I've grown up thinking about what fire means, but in a very specific way. And then becoming an anthropologist, I obviously realised that fire had completely different meanings, particularly in lots of indigenous contexts.

Jodie:
I wanted to touch on a paper that I was looking at recently and it's Tim Neale's paper and he's one of our very good friends at Anthropology@Deakin. A shout out to Anthropology@Deakin right now. So Tim's research area is about bushfires and wildfires and he published a paper this year about the way that indigenous communities are being brought into the fire management processes much more now than they were in the past, not just in Australia. It also talks about Canada and other places and how we are using more indigenous knowledges in our management, but also not necessarily always acknowledging that, for example, backburning is something that has been going on in Australia for many thousands of years. And yet it's something that we govern as a settler colony. So my question for you guys is what are the different ways that you think fire has meaning? How do we navigate when fires is destroying homes and is a problem for various people? How do we also make space for fire to have those, those multiple meanings that they've had for many thousands of years?

Kylie:
My first thought on this is about control, things being within and out of control. Firstly, the language difference, bushfires and wildfires, but I think that introduces a different type of thinking about a lack of control that I think is different from in Australia.

Alex:
Honestly, it made me think about, I want to know how this moves across time. Bushfire has traditionally been an adversary. There's a real settler, the rural mythos about like fighting the land, bring it under control as you say. As that runs up against other conceptions of fire and bushfire, what does that mean and how do they more fixed change does one giveaway, et cetera. How does this look across time? I think it would be a really interesting way of looking at this.

Jodie:
I think time is an important factor here because according to Tim's paper, there is literally double the number of bushfires in Australia now than there were a hundred years ago. We are seeing obviously catastrophic changes to the climate. It's not just the way that our culture has changed, our physical environment has changed as well. So perhaps fire is even more of an adversary than it was then.

Julia:
And I'm wondering also about the human influence beyond the climate change factor, going back to individual arsonists that might light fires deliberately and I think the first question when we hear of fires in Australia is often has it been lit by another human being?

Kylie:
And is that I'll need to attribute blame to a human agent rather than a nonhuman agent that's fire.

Julia:
Yes, because I reckon that gives people a greater sense of control-

Kylie:
Right?

Julia:
...if we can pinpoint a person.

Jodie:
Well, I would just say that as we, as we finished this topic up, our thoughts are with the people who are suffering. It's, it's been a really obviously an absolute tragedy up there. So, so we're thinking of you and on that very cheery note, Julia, I'll hand it back to you.

Julia:
Alex. What are you thinking about this week?

Alex:
I'm in what is technically the very early stages of writing up. I've been doing a lot of writing of vignettes, writing up the things I've seen, et cetera. Where I've been having difficulties is in some ways trying to connect this to theory and I was chatting to my supervisor about this sort of expressing my reluctance of imposing my own thoughts and models on my daughter and my informants. Then my supervisor said to me, "Alex, on a certain level, everything is an imposition. At the end of the day you're the one doing the analyzing. That's kind of how it goes." It certainly helped me to start to make that sort of connection. I mean, I'm no longer sitting there saying... Looking at my data being like, "say something about citizenship, something about citizenship." So my question to you guys is how do you guys, particularly two people who have written up deal with that little conundrum of how much do you impose and how much do you just let it speak for itself?

Julia:
I really feel for what you're going through. I had the same difficulty and I ended up threading the words of my participants wherever possible throughout my thesis. I almost overdid it, but hopefully I found the right balance in the end. My question would be back to you, the theories that you're building on and that you're trying to demonstrate, are those theories backed up with words that necessarily support the idea of citizenship, for example? Anyway?

Alex:
I think so. So even though -- it's funny, even though it was about how people should act in an economic way, a lot of it actually was had you interact with the government. Of course, they didn't frame it in those terms. So my point is even though they're talking about economics, actually kind of talking about citizenship.

Jodie:
How do you know that that's what they're talking about?

