[Anthropgrad] Post Field Seminar Friday 19th Dec 9.30am Milgate Room AD Hope

[Gillian Dalgetty]

Post Field Seminar Friday 19th Dec 9.30am Milgate Room AD Hope

*5 Needles 6 Qi*

In this post-fieldwork seminar I will tell the story of my PhD project 
to date and present a provisional thesis structure for feedback from the 
department. My thesis will centre on how teacher practioners in 
acupuncture promote trust in their pedagogic relationships. The thesis 
will describe the teaching of two experienced and charismatic 
acupuncturist teachers who were introducing non government acupunctures 
to novice and expert students, using apparently different teaching 
styles which converged on similar themes of concern in medical learning 
and practice. Teachers were concerned to promote their knowledge as 
complete and efficacious. I think they promoted this by performing 
transparency in content and teaching style. At first I understood these 
concerns through “luong y keep secrets” (traditional medicine doctors 
keep secrets) but later in light of a widespread cynicism about validity 
of credentials among people I worked with, I started to think knowledge 
completeness was a wider idea. I think that teacher acupuncturists were 
concerned to maintain self-as-expert by promoting and proving himself to 
be a moral, successful practioner active in the clinic. Fieldwork was 
carried out in HCM city, Vietnam and its catchments between January 2007 
and August 2008.

-- 
Gillian Dalgetty
PhD Candidate
Anthropology Dept
Research School of Pacific Asian Studies
Coombs Building
Australian National University
ACT 2600

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Mobile : 04 0536 3268