[csaa-forum] CCR SEMINAR SERIES 08: Meaghan Morris and Fiona Allon - 18 December

Reena Dobson R.Dobson at uws.edu.au
Wed Dec 10 09:24:18 CST 2008


Apologies for cross-postings 

 Centre for Cultural Research

University of Western Sydney

 

invites all to attend

the CCR Seminar Series 2008

featuring

 

 

Professor Meaghan Morris (CCR, UWS)

 

Dr Fiona Allon (CCR, UWS)

 

Date: Thursday, 18 December

Time: 2.00pm - 4.30pm

Venue: The Gallery, Female Orphan School, Parramatta Campus

Afternoon tea and cakes provided 

RSVP: Jacqui Kingi j.kingi at uws.edu.au or 9685 9600

Apologies: Cameron McAuliffe: c.mcauliffe at uws.edu.au 

 

 

 

Twenty Years of 'Banality in Cultural Studies'; a research problem

Meaghan Morris

 

In 1988 I published the short version of an essay, 'Banality in Cultural Studies' and signed a contract for a book with that title.  Unfortunately, the essay soon  became the bane of my life for being widely but selectively quoted by people who read it approvingly as an attack on the banality OF Cultural Studies, and thence of the new humanities more widely. The terms of that polemic have not changed greatly in the intervening years, but my attitude to Cultural Studies and new humanities education has been transformed by my experience of working in the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies network while institution-building in Hong Kong. In this talk I want to reflect on the issues that arise for me now as I contemplate writing that book.    

 

 

The Redistribution of Risk: You can bet your house on it!

Fiona Allon

The worldwide rise in house prices over the past decade has been called the biggest bubble in history. During this time, home and property ownership became central to privatised economic security and risk taking, and emerged as one of main arenas for the increasing financialisation of everyday life. The home was redefined as an investment asset, and a vehicle for speculation, capital gains, and further wealth/credit expansion. Meanwhile a range of relatively routine and mundane financial obligations such as the purchase of houses, cars, holidays, consumer goods, and the payment of phone bills, credit card and student loans became connected to the multiple networks of capital markets through both mortgage-backed securitisation and asset-backed securitisation more broadly, achieving, in short, suburbia's 'securitisation'. Risk was also redefined as self-management and self-regulation, with individuals valued on their ability to successfully negotiate risk as a way-of-life. The current meltdown of the financial system - a system that ironically was deemed to be able withstand collapse because risk was spread far and wide - has revealed both the complexities and calamities inherent to this redistribution of risk. Defaulting homeowners, for example, are largely viewed as 'delinquent and deviant borrowers' unable to manage risk and finance, and requiring greater financial 'literacy and self help'. This paper suggests the need to conceive of risk, property markets, housing supply and demand, and the relationships between them, in entirely new terms, and not reducible simply to economic and financial variables.

 

 

Meaghan Morris is a figure of world stature in the field of Cultural Studies and she currently Chairs the international Association of Cultural Studies (ACS). A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, she divides her time between the CCR and Lingnan University, Hong Kong, where she has been Chair Professor of Cultural Studies since 2000. Her most recent book is Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture (Sage, 2006).

 

Fiona Allon is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Cultural Research and a recipient of an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship for the ARC Linkage grant 'Backpacker Tourism in Global Sydney'. Fiona's most recent publication is Renovation Nation: Australia's Obsession with Home (UNSW Press, 2008).

 

 

Parramatta Campus Map and Directions http://www.uws.edu.au/about/locations/maps/parramattamap     

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