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Anthropology Seminars
Two talks co-hosted Sydney Student and Staff Workshop in Anthropological Research Methods (SSSWARM), Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) and the School of Social and Political Sciences' Discipline of Anthropology.
There’s a Good Boy: making kin with a symbiotic virus & Circulations of Law: Translation and the Work of Language
When:
Seminar 1: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 • 03:30PM - 05:00PM
Seminar 2: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 • 03:30PM - 05:00PM
Where: A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 441
There is no need to book in advance. Contact Michael Edwards for enquiries: michael.edwards@sydney.edu.au
Seminar 1: There’s a Good Boy: making kin with a symbiotic virus
Presented by Ben Hegarty (UNSW)
Virological research is now attending to the possibility that not all viruses cause disease. Some viruses may even be good for us. In this paper, I discuss opportunities for theorising viral symbiosis drawing on my research about the human pegivirus, also known as the ‘Good Boy Virus.’ Good Boy was accidentally discovered in 1995 in the context of hepatitis research. Since then, Good Boy was found to have beneficial impacts for people living with HIV and Ebola, and even touted as a potential 'biovaccine' at a moment of increasing antimicrobial resistance. An ethnography of the human pegivirus offers an ideal opportunity to develop a theoretical account of multispecies symbiosis, in turn opening new vistas on how to live ethically with viruses. However, viruses are notoriously tricky to study as a participant observer: they are microscopic and can be dangerous to human and non-human hosts. This paper will bring together concepts and approaches from virology, queer theory, and more-than-human anthropology, to invite participants into a dialogue about how ethnographic methods can advance new understandings of multispecies relations through an empirical, multisited account of the Good Boy virus.
Seminar 2: Circulations of Law: Translation and the Work of Language
Presented by Iza Hussin (University of Cambridge)
‘Circulations of Law’ explores the material and textual life of law across a shifting global landscape, and in doing so considers how law moves, what happens when it arrives, and how it gains its onward momentum and direction. The much-travelled figure of Abu Bakar of Johore (1833-1896) provides its narrative and archival spine: his travels and encounters encapsulated a world of sovereigns in the shadow of empire, from Java to Japan, Delhi to Constantinople, Cairo to London. At the time of his death, he was responsible for the promulgation of Southeast Asia's first constitution, and of one of the earliest iterations of a now-familiar formulation: "Islam shall be the religion of the state." The talk considers the dynamics that aided the transport, translation and domestication of these iterations of Islam in law. More broadly, it invites discussion around methods for the study of law in motion, in which the work of language plays a critical role.