Die Liste der Lehrveranstaltungen im WiSe 2005/06 am Münchner Ethnologieinstitut ist online. 3 Vorlesungen, 9 Hauptseminare, 24 Proseminare, 5 Kolloquien, 4 Sprachkurse, und 3 Tutorien. Enjoy.

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Hier ein Beitrag zu 'Methoden und Techniken der Feldforschung'. Wer sich im Feld von den Angriffen der weiblichen Mücke der Gattung Anopheles bedroht sieht (Stichwort Malaria), sollte sich Rat bei Einheimischen holen. Die Jungs aus der Elfenbeinküste machen's uns in ihrem WerbeClip von 1986 nämlich vor. Bei ihnen kommt entweder eine ausgeklügelte Totschläger-Choreographie zum Einsatz - oder eben doch der effektivere Moskitospray SuperTimor N°1. Bitte alle mitsingen/-tanzen: "Super Timor est encore plus fort avec sa nouvelle formule..." Absolut sehenswert, dieser WerbeClip! [> vollständiger Werbetext]NE TUEZ PLUS LES MOUSTIQUES AVEC DES CLAQUES SUR VOS JOUES, DES CLAQUES SUR VOS CUISSES, DES CLAQUES SUR VOS BRAS. SUPER TIMOR EST LA, SUPER TIMOR EST ENCORE PLUS FORT AVEC SA NOUVELLE FORMULE (SUPER TIMOR). LE TEMPS DE SENTIR L'ODEUR SUPER TIMOR (PCHHHHH, PCHHHH) LES INSECTES SONT DEJA MORTS (SUPER TIMOR) SUPER TIMOR AVEC SA NOUVELLE FORMULE, VRAIMENT VRAIMENT PLUS FORT (SUPER TIMOR) LE NUMERO UN

[via KerLeone]

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Eine Geschichte der Stadtforschung [FfM 2004] Aus dem Klappentext: Die Geschichte der Stadtforschung ist eine Geschichte der Erforschung "anderer Räume", der Quartiere der Armen, der Außenseiter. Entlang methodisch wie analytisch bahnbrechender Studien - von Henry Mayhews Großwerk über die Londoner Armen bis hin zum Projekt des Bourdieu-Schülers Loic Waquant, der das professionelle Boxen erlernte, um die Chicagoer South-Side zu erkunden[sic!] - lässt Rolf Lindner die Geschichte der Stadtforschung seit dem 19. Jahrhundert Revue passieren. Er führt in Themen und Methoden der Stadt-Ethnographie ein und berichtet auch von den Motiven und Obsessionen der Forscher, die es immer wieder in die unheimlichen Teile der Stadt gezogen hat.

Rezensent Hans-Volkmar Findeisen [Die Zeit, 18.11.04, Nr.48]: Seitdem die moderne Großstadt in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts entstand, verkörperte sie immer ein Bündel von »Problemen«. Mit ihnen umzugehen setzt voraus, ihre soziale Mechanik und Bildlichkeit zu durchschauen. Dies wird umso dringender, als die repräsentative Demokratie und die Hierarchien der Verwaltung an ihre Grenzen kommen. Wie die Megacitys der südlichen Hemisphäre sind sie heute darauf angewiesen, im Umgang mit der Stadt auf die Netzwerke und Ressourcen kleingliederiger und informeller Strukturen im Stadtteil zurückzugreifen. Damit stellt sich die Frage nach den Instrumenten, die helfen könnten, den Leviathan Großstadt zu beschreiben. Welchen Blick braucht es, um die vielen Ebenen städtischer Öffentlichkeit miteinander in den Dialog zu bringen? Welche Ansätze bieten andere Länder, etwa die USA? Wo liegen verschüttete Traditionen im eigenen Land? Dies herauszuarbeiten, hat sich Rolf Lindner, Ordinarius für Europäische Ethnologie an der Berliner Humboldt-Universität, zur Aufgabe gemacht. ... read more

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Johan Rasanayagam and Monica Heintz, fellow researchers at Max Planck Insitute for Social Anthropology Halle/Saale, Germany, are organizing an interesting workshop for December 2005. Interesting especially to those who have followed the multiple reflections on anthropology`s inherent moralities (i.e. start reading here) that had been initiated by Dustin M. Wax at Savage Minds.

