About event

The SSN is thrilled to launch Benjamin Hegarty's "The Made-Up State Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia"

The Made-Up State Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia

By Benjamin Hegarty

The SSN is delighted to launch Benjamin Hegarty’s new book, published by Cornell University Press, alongside afternoon tea. Join us for an introductory talk by Ben, who will be in discussion with feminist STS researcher Thao Phan (Monash University). The discussion will include responses from Carla Jones, (Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder) Alegra Wolter (Transgender Activist and Medical Doctor, Suara Kita, Indonesia ) and Christoff Hanssmann (UC Davis), from their diverse perspectives across activism, Queer Studies, STS and anthropology.

Whilst we encourage attendance at Deakin Downtown, it will also be livestreamed for our regional and global audience.

Downtown guests, please feel welcome to join us 15 minutes early, at 15:15, to enjoy some afternoon tea that we can take into the venue.

About the book

In The Made-Up State, Benjamin Hegarty contends that warias, who compose one of Indonesia’s trans feminine populations, have cultivated a distinctive way of captivating the affective, material, and spatial experiences of belonging to a modern public sphere. Combining historical and ethnographic research, Hegarty traces the participation of warias in visual and bodily technologies, ranging from psychiatry and medical transsexuality to photography and feminine beauty.

The concept of development deployed by the modern Indonesian state relies on naturalizing the binary of “male” and “female.” As historical brokers between gender as a technological system of classifying human difference and state citizenship, warias shaped the contours of modern selfhood even while being positioned as nonconforming within it. The Made-Up State illuminates warias as part of the social and technological format of state rule, which has given rise to new possibilities for seeing and being seen as a citizen in postcolonial Indonesia.

About the author

Benjamin Hegarty is a medical anthropologist working at the intersection of queer and transgender studies, science and technology studies, and global health. His research is based on research with transgender communities in Indonesia. Before joining the Global Health Program at the the Kirby Institute at UNSW, Benjamin was a McKenzie Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne (2019-2022). His ethnographic and historical research appears in Visual Anthropology Review, Ethos, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and the Journal of Asian Studies. Benjamin is a member of the Editorial Board of American Ethnologist.

You can learn more about Ben, and download his free e-book, on his website

About the discussant

Dr Thao Phan is a feminist science and technology studies (STS) researcher who specialises in the study of gender and race in algorithmic culture. She is a Research Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society and the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University.Thao has published on topics including the aesthetics of digital voice assistants, big-data-driven techniques of racial classification, and the commercial capture of AI ethics research. Her award-winning writing has appeared in journals such as Big Data & Society, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technosocience, Science as Culture, Cultural Studies, and more. Thao is a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science and is the co-founder of AusSTS—Australia’s largest network of STS scholars.

Book sales

A limited number of books will be for sale on the day at $20 each; all proceeds will go to the Waria Crisis Centre in Yogyakarta for projects related to trans health and housing

Livestream link and hashtag

Click on the link here to join the livestream. Please join in the conversation on Twitter using #MadeUpState #SSNbooklaunch.