[Anthropgrad] Pre-Field Seminar by Elise Adams on Friday, 24 Oct 08

[Sin Wen Lau]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series, Semester 2, 2008
Milgate Room, AD Hope
24 October 2008, 3 pm

'Aboriginal Employment in Sydney: Barriers and Support'
Pre-Field Seminar by ELISE ADAMS, PhD Candidate, Department of 
Archaeology and Anthropology

The mainstream Australian media alarmingly portrays an all-encompassing 
welfare dependency enveloping Australia’s Indigenous population, 
presenting stereotypic ideas that Aborigines cannot manage regular 
employment. I want to research the experience of employment for 
self-identifying Aboriginal persons in Sydney. This presentation will 
focus upon two themes central to my proposed research: the ‘moral 
economy’ and assertions of its centrality to Aboriginal ways of life, 
and questions of identity. Many Aborigines have been characterized as 
living in terms of a ‘moral economy’. I will explore this notion 
critically and comparatively, and describe the way it has been used with 
respect to Aborigines. I intend to investigate the extent to which it 
may be appropriate to understand urban Aboriginal household and wider 
social interaction in terms of such a notion. And secondly, I want to 
understand the lives of self-identifying Aboriginal people who have been 
relatively successful in finding and keeping employment in the urban 
context: To what extent do the lifestyles and practices of my research 
subjects resemble or differ from those of the mainstream population? How 
do these people understand themselves and live as Aborigines in the 
urban context? To what extent do they see practices as Aboriginal and 
more or less characteristic of themselves and others? I plan to answer 
these questions by exploring the dimensions of social and kin 
relationships and the barriers and supports they may present to employed 
Aboriginal persons in Sydney when obtaining and maintaining employment.

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Lau Sin Wen
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT0200
Australia

Telephone : +61-2-6125-3271
Fax	 : +61-2-6125-4896
Email	 : sinwen.lau at anu.edu.au
Website	 : http://rspas.anu.edu.au/anthropology
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