Linda Connor (anthropologist)

Last updated

Linda Helen Connor FASSA (born 1950 in Sydney) is an Australian anthropologist. She is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney.

Contents

Background and career

Connor graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours in Anthropology) in 1974 and a PhD in Anthropology in 1982. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. [1] From 2009-2018 she was Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney. [2] She served two years as President of the Australian Anthropological Society from 2009–2010 and Vice President of the National Tertiary Education Union Sydney University Branch [3] from 2018-21. She has held positions at the University of Newcastle, the Australian Research Council, University of California, and East-West Center, Hawai’i.

Research

Connor has researched and published on religion and ritual, [4] medical anthropology, [5] development, [6] visual anthropology, [7] shamanism and healing, [8] and rural environmental change, [9] predominantly in Indonesia, India and Australia. Funding sources include the Australian Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Ford Foundation. In Indonesia, she studied transformations of development, economy and social life in Bali, [10] as well as processes of citizenship and decentralization in rural communities. [11] From 1978 to 1990 she collaborated with ethnographic filmmakers Patsy and Timothy Asch to produce a series of films and a film monograph based on the life and work of a Balinese healer, Jero Tapakan, and her village. [12] [13] [14] [15] In North India in the mid-1990s, she investigated questions of displacement, identity, and cultural innovation, as part of a team studying healing in diasporic Tibetan communities. [16] Since 2002 she has worked on interdisciplinary projects focused on coal-affected localities, climate change and energy transitions in the Hunter Valley and North West New South Wales Australia. [17] [18] She is currently undertaking ethnographic research on social legitimacy of renewable energy development in Upper Spencer Gulf, South Australia as part of an ARC funded cross-national team. [19]

Selected publications

Goodman, J., Connor, L., Ghosh, D., Morton, T. S., Marshall, J., Mueller, K., Menon, M., Kholi, K., Pearse, R. and Rosewarne, S. 2020. The End of the Coal Rush: A Turning Point for Global Energy and Climate Policy? Cambridge University Press.

Connor, L. 2016. Climate Change and Anthropos: Planet, People and Places. London: Routledge/Earthscan.

Marshall, J. and Connor, L. (eds.) 2016. Environmental Change and the World’s Futures: Ecologies, Ontologies and Mythologies. London: Routledge/Earthscan.

Connor, L. 2010. “Anthropogenic Climate Change and Cultural Crisis: An Anthropological Perspective.” Australian Journal of Political Economy 66:247-267.

Higginbotham, N., Albrecht, G. and Connor, L. 2001. Health Social Science: A Transdisciplinary and Complexity Perspective. Melbourne, Oxford University Press. 382pp.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bali</span> Province and island in Indonesia

Bali is a province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller offshore islands, notably Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan to the southeast. The provincial capital, Denpasar, is the most populous city in the Lesser Sunda Islands and the second-largest, after Makassar, in Eastern Indonesia. The upland town of Ubud in Greater Denpasar is considered Bali's cultural centre. The province is Indonesia's main tourist destination, with a significant rise in tourism since the 1980s. Tourism-related business makes up 80% of its economy.

<i>Trance and Dance in Bali</i> 1952 anthropology film by Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead

Trance and Dance in Bali is a short documentary film shot by the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson during their research on Bali in the 1930s. It shows female dancers with sharp kris daggers dancing in trance, eventually stabbing themselves without injury. The film was not released until 1951. It has attracted praise from later anthropologists for its pioneering achievement, and criticism for its focus on the performance, omitting relevant details such as the conversation of the dancers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clifford Geertz</span> American anthropologist (1926–2006)

Clifford James Geertz was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balinese people</span> Ethnic group in Indonesia

The Balinese people are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the Indonesian island of Bali. The Balinese population of 4.2 million live mostly on the island of Bali, making up 89% of the island's population. There are also significant populations on the island of Lombok and in the easternmost regions of Java.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Asch</span> American anthropologist, photographer and ethnographic filmmaker

Timothy Asch was an American anthropologist, photographer, and ethnographic filmmaker. Along with John Marshall and Robert Gardner, Asch played an important role in the development of visual anthropology. He is particularly known for his film The Ax Fight and his role with the USC Center for Visual Anthropology.

