Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

In the rural town of Ceduna, an intra-Aboriginal distinction is key to the reproduction of social life: between
Nungas, whose history centres on a nearby mission and participation in the agricultural economy, and
Anangu, Pitjantjatjara-speaking visitors from “remote communities”. This paper enquires into the status of
radical alterity – locally understood to be embodied by Anangu – in this outback town. Anangu draw first,
discourses of moral opprobrium and a repressive responsive, whereby a private security firm is charged with
removing from view their socially aberrant otherness. Second, they draw discourses of humanitarian
compassion, which, as it turns out, justify, third, further repressive interventions in the form of stringent
welfare quarantining. Ceduna is the first trial site for the “cashless welfare card”, the latest iteration of
Australia’s racialised experiments in welfare reform. Fourth, Anangu are invested with a more positive
valence – they embody a cultural otherness that is respected, even revered, by some Nungas for their
perceived closeness to ”traditional” Aboriginality.
Liam Grealy
Paperless arrests and the everyday governance of preventive detention
This paper examines the Northern Territory’s paperless arrest regime as a recent attempt to manage the
public consumption of liquor in Australia’s top end. Operative since 2014, paperless arrests legislation
provides police with the power to take an individual into custody for four hours if that individual has
committed, or was about to commit, a summary notice offence, which would not typically result in a
custodial sentence. As part of a larger project on the institution of preventive detention regimes to manage
exceptional populations, this paper examines the everyday governance of the paperless arrests regime,
including the authorities, logics, and technologies involved. Specifically, I consider the ways that motion and
paperlessness orient governmental practices to both move and record people on behalf of racialised notions
of public propriety in urban space.
Timothy Neale Why we burn
The significant socioeconomic and socionatural costs of landscape fires are likely to rise as fires become
more severe and more frequent in fire-prone regions due to climate change. At the same time, in Australia,
institutionalised forms of inquiries and management have helped establish a widespread (and unrealistic)
public expectation that fires are always preventable. The popularisation of scientific claims about the
continent’s tolerance of fire, abundance of pyrophilic biota, and long history of Aboriginal fire management
practices have further cemented this dominant reading of bushfire as, I suggest, an immanent but technically
manageable actor in our environment. Through the judicious application of pre-emptive fires (also known as
prescribed burning), the argument goes, we can simultaneously eliminate disastrous fires and render
ourselves truly ‘Australian’. Drawing upon two case studies, I present a critical account of bushfire
management in Australia as an anticipatory regime, giving rise to interventions legitimated by various styles,
logics, and practices. To this end, I draw attention to the need to critically examine, in particular, the
ostensible embrace of Aboriginal fire management both within the sector and more broadly.
3C
Youth’s Cultural and Affective (Re)actions against Neoliberal Change in East Asia (Chair, Anthony Fung)
Youngdo Yun
More Reactive, More Affective: the Dynamics of the Youth’s Affects on the Video Sharing Sites
There has been a drastic change in the social media field and media consumption culture since 2010. After
the rapid popularization of smartphones and the increase of internet users, video sharing market also has
grown rapidly. This could not be possible without the transformation of media consumption from a linear
style to non-linear one, and without the affective and cultural practices of the young generation that is
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