This complementary seminar to the lecture “Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology” is held in English language.
It has been especially designed to offer students the opportunity to begin their studies in anthropology and cultural research in English. Like all other seminars accompanying the lecture, it aims at giving an engaging and hands-on introduction into the world of anthropology. It addresses key approaches, questions and methods used in the discipline, and provides students with an initial ‘tool kit’ for studying anthropology and cultural research. At the same time, this seminar provides to opportunity to improve English skills in reading, writing and discussing academically in this field.
There are no requirements regarding the level of language proficiency needed. However, participants should be interested in doing the exercises in English.




Literatur:
Augé, M. (1995) “From Places to Non-Places” in: Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London: Verso, pp. 75-115
Bourgois, P. (2002) ‘Respect at Work: ‘Going Legit’’, Stephanie Taylor (ed.) Ethnographic Research. A Reader. London: Sage, pp. 15-35
Miller, D. (2008) The Comfort of Things, Cambridge: Polity Press
Rhys-Taylor, A. (2013) ‘The essences of multiculture: a sensory exploration of an inner-city street market’, Identities, 20 (4): 393-406
Tranberg Hansen, K. (2004) ‘Helping or Hindering? Controversies around international second-hand clothing trade’, Anthropology Today 20 (4): 3-9

Important notice: This is an English speaking course, a premodel for a joint YUFE-course in the near future, hopefully winter 21/22. During this term, winter 20/21, you have to choose both seminars as obligatory combination for module 4 ⇐4 semester weekly hours).
80% of the course will be held synchrone via ZOOM (incl. Resources on StudIP and Moodle); 20% will be done outdoor in small teams!

When you wake up in the morning, you may hear the birds or the alarm clock, then you may switch on the radio, while you smell the shower gel, the fresh coffee or the toasted bread. Without being conscious of this sensual life setting, the sounds and smells are important for our mood or location in time and space. To know how significant smells and sounds are in social life, in your culture, you just have to imagine the reaction when you hear the police siren on your way to work.

In this introductary course we will explore the Anthropology of the Senses, and which analytical approaches have become prominent in this interdisciplinary field. For example, childhood memories of sounds and smells are quite various, but imagine how easily you might remember a certain experience while smelling something and how easily you may involve someone else to your memory when telling the story connected to this event.
What you recognize as a beautiful sound, might completely vary in other societies. It is our socialisation to rate smells or sounds, to say this smells ugly or not, this sound is nerve-shattering or not. What could be reasons for those differences? And by which rules or motives are these sensual meaning systems of our culture-s organized?
It has become central in the field of sensory studies to use our human body with all the different sensory potentials. How does it work to focus on only one sense? What happens if you follow the daily sounds and try to document them? Whereas audiotechnologies offer a lot, it might be more challenging to document smell. How can we approach our experience of various smells and represent them, as they are even more volatile than sounds?
With these questions in mind we will also work practically by conducting sound- and smellwalks outdoor in small groups, immersing into sound- and smellscapes of specific environments including COVID19-circumstances. How do we share this sensual experience with others, how can we document and represent the sound- and smellscapes we have discovered individually or in small teams?

As this course is taught as a premodel for the YUFE-program, we will already meet online with students and teachers of the University of Eastfinland during 3 sessions in January (via Zoom, StudIP & Moodle). We will share videolectures and theoretical texts in order to discuss our first insights.
At the end of the seminar, you will work on your ideas which have been developped throughout the practical and the theoretical units of the course ⇐“Prüfungsleistung“). E.g. you may edit a sound- or smell-diary, you may create a photo story of your smell- or soundscape, a podcast, a painting, or a conception for a guided walking tour – we are looking forward to your creativity how to document and represent the volatile world of sounds and smells.

Requirements:
Active Participation (6 CP)
3 CP: Seminar 1 (Dr. C. Weißköppel): Introduction to sensory studies incl. smellscapes
+
3 CP: Seminar 2 (Dr. J. G. Holzscheiter): Introduction to sound studies incl. soundscapes
+
3 CP: Graded work ⇐Prüfungsleistung):
Your individual or teamwork on A. soundscapes oder B. smellscapes or C. a combination of both, including a written paper (5 pages) commenting on your mediaproject up to end of March 2021, which shall be finally presented during a joint zoom-session with our partners from UEF in mid of May 2021.

Total 9 CP.

Contact: cweisskoeppel@uni-bremen.de, luc@uni-bremen.de


Recommended books:
Braun, K. et al. (Hg. 2017): Kulturen der Sinne. Zugänge zur Sensualität der Sozialen Welt. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Drobnick, J. (Hg. 2006): The Smell Culture Reader. Oxford und New York: Berg, S. 107-117.
Elliott, Denielle/ Culhane, Dara (Hg. 2017): A Different Kind of Ethnography. Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Pink, Sarah (2009): Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles: Sage.
Sterne, Jonathan (ed. 2012): The Sound Studies Reader. London: Routledge.

