Ethnologie

(I) Theoretical foundations

(II) Ecotourism practices with a magnifying glass

This course will be a semi-face-to-face modality, considering virtual in-vivo sessions and self-guided work modules. The course will be recognized in each university according to the specific standards of the country and institution.

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of urban and rural spaces. Cities and farms, villages and forests, are socially, politically, and environmentally contested spaces that are seldom addressed in their relations to one another. This course, on the other hand, will examine urban and rural spaces both historically and cross-culturally, and study how the relation between them has been imagined and incorporated into planning and governance, as well as its impact on community livelihood and the environment. In particular, in this course we introduce some of the theories about how cities and the countryside are formed as distinct, often separate entities, as well as analyses that move beyond such dichotomies. Reading (and watching) the work of anthropologists and human geographers, but also environmental historians and urban planners, we address the unresolved tension between the urban and the rural, and ask fundamental questions for the current times. What is the relation between the “urban” and the “rural”? How has this relation changed over the past decades? How does our understanding of urban and rural spaces shape the ways in which we approach nature and the environment? How does rural-urban migration re-configure both urban and rural environments, imaginaries, and gender roles? What is the future of cities and farms?

Der Grundkurs Politikethnologie ist Teil des Aufbaumoduls „Ethnologie systematisch“ und gibt einen Überblick über die Politikethnologie als zentralen Sachbereich der Ethnologie. Die Teilnahme ist für BA-Hauptfachstudierende im zweiten Semester verpflichtend.

Politikethnologie ist als die Untersuchung politischer Strukturen in nichtstaatlichen Gesellschaften entstanden. Für die Politikwissenschaft war das ein Paradox, war für sie doch Politik ohne Staat nicht denkbar. Ethnologen haben jedoch untersucht, wie auch ohne Staat gesellschaftliche Ordnung etabliert wird, Machtverhältnisse bestehen, Konflikte entstehen und gelöst werden. Inzwischen beschäftigt sich die Politikethnologie jedoch auch längst mit dem Staat. Aus ethnologischer Perspektive geht es dabei weniger um die staatliche Ordnung an sich, um Verfassungen und Regelwerke, als um politische Praxis im Rahmen des Staates und um all das, was in den „Zwischenräumen“ staatlicher politischer Ordnung geschieht.

Die Lehrveranstaltung beginnt mit der Diskussion von Grundbegriffen (Was ist Politik? Macht? Gewalt?) und zeichnet die Geschichte der Politikethnologie nach. Zu den Themen, die danach besprochen werden, gehören auch Ethnologie und Kolonialismus, Ethnizität und Nationalismus, transnationale Politik, Widerstand und soziale Bewegungen sowie die Politik von Naturkatastrophen und Humanitarismus.

Bei den Themen ist jeweils obligatorische Lektüre angegeben, die auch klausurrelevant ist.

Zum Grundkurs wird ein Tutorium angeboten; Tutorin ist Lea Schönheit.

Lektüre zur Einführung:

Lewellen, Ted (2003). Political Anthropology. Westport.

Das eigentlich ganz gute Leben. Eine ethnologische Annäherung an Narrative und Praktiken des Mangels und der Fülle als Beitrag zur De-Growth-Debatte Es ist beileibe nicht so, dass dem lauter werdenden Ruf nach Verzicht eine gewisse Vergeblichkeit anhaftet, weil den so Angesprochenen die Alltagserfahrung des Mangels fehle, denkt man an die Auswirkung einer Austeritätspolitik im neoliberalen Staat oder die Bitternis von Armut infolge einer „imperialen Lebensweise“ (Ulrich Brand) anderer. Die Steigerungslogik des globalen Wirtschaftssystems sitzt zu tief in unseren „mentalen Infrastrukturen“ (Harald Welzer) verankert, als dass die Kassandrarufe nach De-Growth von Klima- und Umweltschützer*innen allzu großflächig durchdringen würden. Und dennoch finden alternative Entwürfe, die gemeinsame Zukunft zu gestalten, immer mehr Zulauf und Unterstützung, darunter Denk- und Praxisanstöße, welche oftmals von Konzepten aus dem Globalen Süden inspiriert scheinen. Wie steht es also um die „Indigenialität“, von der Biologe Andreas Weber neuerdings (2018) als probatem Transformationsdesign schwärmt? Im Seminar werden wir uns umsehen, womöglicherweise jene „Suffizienz“ (Wolfgang Sachs) zum Grundanliegen eines Lebens ohne Exzesse wird (the good enough life, Viveiros de Castro): in einem Leben vor dem „Fall“ der neolithischen Revolution (James C. Scott), oder gerade in den ruhigen Kreisläufen einer sich selbst beschränkenden (the limited good) Landwirtschaft vorindustrieller Prägung, oder doch erst in jüngeren Initiativen einer in die Praxis umgesetzten Wachstumskritik (Via Campesina, Nyéléni, Terra Madre u.v.a.)?

