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Umbenenung: “Institut für populäre Kulturen” statt “Volkskundliches Seminar”

Published on July 27, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Ethnologie allgemein, Ethnologie Sozialanthropologie Kulturanthropologie

Ethnologie statt Voelkerkunde. Sozial-/Kulturanthropologie statt Ethnologie. Namensaenderungen widerspiegeln Aenderungen im Fach. Nun hat sich auch das “Volkskundliche Seminar” an der Uni Zuerich umbenannt und heisst nun “Institut für Populäre Kulturen“.

Ueli Gyr, Leiter des Institutes, und Ingrid Tomkowiak, Leiterin der Abteilung Populäre Literaturen und Medien, erklaeren im Uniblatt uniforum die Gruende fuer den Namenswechsel:

Ende der 1960er Jahren setzte im deutschsprachigen Raum eine grosse Debatte über den Namen des Faches ein. Man war sich einig, dass der Begriff «Volk» ungenau und ideologieanfällig ist. Er war nicht zuletzt im Nationalsozialismus für politische Propaganda missbraucht worden.
(…)
Die damalige Volkskunde betrachtete das «Volk» als eine organisch gewachsene, homogene Einheit, die gleichsam aus sich selbst heraus kulturelle Phänomene wie beispielsweise Märchen und Bräuche hervorbringt. Diese Vorstellung ist so nicht haltbar, hielt man damals fest. Die Alltagskultur wächst nicht nur von «unten», sondern entsteht durch vielerlei gesellschaftliche Impulse und wird beispielsweise auch von der Kulturindustrie geprägt. Dementsprechend begann auch die Volkskunde in der Schweiz ihren Gegenstand komplexer und breiter zu definieren und verstand sich fortan als Kulturwissenschaft.

Mit dem Namenswechsel hat es offenbar eine Weile gedauert. Die Zeit sei nicht reif für einen solchen Schritt gewesen.

Interessant: Der Namenswechsel hat das Fach in die Oeffentlichkeit gebracht und wird auch von den Medien ernster genommen:

Seit wir Institut für Populäre Kulturen heissen, bekommen wir auch Medienanfragen rund um Bestseller in Literatur und Film oder anlässlich der Fussball-WM zum Beispiel zum Gebrauch der nationalen Farben im Alltag. Obwohl wir durchaus auch Brauchforschung betreiben, freut es uns natürlich, dass wir nun vermehrt als Fach mit einer breiten kulturwissenschaftlichen Ausrichtung wahrgenommen werden.

>> zum Interview in Unipublic

PS: In Basel heisst die Volkskunde seit einem knappen Jahr “Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und Europäische Ethnologie”.

Ethnologie statt Voelkerkunde. Sozial-/Kulturanthropologie statt Ethnologie. Namensaenderungen widerspiegeln Aenderungen im Fach. Nun hat sich auch das "Volkskundliche Seminar" an der Uni Zuerich umbenannt und heisst nun "Institut für Populäre Kulturen".

Ueli Gyr, Leiter des Institutes, und Ingrid Tomkowiak, Leiterin der Abteilung…

Sosiologiens blendende hvithet

Published on July 24, 2006 by lorenz Posted in antropologi allment, globalisering transnajonalt, individ og samfunn, master-/ hovedoppgaver, modernitet, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, vi og de andre

Sosiolog Ida Hjelde etterlyser i en fersk masteroppgave globale perspektiver innen sosiologien, melder nettstedet Kilden. Ved hjelp av postkolonial og feministisk teori har hun synliggjort sosiologiens blendende hvithet:

– Jeg mener at god sosiologi konsekvent må operere med en global referanseramme for analyse. Dette er en forutsetning for å kunne se når, og i hvilken grad, globale relasjoner er relevant for å forstå et lokalt fenomen. Det er et paradoks når viktige internasjonale handelsavtaler som WTO og GATS ikke kommer inn i analysen av det norske samfunnet og at global ulikhet ikke blir behandlet i et masterkurs om ulikhet.

På samme måte som kjønn ble kjempet fram som et sentralt perspektiv i sosiologien må de globale maktrelasjonene som vestlige samfunn er en del av bli en naturlig del av sosiologien!