The Margaret Mead Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is the longest-running, premiere showcase for international documentaries in the United States, encompassing a broad spectrum of work, from indigenous community media to experimental nonfiction. The Festival is distinguished by its outstanding selection of titles, which tackle diverse and challenging subjects, representing a range of issues and perspectives, and by the forums for discussion with filmmakers and speakers.

Kata Kolok, also known as Benkala Sign Language and Balinese Sign Language, is a village sign language which is indigenous to two neighbouring villages in northern Bali, Indonesia. The main village, Bengkala, has had high incidences of deafness for over seven generations. Notwithstanding the biological time depth of the recessive mutation that causes deafness, the first substantial cohort of deaf signers did not occur until five generations ago, and this event marks the emergence of Kata Kolok. The sign language has been acquired by at least five generations of deaf, native signers and features in all aspects of village life, including political, professional, educational, and religious settings.

A Balinese Trance Seance is a 1979 documentary film by ethnographic filmmaker Tim Asch and anthropologist Linda Connor that profiles Jero Tapakan, a Balinese spirit medium. It was one of five films that were made with Jero Tapakan and were considered to be exemplary ethnographic films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acintya</span> Supreme God of Indonesian Hinduism

Achintya, also known as Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa and Sang Hyang Tunggal, is the Supreme God of Indonesian Hinduism, especially on the island of Bali. Achintya is equivalent to the metaphysical concept of Brahman of Indian Hinduism, and is the Supreme God in traditional wayang theatre. All gods, goddesses and existence are believed to be the manifestation of the Achintya in Balinese Hinduism.

The Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs is a constituent of the College of Asia and the Pacific, but was formerly part of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, which was founded in 1946 as part of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. In 2015 it was renamed in honour of Coral Bell, a leading Australian scholar of international politics.

Robert Bush Lemelson is an American cultural anthropologist and film producer. He received his M.A. from the University of Chicago and Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lemelson's area of specialty is transcultural psychiatry; Southeast Asian Studies, particularly Indonesia; and psychological and medical anthropology. He is a research anthropologist in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience UCLA, and an adjunct professor of Anthropology at UCLA. His scholarly work has appeared in journals and books. Lemelson founded Elemental Productions in 2008, a documentary production company, and has directed and produced numerous ethnographic films.

<i>Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali</i>

Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali is a 1980 book written by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Geertz argues that the pre-colonial Balinese state was not a "hydraulic bureaucracy" nor an oriental despotism, but rather, an organized spectacle. The noble rulers of the island were less interested in administering the lives of the Balinese than in dramatizing their rank and hence political superiority through large public rituals and ceremonies. These cultural processes did not support the state, he argues, but were the state.

It is perhaps most clear in what was, after all, the master image of political life: kingship. The whole of the negara - court life, the traditions that organized it, the extractions that supported it, the privileges that accompanied it - was essentially directed toward defining what power was; and what power was what kings were. Particular kings came and went, 'poor passing facts' anonymized in titles, immobilized in ritual, and annihilated in bonfires. But what they represented, the model-and-copy conception of order, remained unaltered, at least over the period we know much about. The driving aim of higher politics was to construct a state by constructing a king. The more consummate the king, the more exemplary the centre. The more exemplary the centre, the more actual the realm.

Mangku Muriati is a traditional-style Balinese painter and priestess from Kamasan village near Klungkung, Bali, Indonesia.

The 1976 Bali earthquake occurred at 15:13 local time on 14 July with a surface wave magnitude of 6.5. The shock occurred 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) south of the Bali Sea coast of the Buleleng Regency, and about 65 kilometres (40 mi) northwest of Denpasar. Up to ninety percent of houses in Buleleng Regency were seriously damaged or destroyed and the Seririt sub-district was almost completely destroyed, where a school building collapsed and trapped at least 200 students. 573 people are believed to have died; at least 544 in Buleleng Regency, 24 in Jembrana and 5 in Tabanan. Four thousand more suffered injuries and an estimated 450,000 were left temporarily homeless.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Stephen Lansing</span> American anthropologist and complexity scientist

J. Stephen Lansing is an American anthropologist and complexity scientist. He is especially known from his decades of research on the emergent properties of human-environmental interactions in Bali, Borneo and the Malay Archipelago; social-ecological modeling, and complex adaptive systems. He is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna; a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford; a visiting scholar at the Hoffman Global Institute for Business and Society at INSEAD Singapore, and emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.