Hier können sich alle Lehrenden mit Moodle vertraut machen und ein bisschen "rumspielen" - Viel Spaß!

Digital media have changed the way social life is imagined, political actions are crafted, and power relations are enacted. Digital platforms, internet-based devices and digital social media are widespread around the world. They increasingly play a critical role in political, social and economic processes. Playing, learning, voting, dating, loving, migrating, dying, as well as friendship, kinship, politics, and news production and consumption, have all been affected by the diffusion of digital technologies. This course will prepare students to explore digital media by using anthropological methods, theories and themes. The course will develop critical skills to contextualize digital media in relation to everyday cultures of use and social-political structures, and examine how people’s lives converge in offline and online spaces.  The course will focus on four important themes of digital anthropology: digital political cultures, digital leisure, digital media and gender, and digital visualities. Students will be introduced to anthropological methods for the study of digital media, including digital ethnography, mixed methods (data analysis and ethnography), and field interviews. The course will demonstrate the stunning diversity and variation in digital media in different parts of the world. Students will learn how the impact and use of digital media among people are shaped by class, gender and religious backgrounds, and different levels of embeddedness in local and global power structures. 

At the end of the course, students will

demonstrate knowledge of key debates and terms in anthropological explorations of digital media

situate digital media within the broader context of power, ideology and institutions 

think comparatively in terms of general features of digital media and their specific local articulations 

develop knowledge of anthropological methods in exploring digital media

apply anthropological methods, theories and themes to the study of digital media 

The course has no specific prerequisites. 

Grading and participation

Students are encouraged to read the key texts assigned to each class, and prepare responses and questions to participate in classroom discussions. Students will post two guiding questions or summaries for discussion based on the week’s readings on Moodle at least two days before the class meets.  Half way into the semester, students will present a 3-page (double spaced) research proposal that outlines, i. the topic chosen for the study, ii. research questions, iii. background discussion, iv. research methods, v. research ethics compliance, v. how the project contributes to a theme in digital anthropology. Research methods should include i. offline and online participant observation, ii. interviews with at least three people, iii. one more research method (textual analysis of digital content/analysis of visuals/digital content creation). Students will present the research proposal before the class, to gather feedback. Grading is based on the research proposal and the short digital anthropological project they will carry out based on the proposal. Students will deliver the project findings and a theoretical discussion (3000 words for undergraduate students and 5000 words for masters students) in the last two classes. The project paper will discuss the findings of the ethnographic study with a thorough review of relevant scholarship (including at least three readings covered in the syllabus and one new scholarly source). 

Zum Kernbereich sozialethnologischer Studien gehört seit jeher die Beschäftigung mit Verwandtschaft. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Untersuchung indigener Gesellschaften. Hier erwies sich die Analyse von Verwandtschaftssystemen als klassischer Zugangsweg zu einer Vielzahl sozialethnologischer Themenfelder. Verwandtschaftliche Beziehungen regeln nicht selten so disparate Bereiche wie Land- und Erbrecht, Dorfanlage und Haushalt, Krieg und Kult, Freundschaft und Feindschaft und vieles andere mehr. Zwar war das Interesse an verwandtschaftsethnologischen Fragestellungen während der 70er und 80er Jahre kurzfristig in den Hintergrund gerückt, im Rahmen der Hinwendung zu Fragen von personhood und gender oder den neuen Reproduktionstechnologien erlebte es jedoch in den letzten beiden Dekaden eine Renaissance.

Im Kurs werden wir einen Blick auf die wichtigsten Vertreter der „klassischen“ Sozialethnologie werfen, bevor wir uns den aktuellen Debatten über Verwandtschaft zuwenden. Neben den verschiedenen Formen der Familie, unterschiedlichen Verwandtschaftsterminologien und den verschiedenen Weisen, Abstammungs- oder Allianzgruppen zu konzipieren und politisch nutzbar zu machen, werden dabei auch Themen wie Gender, Altersgruppen, Reproduktionstechnologien behandelt werden.