Hjelde har studert sosiologi både ved Det amerikanske universitet i Kairo og Universitet i Oslo. Der oppdaget hun dramatiske forskjeller:

– Det postkoloniale perspektivet var en selvfølge på universitet i Egypt, mens jeg med min norske utdanning knapt visste hva det var, sier Hjelde. Med postkolonial teori mener hun teorier som ser på maktforholdet mellom tideligere kolonier og kolonimakter, og hvordan maktforholdet videreføres og legitimeres selv kolonitida er over.

Ubehaget og undringen over forskjellene fikk henne til å skrive denne oppgaven. Hun har brukt empiriske eksempler fra to kurs ved Universitetet i Oslo, Sosiologiens klassikere på bachelornivå og Ulikhet: Klasse, kjønn og etnisitet på masternivå. Hjelde mener sosiologien konstruerer et syn på det moderne som er ensbetydende med vestlige samfunn og at vestlige samfunn kan forstås bare ut fra seg selv, utenfor et globalt rammeverk.

Som positivt eksempel trekker hun fram May-Len Skilbrei, Marianne Tveit og Anette Brunovskis studie av nigerianske prostituerte, leser vi:

De har studert de konkrete erfaringene og reiserutene til de nigerianske prostituerte. På grunn av stengte grenser må disse kvinnene betale i dyre dommer for å komme til Europa, og ender dermed i et avhengighetsforhold til bakmenn som de skylder penger.

– De tar utgangspunkt i konkrete erfaringer og setter dem inn i en global kontekst, og da blir virkelighetsbeskrivelsen helt annerledes enn hvis hun hadde tatt utgangspunkt i prostitusjon som et ordensproblem, sier Hjelde.

>> les hele saken på Kilden

>> last ned hele oppgaven

Det ville være interessant å undersøke eurosentrismen i antropologien. Kan Hjeldes funn overføres til vårt fag? På et seminar sa Ida Hjelde at det ikke går an å snakke om at vi lever i et postindustrielt samfunn når industrien lever i beste velgående – i lavkostland. Dette er påstander som også sirkulerer innenfor antropologien. Thorgeir Kolsrud avslørte eurosentrisme i antropologiens bruk av begrepet modernitet. >> les “Modernitet” ødelegger antropologien

SE OGSÅ:

Rethinking Nordic Colonialism! Nordisk kolonialhistorie fram fra glemselen

- Jeg mener at god sosiologi konsekvent må operere med en global referanseramme…

Participant rather than client – anthropologist studies new refugee integration programme

Published on July 24, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, fieldwork / methods, journal articles / papers, migration, Us and Them

Refugees are no longer treated as clients but as ‘participants’. They no longer receive social benefits but a salary for learning Norwegian and jobtraining. All recognised refugees in Norway have ‘the right and duty’ to attend a two year full-day Introductory Programme. Anthropologist Oddveig Nygård did fieldwork in one of these introductury centers in a small town in Western Norway.

She found that the new program on the one hand had positive effects on the relationship between refugees and the caseworkers – partly because the introductory programme allows the caseworkers to focus on other things than merely payment of benefits:

The fairly cold and bureaucratic environment of the social security office, in which the caseworkers are placed behind their desks and the refugees come to receive their social benefits, now belongs to the past. Instead, the refugees daily attend a centre where they see the caseworkers on a frequent basis. (…) The new framework has created a better basis to see the individual behind the refugee label and to obtain a more contextual image of the client. (…) The frequent encounters in more than just one setting have led to a more subtle relation between the two parties.

But the closer relationship between caseworkers and refugees creates ambiguity. There is a short step to the caseworkers being conceived of as a helper or a provider. Careworkers have to balance between care and control:

My study demonstrates how the motivation/sanction intersection of the introductory programme involves an element of control. Yet, the authority role tends to be diverted by the ‘fellow-being’ as they seem to have some empathy for the participant and his personal situation.

A drawback of the program is its focus on future planning and job acquirement, she writes. The role refugees seem most familiar with and accustomed to is the student role:

The majority of the refugee informants said they found it somewhat difficult to plan their future. (…) The main reason seems to be an expressed scepticism towards what they regard as limited job opportunities. (…) Several referred to their poor chances of getting a desirable job because they were ‘foreigners’, and some pointed to how even Norwegians face difficulties on the current labour market. Other spoke with resignation of the long process it would take to complete possible re-training and higher education. (…) As a result, the vagueness of the future planner role is likely to curb the overall role as ‘the active participant’.