James Joseph Fox is an American anthropologist and historian of Indonesia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I Wayan Arka</span>

I Wayan Arka is an Indonesian-Balinese linguist, lecturer, scholar and researcher at Udayana University (UNUD) in Bali, Indonesia and the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia.

Hildred Storey Geertz was an American anthropologist who studied Balinese and Javanese kinship practices and Balinese art in Indonesia.

References

  1. ↑ "Academy Fellow: Professor Linda Connor ASSA". Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Retrieved 5 October 2020.
  2. ↑ Sydney, The University of. "Professor Linda Connor - The University of Sydney". sydney.edu.au.
  3. ↑ "Officers - University of Sydney". www.nteu.org.au. Retrieved 6 May 2019.
  4. ↑ Connor, Linda H. (1995). "The Action of the Body on Society: Washing a Corpse in Bali". The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 1 (3): 537–559. doi:10.2307/3034574. ISSN   1359-0987. JSTOR   3034574.
  5. ↑ Connor, Linda H. (2004). "Relief, risk and renewal: mixed therapy regimens in an Australian suburb". Social Science & Medicine. 59 (8): 1695–1705. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.01.030. ISSN   0277-9536. PMID   15279926.
  6. ↑ Mcmanus, Phil; Connor, Linda H (2013). "What's Mine Is Mine(D): Contests Over Marginalisation Of rural life in the Upper Hunter, NSW". Rural Society. 22 (2): 166–183. doi:10.5172/rsj.2013.22.2.166. ISSN   1037-1656. S2CID   109486459.
  7. ↑ Connor, Linda; Asch, Patsy (1995). "Subjects, Images, Voices: Representing Gender in Ethnographic Film". Visual Anthropology Review. 11 (1): 5–18. doi:10.1525/var.1995.11.1.5.
  8. ↑ Connor, Linda H. (1995). "Acquiring invisible strength: A Balinese discourse of harm and well‐being". Indonesia Circle. School of Oriental & African Studies. Newsletter. 23 (66): 124–153. doi:10.1080/03062849508729843. ISSN   0306-2848.
  9. ↑ Connor, Linda; Higginbotham, Nick; Freeman, Sonia; Albrecht, Glenn (2008). "Watercourses and Discourses: Coalmining in the Upper Hunter Valley, New South Wales". Oceania. 78 (1): 76–90. doi:10.1002/j.1834-4461.2008.tb00029.x. hdl: 1959.13/40190 . ISSN   0029-8077.
  10. ↑ Rubinstein, R; Connor, L (1999). Staying Local in the Global Village: Bali in the Twentieth Century. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN   9780824821173. JSTOR   j.ctt6wr0k5.
  11. ↑ Connor, L; Vickers, A (2003). "Crisis, citizenship, and cosmopolitanism: Living in a local and global risk society in Bali". Indonesia. 75 (75): 153–180. JSTOR   3351311.
  12. ↑ Asch, P., Asch. T., and Connor, L. 1981. Jero on Jero. 'A Balinese Trance Seance' Observed. Dist.: Documentary Educational Resources (DER), Royal Anthropological Institute and ANU (RSPAS), Canberra.
  13. ↑ Asch, P., Connor, L., and Asch. T. 1983. Jero Tapakan: Stories from the life of a Balinese healer. ANU, Canberra.
  14. ↑ Asch, P., Asch. T., and Connor, L. 1983. The Medium is the Masseuse . Dist.: DER, Royal Anthropological Institute and ANU (RSPAS), Canberra.
  15. ↑ Asch, P., Asch. T., and Connor, L. 1991. Releasing the Spirits: A Village Cremation in Bali. Dist.: DER, Royal Anthropological Institute and ANU (RSPAS), Canberra.
  16. ↑ Connor, L. and Samuel, G. (eds.) 2001. Healing Powers and Modernity: Shamanism, Science and Traditional Medicine in Asian Societies. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey. 283pp
  17. ↑ Connor, Linda H. (2016). "Energy futures, state planning policies and coal mine contests in rural New South Wales". Energy Policy. 99: 233–241. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2016.05.026.
  18. ↑ "Home". The Coal Rush and Beyond.
  19. ↑ "ARC Project ID: DP180101368". 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.