This course offers a critical introduction to hate speech and extreme speech, with a specific focus on the role of contemporary forms of digital communication. Hate speech and extreme speech have become a key concern for policy makers and state regulators, but it is important to examine its full scope as a global phenomenon with vast differences in context and political implications.  The key objective of this course is to take a global perspective on hate speech. The course tracks the definitions of hate speech, theoretical traditions that underpin them, and the limits of hate speech as a legal-regulatory discourse. Scanning various cognate frameworks such as dangerous speech, fear speech, hateful speech, and violent extremism that are used in understanding contemporary forms of aggressive and vitriolic speech, this course will introduce the ethnographically driven concept of “extreme speech”. We will study fake news, propaganda, Internet humor genres, rumor, racist speech, anti-minority speech, gender based violence, trolling, memes making, digital vigilantism, and xenophobic speech as different instances of extreme speech. At the same time, we will examine how extreme speech as subversive incivility has been instrumental in “talking against the authorities” in some cases. Finally, we will study different civil society, governmental and industry responses to hate speech. 

We cover different layers of digital mediation involved in shaping extreme speech, and different kinds of actors. These actors include i. dispersed yet ideologically active individual producers of exclusionary extreme speech, ii. semi-organized groups of volunteers and organized groups for right wing movements and ethnic/racial hatred, iii. minoritized groups targeted by extreme speech (refugees, immigrants, “liberals”, humanists, religious/ethnic groups), iv. politically “agnostic” paid trolls, v. business minded digital influencers, vi. precarious labor of the disinformation industry, as well as vi. civil society groups, individuals and community associations engaged in creative resistance to online extreme speech.

The course will draw upon the disciplinary traditions of media anthropology and communication studies. 

At the end of the course, students will

• demonstrate knowledge of prominent debates concerning hate speech;
  
• develop models to assess the role of digital communications in shaping hate speech and extreme speech;
  
• recognize the vast variation in the production and implications of hate speech by using different global case studies;
  
• develop skills to think about regulatory, civil society and political interventions in addressing hate speech.
  

 The course has no specific prerequisites.

Grading and participation

Students are encouraged to read the key texts assigned to each class, and prepare responses and questions to participate in classroom discussions. Final grading is based on the essay (3000 words for undergraduate students and 5000 words for masters students) that will discuss one empirical case of online hate speech/extreme speech, explicates the theoretical lens to study the case, and develops measures of regulatory and public intervention. Students will give a classroom presentation on the key arguments of the essay-in-making (theoretical and interventionist) in the final session. 

Die Malediven und Lakkadiven bilden eine Kette von etwa 1200 Inseln, die sich in nord-südlicher Richtung über mehr als eintausend Kilometern erstreckt. Der nördliche Teil, die Lakkadiven, werden als indisches Territorium von New Delhi säkular verwaltet und sind nur bedingt zugänglich. Der weitaus größere, südliche Teil ist das Territorium der Republic of Maldives, einem islamischen Staat, der durch seine Touristenresorts weltweit Bekanntheit erlangt hat. Zur Gesellschaft in beiden Regionen, die zum überwiegenden Teil muslimisch und matrilinear geprägt ist, liegen jedoch nur wenige kulturwissenschaftliche Arbeiten vor. Im Seminar werden vorkoloniale, kolonialzeitliche und rezente Berichte und Ethnografien aus einer kritischen postkolonialen Sicht gelesen und im Rahmen der größer angelegten Indian Ocean Studies interpretiert. Einer der Schwerpunkte ist das Verhältnis von Staat und Lokalgesellschaft, das sich aufgrund der großen Entfernungen und kleinräumlichen Gesellschaften in besonderer Weise manifestiert. Das Meer erscheint hier nicht als trennendes, sondern als verbindendes Element und der Staat mit seinen Forderungen von Abgaben und Steuern punktuell mächtig und dennoch oft abwesend. Heute sind alle bewohnten Inseln administrativ erfasst, infrastrukturell mit den politischen Zentren verbunden und vom jeweiligen Staatswesen geprägt. In Indien regierten über lange Zeiträume säkulare Kräfte und seit kurzem eine nationalistische Partei; die Malediven sind ein islamischer Staat und sowohl von wahhabitischem Gedankengut aus Saudi Arabien wie auch von einer globalisierten Tourismusindustrie beeinflusst.