She also describes her research process. As often the case, the anthropologist’s role is unclear to people in the field:

My mingling with both the caseworkers and the refugees certainly involved some challenges, probably causing some confusion as to “where I actually belonged”. I attempted to balance my involvement with the two groups by spending most time with the caseworkers during the refugees’ daily classes, and socialising with the refugees before and after classes, and in their lunch breaks. As a result, I sometimes had an unusual feeling of being a ‘social butterfly’ trying to be everyone’s ‘friend’.

At the same time, I may have been perceived as a somewhat curious element, primarily among the refugees, in the sense that that I was a young woman apparently having lots of time, and being more than willing to talk to people. I believe my relatively young age and my perceived student role may have made me less “threatening” and arguably made it easier to get in contact with people.

>> read the whole paper by Oddveig Nygård: “Between care and control: Interaction between refugees and caseworkers within the Norwegian” (pdf) (Working paper 32, Sussex Centre for Migration Research)

Refugees are no longer treated as clients but as 'participants'. They no longer receive social benefits but a salary for learning Norwegian and jobtraining. All recognised refugees in Norway have 'the right and duty' to attend a two year full-day…

My blog, my project and I, part 3 – I and Politics

Published on July 23, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Fieldwork, Politics

Another warm night, and it seems like insomnia strikes again despite however little storm and poèsie infused sleep I had last night. I’ve been too snotty to go to the jazz concert in Parc Floral and hang around somewhere in East Paris until the early hours, as would have been suitable for this hot Saturday. And I regret it a lot, especially since it’s my second last weekend here (and only three more jazz concerts to go, amongst all the other things I’ll be missing…). Instead I make use of my sleeplessness to finish a blog post I’ve been planning for months.
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As my fieldwork is soon coming to an end, it’s time to take a step back and look at what I’ve been doing here, and why I’ve been doing these things and not others. It’s been a lot of politics, in my blog as well as in my experiences here.

As I’ve mentioned before, my initial intention to study peaceful and harmonious cosmopolitanism as it is played out in people’s everyday life, quickly faded into the background since I had been fortunate to step right into the largest revolts and demonstrations in the time of the Fifth Republic (1958-). (And probably, simple harmony sans rebellion would have made a poor representation of French society, anyway. Apropos, the almost free jazz concerts in Parc Floral constitute exactly such a harmonious cosmopolitan space. There is every colour on the planet present, and the number of mixed couples, babies and circles of friends equals Marseille ☺. The styles of dress vary from the banlieusard’s trainers, tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt to chic west end babes with sunglasses and expensive skirt and top, via almost everything else. And, as I’ve noticed to my delight at an east Paris hub like Place de Ménilmontant as well, all colours/ethnic backgrounds are represented – though not equally numerous – in all styles and functions. Thus, no multiculturalist neat little boxes to put the people inside. Though, I should add that this mix might have decreased with the summer reaching its zenith, as more and more Parisians are leaving for vacation and being replaced by more and more groups of tourists and foreign western students).

Besides, as more than one post on this blog have tried to show, it doesn’t take long to start sensing the reasons behind people’s frustration and anger. Policing and security is one such issue. After a quiet week in Corsica, it took one night out in Marseille for my Norwegian company not yet accustomed to the present government’s “securitarian” measures to get a feel of this situation. We watched the world cup football semi-final Portugal-France in the Vieux Port. After the match we stuck around for a while with a few thousand others, sharing our last can of beer while watching the celebrations. Teenagers on scooters drove around in corteges waving flags and hooting. Kids were running around while their parents were chatting. – I saw a brother yelling at his little sister for walking around alone shooting pictures of the crowd with the family’s digital camera, while their mother just laughed at it. There were firecrackers and drums, and a little (very little compared to where I come from) drinking and a little (much more than where I come from) cannabis smoking. A group of thirty-something were just about to light their joint next to us, and I was just about to say to my company that sooner or later someone will throw something in the direction of the Robocop-looking CRS police who are never far away on such occasions, who will in turn start charging, which again will provoke more projectiles from the crowd… when a group of CRS suddenly ran up right behind us with all their riot gear. So less than 45 minutes after France had beat Portugal, the CRS found it opportune to start clearing the Vieux Port. There were still children there, I even saw a father carrying his 3 months old baby away from the tear gas… A large section of the crowd had involuntarily been trapped on the opposite side of the port of their way home, but I also think some families with older children stuck around for their kids to see what France is like these days. My company, who had not yet become used to see the police in action on almost every night out, was surprised and a little bit upset and angry: It was utterly incomprehensible to us why we couldn’t go on with our little celebratory street party a little longer…

