Mixed Race Identities in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Books, Media Archive, Oceania, Social Science on 2016-12-26 20:45Z by Steven

Mixed Race Identities in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Routledge
2016-12-20
246 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781138677708

Edited by:

Farida Fozdar, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
University of Western Australia

Kirsten McGavin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Anthropology)
School of Social Science
University of Queensland

This volume offers a “southern,” Pacific Ocean perspective on the topic of racial hybridity, exploring it through a series of case studies from around the Australo-Pacific region, a region unique as a result of its very particular colonial histories. Focusing on the interaction between “race” and culture, especially in terms of visibility and self-defined identity; and the particular characteristics of political, cultural and social formations in the countries of this region, the book explores the complexity of the lived mixed race experience, the structural forces of particular colonial and post-colonial environments and political regimes, and historical influences on contemporary identities and cultural expressions of mixed-ness.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction: “Mixed Race” in the Australo-Pacific Region / Kirsten McGavin and Farida Fozdar
  • 1. Descentism in Three Acts / Emma Kowal
  • 2. Reimagining Ancestry in Northern Australia’s Gulf Country: The Politics of History, Indigeneity and Race / David Trigger and Richard Martin
  • 3. Raising “Mixed Race” Asian/European Migrant Children in Australia / Maki Meyer and Farida Fozdar
  • 4. “See This Skin, It Is Black and White Together” / Margot Ford and Ailsa Purdon
  • 5. Asian (Con)Fusion: Identity Markers Among Mixed-Asian “Race” Individuals in Perth, Western Australia / Crystal Abidin
  • 6. Who Are We?German-Tongan Identity in New Zealand and Australia / Kasia Cook
  • 7. Constructing and Interpreting “Mixed Race” and “Mixed Parentage” in Papua New Guinea / Helen Johnson and Kirsten McGavin
  • 8. Papua New Guinean-Australian Hybridity: Reflections of an “Insider” / Anita Iko Togolo
  • 9. The Transformations of the “Métis Question” in New Caledonia (1853-2009) / Adrian Muckle and Benoit Trepied
  • 10. A Categorical Failure: “Mixed Race” in Colonial Papua New Guinea / Michael Goddard
  • 11. Searching for a Sound: Music and “Mixed Race” Identity in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea / Michael Webb
  • 12. Lingering Legacies of German Colonialism: The “Mixed Race” Diasporas in Oceania / Christine Winter
  • 13. “Mixed Race” Identity and West Papuan Political Activism: Two Case Studies / Camellia Webb-Gannon
  • 14. “It’s a Bicultural Nation. But the Journey Towards True Biculturalism, It’s Not There Yet”: Exploring Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed Race Children in New Zealand / Rosalind Edwards
  • 15. When “Mixed Race” Is No Longer “Mixed”: A Case from Aotearoa/New Zealand / Neriko Musha Doerr
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mixed Race in Australia and the region

Posted in Identity Development/Psychology, Live Events, Media Archive, Oceania, Social Science on 2015-05-15 20:09Z by Steven

Mixed Race in Australia and the region

University of Western Australia (UWA)
2015-06-08 through 2015-06-10

Conveners: Farida Fozdar

People of ‘mixed race’ are often seen as marginal individuals managing cultural and psychological tensions, or alternatively valorised as the vanguard of an integrated, post-racial, cosmopolitan world (Edwards et al. 2012). Such dichotomies ignore the complex lived reality of being mixed – ranging from ‘passing’, to constructing multiracial identities, to embracing a cultural identity not necessarily reflected in one’s appearance (see Perkins, 2007; Paradies, 2006; Song and Aspinall, 2012; Jones, 2011). Mixed identities are not singular and fixed, but multiple and fluid (Nandi & Platt 2012; Tilbury, 2007; Paradies, 2006), often characterised by ‘ordinariness’ (Caballero, 2012). The lived experience of being ‘mixed’ is strongly influenced by political and social context (Luke and Luke, 1999). While a growing body of research exists on ‘mixed race’, more productive approaches are needed to investigate the cultural production of ‘mixedness’.

Perhaps surprisingly, Australia and the region lag behind the rest of the world in research on ‘mixed race’. There has been little public debate about the place of ‘mixed race’ in Australia and New Zealand (see Fozdar and Perkins, 2014). The subject does rate a hearing in Australia, however, in regard to people of mixed Aboriginal descent (Andrew Bolt style) (see Paradies, 2006). The social and political contexts of mixed race in Australia, New Zealand and the region offer complex histories of colonisation and migration, making this region an important counterpoint to the large bodies of research undertaken in the UK and US.

We invite papers on mixed race in Australia and surrounding countries, with a particular focus on mixed race across the life course (Csizmadia, 2012), the health and development of young people and families; cross-country comparison, and transgenerational effects. We are keen to include papers on mixed race of all types.

Invited speakers include:

  • Prof Rosalind Edwards (Southampton)
  • Dr Chamion Caballero (LSE)
  • Prof Yin Paradies (Deakin)
  • Prof David Trigger (UQ)
  • Dr Kirsten McGavin (UQ)

View the program guide here.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,