[Anthropgrad] Friday Seminars (28 March 2008)

[sinwen.lau at anu.edu.au]

Anthropology Student Seminar Series, Semester 1, 2008
Milgate Room, AD Hope
28 March 2008, 3 pm

'The Indonesian Dance-Off: Fighting over Stat(e)us in Australia's Western Frontier' by Monika Doxey

Anthropologist writing about multiculturalism frequently reverts to discussions of ethnic eating and performance spectacle as either a superficial expressions of harmony (Hage 1998, Hall 1997) or as crucial to migrant identity (Bottomley 1992, Ram 2005). This presentation will impress the importance of an insider’s perspective on ethnic performance in a migration setting. The cultural actors take their performance very seriously, as a daily life activity within the multicultural business. As Indonesians they feel compelled to work within an Indonesian homogenous national culture (Unity in Diversity) and as migrants within a context of Australia’s multicultural identity. However, the dancers I talk about use their performance not to ‘speak to’ the Australian public but rather to their own migrant community—the Perth Indonesian community. Thus, the performances become a symbolic ritual that unites the members of a category of people in pursuit to construct a shared meaning of themselves (Durkheim 1915). They use these performances in an attempt to achieve their aspiration of upward social mobility —gaining status within the Indonesian community. Everybody wants status, but why do these dancers want it from the Indonesian community and why does the community use the state as represented by the consulate as a marker of status? These questions will be addressed through an ethnographic description of the 2007 June Indonesian Bazaar and the March Harmony Day Festival that preceded it.