So, all this writing on politics of resistance has come naturally, from the circumstances. In addition, of course, it’s due to my own social and political concerns and interests. It’s not the first time I become politicised when I leave the peripheral Norway and go to Europe. (This has got more to do with Norway than with Britain and France, “remember, it’s Norway that is exotic,” my old French teacher used to say when we were surprised by some strange ways of the French). It happened on my previous fieldwork as well, in London in 1999, although then overt politics didn’t make its way into my final texts the same way as it undoubtedly will this time.

My fieldwork (amongst British Asians) and my life in our communal house was so far apart when it came to political activism, that on a demonstration where I went with one of my flatmates (a British Pakistani), he was so excited about seeing one other South Asian looking guy there, that he wanted to go straight over to him and try to get him to be my informant. This was on the great Carnival against capitalism, at the day of the G8 meeting on June 18, 1999, which together with the Seattle meeting in November the same year, marked the beginning of a new era of anti-capitalist and anti-(economic) globalisation protest. It was inspired by the anarchic street party approach of the Reclaim the streets anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, anti-car phenomenon in Britain from the mid 1990s, and it was to become increasingly transnationalised, – epitomised by the slogan “Our Resistance is as Transnational as Capital”. For me, the experience of spending a whole day in the enjoyable, but conscious, atmosphere at this do-it-yourself street party right between the corporate giants in City, woke up my old anarchist political consciousness that had been slumbering ever since my teenage years of naïve reveries had ended. After that moment, I understood perfectly well Durkheim’s analysis of how participating in rituals make individuals feel that they are part of something bigger, which can give them a certain sense of meaning in their lives.

In London, I met loads of people who believed it was worthwhile making the world – as well as the local community – a better place to live. In my ears, it sounded like people were discussing things that mattered, things worth living and fighting for – and they often tried to live accordingly, not just exist to consume… Well, what happened when I got back to Norway after my previous fieldwork? We all seem so bourgeois there, caught in our narrow, bourgeois lives, – to put it with an everyday French term. But perhaps it’s just got to be like that, in a society without foreign debt, where the buying power is just rising and rising and where we seem to be so comfortably far away from the misery of the world.

Here, the world is on our doorsteps – if not in our own house: the misery of it as well as its diversity, its resistance, its hopes… The cosmopolitanism, the transnational connections, the creativity, the political consciousness, the sociability, the poetics – all this constitute for me sensations, emotions, atmospheres and everyday routines – as I wrote in this blog some days ago – which I’ll miss immensely when I leave. Because I know, as I also wrote, that it takes no time at all for this state of mind to be replaced, as soon as I step back into my Oslo way of life, to such an extent that my Paris experience – as with London some years ago – appears as a parallel but distinctly separate universe.

Anthropologists on the Israel-Lebanon conflict

Published on July 23, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Middle East, politics, Us and Them

(post in progress) “Strangely, you rarely see anthropologists on the front lines at times like these”, anthropologist Maria Teasdale Brodine wrote at anthropology.net on the war in Lebanon nine days ago:

It seems that anthropologists might have the tools to go into a place like this and help opposing sides understand one another. After all, being a cultural anthropologist takes both a lot of diplomatic skill, and being able to respect and attempt to represent the people you’re working with.

Since then, some (not many, though!) anthropologists have raised their voice or have been asked to do so by journalists.

Gabriele Marranci, lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion, is one of the authors at the anthropology blog on the Middle East called Tabsir. He makes some comments that are typical for anthropologists (in a positive sense – in my view):

First, it is important to deconstruct one point. “Israel is not ‘the Jew’”, my very religious Rabbi friend repeated again and again to me. I have no problem to believe him: a state cannot be a person or represent what today is a very heterogenic faith: Judaism. (…) Zionism is not Israel; leave aside ‘the Jew’. An ideology can help to build a state, but a state cannot be an ideology, leave aside the personification of a person, ‘the Jew’.

Hence, to really understand what is happening today (…) means to stop observing the antithesis (terrorist vs. non-terrorist, axis of evil vs. axis of good, pro-Israeli vs. anti-Israeli and so on) and focus on more complex macrostructures.