Alex:
And that is the trap up and falling into for ages. For me I think I've reached a stage where I just have to call it, I have to say, "Look, I need a label for whatever they're talking about. I need a word in the literature. The term is citizenship. And to be able to speak to the literature, you have to use that terminology." Susan Ellison is one of my main interlocutors. But of course, to what extent does this serve my needs, the needs of the Academy and to what extent is that me imposing myself?

Jodie:
So I would say that the question that you're, you're always asking yourself as you're writing up is what makes me think that this is the phenomenon that I'm observing. As long as you are able to explain your thinking, it's like maths, right? You know, you've got to kind of show you working. And if you can show you're working, then people can argue with that working or they can agree with it, but at least you've been transparent about how you got there.

Julia:
I know it would be very repetitive to just use their words and then have a quote from them and then you know it is more productive to paraphrase and to gel ideas together in concise ways and then back it up with all the detail that helped you get there.

Kylie:
I wonder if part of your ambivalence is to do with a kind of epistemological pivot that you have to do away from your participants and towards the Academy? And is it feeling like you're answering more to people in academia than working directly with your participants and I suspect that is where those feelings might come from for me, is that what you're going through?

Alex:
Yeah, I suspect so. I think in some ways part of it is I came into it with a somewhat romanticised idea of what I would do as an anthropologist, particularly cause I was moving into a very theoretically aware field side. These are lefty government bureaucrats in Ecuador who love their theorists and love their theory. And so you know, you have this limit, I'm going to turn up, we're going to build this theory together and it's going to be great. They do this course on the popular solidarity economy telling people how to be good little populous solidarity economy actors and I ask them about it and they respond, but in a way that at least made me think and feel that that wasn't an aspect of the work that they themselves had reflected on to any great degree.

Julia:
So do you feel that you're alleviated of worrying about using the wrong words if they in fact don't necessarily have the words themselves yet?

Alex:
I think I'm moving into that space. I've been very reluctant about it and I think it's something I'm going to have to continue to check myself for...

Julia:
You just have to spell out really clearly for yourself what your purpose is in this research and just keep going back to that when you're doubting your direction.

Alex:
And I am sure if my supervisor is listening to this, she is applauding you right now.

Jodie:
Are you familiar with Clifford and Marcus's Writing Culture? It's called Writing Culture, the poetics and politics of ethnography and it's a really pivotal texts from the 80s that basically talks about the fact that no matter what you write, it's going to be political. The things you choose not to say are just as political and politically motivated as the things you do say. There's no way of getting around this, so the fact that you are becoming less paralysed by having realised that is exactly the way forward.

Julia:
Well done. Great workshopping guys.

Jodie:
We've solved every thing.

Julia:
And on that note, we'd better wind things up unfortunately. So I would like to thank Kylie Wong Dolan...

Kylie:
Thanks.

Julia:
Jodie Lee Trembath...

Jodie:
Thanks Julia.

Julia:
...and Alex D'Aloia

Alex:
Cheers.

Julia:
And me, your host, Julia Brown. Today's episode was produced by all of us at The Familiar Strange. Our executive producers are the wonderful Deanna Catto and Matthew Phung. Subscribe to The Familiar Strange podcast. You can find us on iTunes and all the other familiar places including Spotify. And if you'd like to support us, please do check out our Patreon page, patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange, not the strange familiars, which is another fun podcast, just not ours.

Julia:
You can find the show notes, including a list of all the books and papers mentioned today, plus our blog about anthropology's role in the world at thefamiliarstrange.com. If you'd like to contribute to the blog or have anything to say to me or the other hosts of this program, email us at submissions@thefamiliarstrange.com tweet us at @TFStweets or look us up on Facebook and Instagram. Please contribute to our Facebook Chats forum, run by Alex...

Alex:
Also, there's a competition. The best comment every fortnight, as judged by us, gets a $10AUD Amazon voucher?

Jodie:
Correct, our last winner was Dethntaxes, who we love - Who will it be next fortnight?

Julia:
Music is by Pete Dabrot. Special thanks to Nick Farrelly, Will Grant, Martyn Pearce and Maud Rowe. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep talking strange.