Familiar Bodies: Transgender Kinship in Yogyakarta

DATE AND TIME

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

@ 1 -3 PM

VENUE

CRCS, Room 406

Gedung Sekolah Pascasarjana, UGM

Jl. Teknika Utara, Pogung, Yogyakarta

Tel. 544 976

ABSTRACT

In order to advance anthropological theorisation of gender and the family, this paper focuses on the experiential dimensions of kinship among older waria (defined as they do, aged 40 years and over) and their families in Yogyakarta and a small amount of ethnographic data collected in the context of a shelter for elderly waria in Jakarta. In this paper I reflect on some preliminary findings from my fieldwork (from January 2014) and recent theoretical contributions from disability and gender studies. Familiar bodies shape peoples’ experiences of the world—even when the family of birth remains either an ambivalent or perhaps tragic memory, retained only in faded photographs. Exploring transgender experiences in this way—located beyond the body proper—will hopefully allow me to contribute to complex and fraught questions related to the connections between of belonging, gendered violence and intimate kin in Java and Indonesia more generally.  

PRESENTER

Benjamin Hegarty is a PhD candidate in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He is in the early stages of 18 months of fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. His ethnographic research explores experiences of the family and claims to motherhood among waria, with a particular focus on older waria. His research interests include transgender studies, kinship and disability studies, and an overarching interest in ethnography as theory and method.