He goes on and explains his thesis: “We are witnessing this carnage because of secularism in action.”

>> read the whole post: Secularism in action?

Also on Tabsir, anthropologist Daniel Martin Varisco commented several news reports f.ex in the posts The Lobby and Lebanon and Impudence, Impotence and Impunity where he comments an “fascinating article” Indonesia and Malaysia Ready to Send Troops to Mid-East:

Those who are informed by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis or Sam Huntington would assume that the headline refers to the readiness of the Muslim nations to go fight jihad in support of the Hezbollah. And they would be WRONG! Instead the article talks about how these nations are encouraging the UN Security council to take quick action to end the active fighting and to establish a peacekeeping force. And when that peacekeeping force is established, they will send troops. If we really were locked in a Clash of Civilization, at this point, Hezbollah would be receiving reinforcements from all over the Islamic world.

>> read the whole post: Indonesia, Malaysia Ready to Send Troops

William Anthropologist O. Beeman, explains in an article at New American Media why Iran could play a role in bringing about peace”. Last month, the anthropology professor of Brown University has started blogging >> visit his blog “Culture and International Affairs”

A similar point is made by political scientist Bahman Baktiari and anthropologist Augustus Richard Norton. They argue that “the latest Middle East war underlines the need for an effective structure for dialogue, even with adversaries like Iran” >> read the whole text: Beyond the war in Lebanon. Norten is also interviewed in the Harpers Magazine

There are lots of stories about people escaping from Lebanon. Among them, of course, are anthropologists, f.ex. Rosemary Sayigh. Maybe also typical for anthropologists, she says, she “would not have left had it not been for pressure from her children”:

I’ve never left in any war before. I’ve lived in Lebanon for 50 years, we’ve had a lot of war in that time, and I’ve stayed usually. (But) they said that they would worry too much about me. And I’ve been planning to come to Cyprus for a holiday, so I thought I’d take it now instead of later, and rationalise it that way.

>> read the whole BBC story “Safe in Cyprus, worried about home”

Efstratios Sourlagas another tough anthropologist. He has no plans to postpone his fieldwork on Greek Orthodox communities in Beirut, he says:

I think it’s important to do my research here and I guess, when I decided to come here to do research, I knew perfectly well … the history of the place and the conditions of being here. I’m not going to be intimidated by the attacks.

>> read the whole story: Princeton students are caught in hiatus

At Electronic Lebanon, Sourlagas tells us more about doing fieldwork in this situation – and his doubts:

I came to Lebanon two weeks ago to start my own fieldwork, slightly optimistic that having being before in the region and country several times, feeling as a Greek more at home here with the way of life than in the US where I spent the last three years, possessing a knowledge of Arabic (admittedly poor as it is), and especially my girlfriend being Lebanese, I would not face such problems. (…) However, I find myself now feeling helpless and questioning the purpose and the feasibility of my research here one day after the first Greek nationals have been evacuated from Lebanon via Damascus.

The infrastructure is destroyed, but…

…what leaves one feeling much more helpless and angry is that mainly civilians have to bear the onslaught of the Israeli army (many times with their own lives) as it ushers in its familiar tactic of collective punishment as a response to the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah.
(…)
How this scene of eerie quietness contrasted with the noises of thousands of Lebanese taking to the streets of downtown Beirut honking in their cars and waving Italian (and Brazilian!) flags in celebration after the World Cup Final just a few days ago!

>> read the whole story: Personal Thoughts From A Besieged Country

For more comments see Proxy War by Kevin Friedman and A protracted colonial war by Erkan Saka.

UPDATE 2 (8.8.06):

Hizballah: A primer by Lara Deeb, cultural anthropologist

Several new posts on Lebanon at Tabsir

UPDATE:
GlobalVoices analyses / sums up some interesting coverage by bloggers from Lebanon and the Middle East >> read Globalvoices: Lebanon Resistance & Unity

Book review: Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change (American Ethnologist)

Do anthropologists have anything relevant to say about human rights?

Live from Gaza: Blogger and journalist Mohammed Omer

(post in progress) "Strangely, you rarely see anthropologists on the front lines at times like these", anthropologist Maria Teasdale Brodine wrote at anthropology.net on the war in Lebanon nine days ago:

It seems that anthropologists might have the tools to…