While backpackers extensively contribute to the national economy as tourists and workers, they are only here on a short-term basis. Being temporary non-citizens there is less emotional investment into backpackers’ wellbeing and security. It is important to evaluate whether national policy overlooks (or even supports) the ongoing pattern of violence against backpackers because their presence benefits the national economy.
Australia
Hearing Indigenous Voices
The 27th of May to the 3rd of June is National Reconciliation Week in Australia. Reconciliation, for anthropology, includes reckoning with the discipline’s colonial past, and confronting the ongoing problems within anthropology today. Anthropology and anthropologists have been involved in violence and dispossession against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And it is still yet … Continue reading Hearing Indigenous Voices
Ep. #9 Calculated risk: Elizabeth Watt talks sexual power, politics, and vulnerability in the field
This track has been removed. Please read the blog post Lizzy wrote to accompany this conversation: "Why #metoo is complicated for female anthropologists." “I knew I was making myself vulnerable, but I also knew that there was phone reception down there, and there were other people within shouting range, and that I had a weapon … Continue reading Ep. #9 Calculated risk: Elizabeth Watt talks sexual power, politics, and vulnerability in the field
Like a Skin
For those of us who have grown up in the ‘West’, we tend to think of religion as a customizable category. Some of us are born into a particular sect, others with no particular orientation, and as we travel through life, we’re presented with a panoply of options from which to choose. Many of us … Continue reading Like a Skin