Dr Maree Pardy

Dr Maree Pardy is an anthropologist and Snr. Lecturer in Community and International Development and International Studies, in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Maree’s work on gender, race and culture is ethnographically and critically focussed across three broad areas – power, representation and place; human rights, law and public policy; inequality across development, humanitarianism and multiculturalism.

Maree’s research focuses on gender, race, culture, and global change. Trained in anthropology, feminist theory, and gender studies, and with a professional background in international and community development, she researches ethnographically among immigrant communities and critically engages with policies, discourses and laws related to gender, sexuality and culture, international humanitarianism, and development. She publishes on gender and cultural diversity; gender and sexuality in cross cultural contexts; gender, race and human rights; gender and feminist theories of global urbanisation; emotion and cultural politics.

• Gender Race and Development
• Gender, Sexuality and Globalisation
• Legal Anthropology - Rights and bodies
• Gender in Cross Cultural Perspective
• Gender, bodies, emotion
• Feminist theories
• Colonial, postcolonial and race theories 

Subjects and Units Currently Teaching

AIS204 Gender, Globalisation and Development

ADH714 Gender and Development

ADS704 International and Community Development Theory and Practice A 

Current areas of interest:

Gender, Race, Human Rights and the Law

Race and Inequality in Development and Humanitarianism.

Ethnographic methods

Urban space, race, place and diversity

Emotion and Cultural Politics

Conference Papers/Presentations

The enduring coloniality of Development Feminism – gender and violence interventions - Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Conference – November 2022

This paper argues that development feminism's reliance on an ahistorical and transhistorical concept of gender perpetuates the racialization of non-Western 'gendered' bodies. It empirically analyses the predominance of development interventions addressing gender-based violence and raises questions about the effects of the sector's approach to 'gender' and 'violence.'

Response to a Scandal - race and the development sector in Haiti (with A/Prof Kalissa Alexeyeff)  - Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Conference – November 2022

A 2018 scandal involving Oxfam in Haiti sparked condemnation of the development and humanitarian sectors’ alleged complicity in the sexual exploitation of Haitian sex workers. Our examination of Oxfam’s media documents, shows that the sector’s representations of Haitian sex workers in this case, and its approach to sex work in general are regulated by a racialised protectionism.

Power and Resistance in Localisation - Centre for Humanitarian Leadership Conference - April 2021, Deakin University

Humanitarians from the Global South are increasingly resisting the moral legitimacy of the international humanitarian system, revealing again the relationship between resistance and power. This paper draws on empirical research with humanitarian actors and joins Foucault (1978) and Abu-Lughod (1990) in tracking the claim that "where there is resistance there is power." Claims from the Global South for an increases share of resources and power brings further light to the forms of power in the international humanitarian system.

CURRENT RESEARCH AREAS

Gender, race, culture, and law (focus on female genital cutting)
Regularly described as the quintessential clash between culture and women’s rights, female genital cutting practices have been criminalised in most countries and remain a high-profile campaign issue for multilateral institutions and global NGOs. This project takes the law as its object of analysis, analysing its histories and effects. In recent years these laws have come under increasing scrutiny for their paradox of producing harm while aiming to prevent it. The history and present-day of laws in Australia are examined through the experiences of those most affected by them.

Political atmospheres and emotion in global women’s rights campaigns (focus on history of the emergence of FGM laws in Australia).
Atmosphere theories have emerged as important to the social sciences, allowing us to consider how atmospheres alter the things that can be spoken or the kinds of actions that become unthinkable. Some have suggested that atmospheres become a kind of affective engineering. This project engages these theories to consider how specific gendered practices become caught up by a social, cultural, and political force that takes hold and drives allowable narratives, actions, and prohibits others. This project engages these theories to consider how specific gendered practices become caught up by a social, cultural, and political force that takes hold and drives allowable narratives and actions while prohibiting others.

Inequalities of power in development and humanitarianism (focus on locally led interventions)
Participation and localisation are the latest buzzwords in attempts to address the structural inequalities in the international aid system. This project engages ethnographically with the experience of people at the frontline of humanitarian responses in war and disasters (current focus Ukraine) and seeks to understand the enabling and hindering factors that support localised or locally led humanitarian responses.

Race, gender, and sexuality in development (focus gender and violence interventions)
Gender and development interventions heavily focus on gender-based violence, and this project questions whether development’s concept of gender and violence is both ahistorical and transhistorical, and how it works to either prevent or perpetuate racialized representations of non-Western gendered bodies. It empirically analyses the predominance of development interventions addressing gender-based violence to reveal more about the effects and effectiveness of the sector's approach to 'gender' and 'violence.'