Diese Veranstaltung wird weitgehend über Zoom stattfinden. Die Teilnehmenden erhalten von mir eine entsprechende Einladung.

In diesem Kolloquium diskutieren wir geplante und laufende studentische Abschlussarbeiten sowie spezifische Aspekte der ethnologischen Forschung. Das Spektrum reicht von Themenfindung, methodischer Herangehensweise, Formulierung der Fragestellung bis hin zu diversen Präsentationsformen der Forschungsergebnisse. Darüber hinaus soll das Kolloquium auch zur Erörterung ethischer Gesichtspunkte dienen und eine kritische Reflexion und Positionierung der Forschenden in Bezug auf die involvierten Akteure ermöglichen. Grundsätzlich können alle Fragen und Probleme angesprochen werden, die im Laufe der Themenfindung und Forschung auftreten.

Ethnographies as long-hauled research reports that combine detailed descriptions of social lives with analyses of their symbolisms and practices, used to be carried out mostly by anthropologists, and also by sociologists. In recent years, however, they have become adopted by several other academic disciplines and specialities wishing to provide more qualitative detail to their studies. While it is true, as Ingold claimed, that anthropology is not limited to ethnography, it is also true that anthropological ethnographies are quite distinct from those produced within other scholarly disciplines. In this course, we will revise and discuss the characteristics of good anthropological ethnographies, in order to better identify the defining features of our disciplinary contributions to this genre. We will combine reading ethnographic monographs with articles and book excerpts reflecting about qualities of anthropological thought, research, analyses, and writing. This course is geared to provide critical tools to identify and assess ethnographic texts. The resulting repertoire of critical tools will thus also help examine narratives produced by anthropologists using other media

This course will offer a critical introduction to the context and impact of digital media activism expanding around the world. In popular discourse, there is immense optimism around digital media as a means for empowering citizens and enabling democratic participation. However, recent episodes of government, market and populist manipulations of digital media have exposed the limits of digital civic activism. This course will offer students the opportunity to analyze the highly contested terrain of digital activism, and recognize that digital activism is not a uniform movement but a plurality of tactics, strategies, and agendas. Rather than celebrating digital technologies as tools for civic activism that is applicable anywhere and anytime, the course will challenge the students to interrogate diverse conditions that shape contention and claims to social justice. Students will also become familiar with higher order social theories that help in interrogating the ways digital media intersect with political actions. The course will combine theoretical readings with analyses of signature episodes such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street and also lesser known events of Internet activism in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia and other countries. 

The course will have a combination of lectures, discussions, classroom activities and film watching, to simulate, in some measure, the promise and limits of digital activism. At the end of the course, students will apply theoretical insights to develop a social media campaign for social advocacy.

Grading 

Students are encouraged to read the key texts assigned to each class, and prepare responses and questions to participate in classroom discussions. Students will post two guiding questions or summaries for discussion based on the week’s readings on Moodle at least two days before the class meets.  Grading will be based on the final paper (3000 words for undergraduate students, 5000 words for master’s students) which will have four components:

1. Explicate the problem/challenge/organization targeted by the digital campaign. 

2. Provide a critical overview of digital media initiatives already available in addressing the problem or used by the organization, and what new interventions you would make.

3. Compare your campaign with one or more of the digital activism cases discussed in the readings, and delineate the differences in strategies, political context, and potential impact. 

4. Discuss the theoretical problem the campaign gestures towards, and situate the campaign in a broader discussion on digital media, power and politics. 

Why is there a resurgence of nationalist sentiments and populist politics across the world in the past decade? Why and how are media implicated in the rise of nationalism and populism? With a critical survey of major theoretical positions on nationalism and populism, and prominent strands of media theory, this course will prepare the students to examine the role of media in these turbulent times. We will focus on Internet enabled media as well as organized legacy media, to see how media channels and media cultures have facilitated, shaped and contested sentiments of exclusivist nationalism. The readings will draw comparative examples from across the world, including North America, Europe and Asia, with a special focus on online media and nationalism in India.

As part of the course, students will do an experimental media project to locate and critique sentiments of nationalism and populism in their own immediate neighborhoods. With this exercise, students will apply theoretical discussions in the classroom to ask, challenge and analyze the varied media practices and the institutional structures of media that have augmented the conditions for exclusivist boundary marking to flare up in the current times.

Grading

·      Class Participation and Questions: 15%

·      Final presentation on experimental media project: 40%