From Heintzand Rasanayagams call for paper (outdated): Many philosophers and the founders of modern social science considered morality, alongside religion and law, to be the key regulator of society, thus giving moral values a centrality that was not reflected subsequently in the interest social studies accorded to the field. Indeed while there is a well developed anthropology of both religion and law, the anthropology of morality remains relatively neglected. Recently, however, some anthropologists have attempted to explore the theme of morality and even to use it as an analytical concept. A common approach which seems to be emerging is to focus not on actual values or value systems themselves, but on the reflective processes by which individuals make choices between different evaluations or courses of action. The anthropology of morality should be about discerning the link between values which are derived from a larger metaphysical whole, and actual beliefs and practices; and about how people make of themselves a certain kind of person through reflection upon the practices and models found in society. Morality can be seen as the site where people represent power or the exercise of authority to themselves, evaluate it, and the either decide to submit to it, exploit it or oppose it. Following the initial steps taken by the new ethnographies of moralities, the time has come to attempt to construct a coherent theoretical concept of morality and suggest how it can be used by anthropologists to contribute to the explanation of social phenomena. How can we develop tools that will help us avoid normative judgements? How can we escape our own value system, that we can describe other value systems, and then arrive at a new view of our own? How do we recognize manifestations or reflections of moral values, in other words the raw empirical data for this topic? ...

via Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle/Saale, Germany

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Eine Autorin der Zeit "hat sich zwecks Feldforschung in eine ihr fremde Welt begeben: Die junge CDU".

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Interview mit dem Deutschlandradio: Der Ethnologe Thomas Hauschild hat die Anschläge der El Kaida als "Krieg" bezeichnet. Das Netzwerk gelte es militärisch zu bekämpfen. Er nannte El Kaida eine "weltweit agierende Jugendbewegung". Da sie für viele enttäuschte muslimische Jugendliche attraktiv sei, gelte es, den Dialog zu suchen, damit sie nicht zu deren Söldnern würden.

Auch als MP3 [1,6MB]

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Maps mirror the way of how we imagine a nation. Well lets have a look at the german weather forecast at www.wetter.de and you ll be surprised how the germans imagine their nation:

1. Click on Germany and - yeah you looked right -, the germans have a new island called "Mallorca". If you click on it you ll even get a map of the beautiful spanish island. Did I say spanish? Well try to enter it the spanish way: 2.Click on Spain, then you ll only get the forecast for Palma. First we imagine the world then we conquer it or was it the other way around ;-)) ?

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Tak Watanabe at Savage Minds some days ago posted an entry on using blogs in knowledge production inspired by Aaron A. Fox` website Real Country, which accompanies his recently published ethnographic study Real Country: Music And Language In Working-Class Culture and provides a selection of primary data as there are interview transcripts, audiofiles, pictures, stuff like that. Moreover, Fox installed a blog to get into dialog with his readers: " Welcome to my blog. I'm the author of Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture, just published by Duke University Press. This is a book about country music ( ... ) as the art of working-class Texans. I've created this blog as a place for readers (and prospective readers) of the book to discuss it, review it, and interact with me. In particular, I'm hoping that students who read this book in classes will feel free to use this blog as a resource." It can be used by other professionals working in similar fields too, despite of possible impact on especially academic knowledge production in general. See also entry at fieldnotes and entry at antropologi.info.

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Waradauti Drummer now! Mawingu Dancer now! orangemcm. Herbalist now! pachulke2 Herdsman now! truffaldino Dancer now!

;-)

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Public lecture held at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle/Saale on Thursday, 14.07.05, 13.00h

Report authors: Nina Glick Schiller, Data Dea and Markus Höhne Speaker: Nina Glick Schiller and Markus Höhne

Abstract: The announcement by the zoo in Augsburg Germany that it was hosting an “African Village” set off a wave of controversy that received widespread media coverage. A global protest developed, fueled by the rapidity of e-mail communication, with concern voiced by African-German organizations, rights organizations, academic associations, a Nobel Prize winner, and concerned individuals from many countries. This report is based on attendance at the four day event, the “African Village” in the zoo from 9 June to 12 June 2005 and interviews with the various participants. Our findings are as follows:

1. The event was not a village displaying people but a market in the zoo augmented by African singing, drumming, and “oriental” belly dancing.
2. The event was organized primarily to earn revenue for the zoo, the promotion company, and the exhibitors and performers.
3. The event organizers linked the zoo and Africans in an endeavor to attract visitors by an “exotic” event; they perceived the zoo with its “African panorama” as a perfect environment for an African fair.
4. Solidarity with African people and mutual understanding were not primary aims of the event.
5. After visiting the zoo, visitors frequently linked Africa, Africans, wild animals and nature.
6. Organizers and visitors were not racist but they participated in and reflected a process that has been called racialization: the daily and often taken-for-granted means by which humans are separated into supposedly biologically based and unequal categories.
7. The questions raised by protestors about the “African Village” in the zoo took the defenders of the event by surprise; the defenders equated racism with the atrocities of Nazism and attacks on Jews, Sinti and Roma and did not reflect critically on problems dating from German colonialism.
8. Images dating from those times contribute to contemporary exoticizing, eroticizing, or stereotyping of Africans and are sometimes promoted as multiculturalism.
9. Against this background the Augsburg zoo was an inappropriate setting to hold a market of African crafts together with forms of “traditional” African cultural performance.
10. The African exhibitors and performers bore the greatest financial risk and some felt exploited by the particular circumstances of the event; however in a situation of high unemployment and unequal power, they rely on the marketing of cultural difference.
11. The promotion of zoos through special events relating African culture, people and animals is not a phenomena limited to Augsburg or Germany; it is found also in other European and US zoos. In the current global economy when marketing of difference is big business and when educational institutions such as zoos need to generate more revenues, there are incentives toward racialization.
12. The racialization processes facilitated by the Augsburg zoo and other zoos are not benign because they can lay the ground work for discrimination, barriers to social mobility, persecution, and repression.
    Full Report .pdf 1,5 MB

Location: Main Seminar Room Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle/Saale

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Public lecture held at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Halle/Saale on Monday, 11.07.05 at 16.15h

Speaker: Karsten Kumoll, Institut für Soziologie, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Abstract: Within some branches of sociological theory, the “social” seems to have been redefined as the “cultural” during the last decades. Furthermore, within historical studies concepts like “the new cultural history” and “historical anthropology” have become increasingly influential since the 1980s. One important source of this “cultural turn” within sociology and history is American cultural anthropology. However, within anthropology itself cultural theories, in particular “classical” concepts developed by Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins, have been seriously questioned from a rather postmodern perspective and from the perspective of British social anthropology. These critiques have been useful in directing the scholarly attention to some weaknesses of the culture concept. Do these critiques imply, however, that we should do social research “beyond the cultural turn” without “classical” anthropological theories of culture or even without the concept of “culture” itself? In reconsidering the so-called “Sahlins-Obeyesekere-debate” about the death of James Cook at Hawaii 1779 I will address this question. In discussing methodological, epistemological and conceptual key issues of this debate, I will argue that any study at the intersection of history and anthropology investigating colonial worlds has to face the conceptual key issues of the Sahlins-Obeyesekere-debate. These key issues are deeply intertwined with the concept of culture. While some of the critiques against the culture concepts are justifiable and indeed fruitful, abandoning the anthropological concept of culture does not solve the conceptual problems surrounding the death of James Cook at Hawai’i 1779. I will argue that a non-relativistic theory of culture incorporating new sociological accounts of structure and social action will be most fruitful in this respect.

Location: Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Main Seminar Room Advokatenweg 36 06114 Halle/Saale

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Auf Anfrage: "Streicht diese Hilfe". Der kenianische Wirtschaftsexperte James Shikwati über die schädlichen Folgen der westlichen Entwicklungspolitik, korrupte Herrscher und aufgebauschte Horrormeldungen aus Afrika

"Geldof macht alles nur noch schlimmer" Kontinentale Unterschiede: Bob Geldofs "Live 8"-Konzerte rufen recht gegensätzliche Reaktionen hervor. Während ein norwegischer Abgeordneter den irischen Rockmusiker kurzerhand für den Friedensnobelpreis nominierte, wirft ihm ein südafrikanischer Diplomat falsch verstandenes Gutmenschentum vor.

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