Kurzbeschreibung:

Borrowing the title from Michael Taussig’s (1997) book The Magic of the State, this seminar addresses some of the subtle assumptions which fundamentally shape our understandings of the state, power and politics.
From early on, anthropology has been interested in how societies are organised, how decisions are made, what hierarchies and political structures exist. The question of whether these societies have a state or not was key to political anthropology and what its representatives understood as political. Power, politics and the state remain to be crucial topics of anthropology, today.
This seminar aims at providing an introduction to the different ways in which anthropology has over time engaged with questions of the political. Focusing on key debates, questions and concepts, the seminar begins by looking into some early examples of anthropological writings and the crucial critique against them, before discussing research of contemporary scholars. In doing so, the seminar addresses the shifting approaches toward state and statelessness, hierarchies and inequalities, colonialism and transnationalism, power and resistance, policing and surveillance.
This seminar will be held in English, but assignments can also be handed-in in German.



Literatur:

Taussig, M. 1997. Magic of the State. New York: Routledge
Gledhill, J. 1994. Power and its Disguises. Anthropological Perspectives on Politics, London: Pluto Press
Vincent, J. (ed.) 2002. The Anthropology of Politics. A Reader in Ethnography, Theory and Critique, Oxford: Blackwell
Sharma, A. and Gupta, A. 2006. The Anthropology of the State. A Reader, Oxford: Blackwell
Talal Asad (ed) 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, Atlantic Highlands (NJ):
Humanities Press
Trouillot, M. 2001. The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization. Close Encounters of the Deceptive Kind. Current Anthropology 42 (1): 125-138
Fassin, D. 2011. Enforcing Order. An Ethnography of Urban Policing. Cambridge: Polity Press

Abstract:

The practical side of intercultural communication shows, that two different paradigms exist in this field. One is the economic perspective with it´s aim to train managers and other staff to facilitate international business or to improve the economic results of organisations through diversity management. The other perspective is much more heterogeneous. In a broad field ranging from associations, schools, the police, adult education, public bureaucracy to NGOs different stakeholders acquire intercultural competences. The differences between these perspectives lie in the diverse understanding of the notion “culture” and in varying methodological approaches. During the course we will also discuss theoretical basics of diversity-studies and intersectional perspectives.

In this seminar we investigate the question, how intercultural competence is understood and trained regarding these different perspectives. Which means or tools are helpful, how are competences defined and which is a good way to get hold of them? Beneath reading relevant literature we also try different practical exercises and invite experts. The starting point will be to look into the basic theoretical concepts. Exercises and trainings will provide an insight into the different fields of application. At the end of the course, participants will understand how intercultural competences are defined and in which way they are trained in different fields of practice.

Our course welcomes international students to join lively discussions about how to handle differences between people and which competences are needed for a future Europe. The course will be online using Zoom-Meetings, which facilitate easy access from abroad.

The required activities in this course are composed of frequent and active participation, presentation in the course and an essay at the end.
Please note that this course is obligatory to achieve the “Interkulturelle Zertifikat”. More details can be found on our website and will be provided in the first session.

Reading:

Moosmüller, A. (2007). Interkulturelle Kommunikation. Konturen einer wissenschaftlichen Disziplin. Münster, New York, München, Berlin: Waxmann.

Nyiri, P. D., & Breidenbach, J. C. (2015). Intercultural Communication: An Anthropological Perspective. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition) (pp. 357-361). Elsevier.

In 2019, Hong Kong’s students rebelled against their government. Whereas previous generations of students had used the “umbrella” (protecting demonstrators against the police’s water cannons) as their guiding metaphor for protest, this new generation went further, and took inspiration from Karate fighter and actor Bruce Lee: “Be water!” became the name of the student’s method of short bursts of direct action that are immediately followed by all participants melting away into a crowd.

This is an art & ethnography & activism course that takes inspiration from the Hong Kong students’ practices of undermining power. We will explore approaches to research that operate from positions of weakness. We aim for new ways to generate knowledge, to act in everyday life, and to leave your mark in public, including those where you can't be traced. We will also question whether the context and position of the researcher can justify alternative ethical frameworks and approaches, looking at tactics of subversion and deception, covertness and anonymity, obfuscation and hiding in plain sight.

The course is hands-on and experimental. Both digital media and urban space will provide us with sites of action. We will engage with prominent and outsider art, activism, ethnography, theory as well as our everyday practices, while we search for new mergers of activism, art and research: beyond fine art, beyond classical academic research and beyond traditional forms of activism. You will also be tasked with doing and producing weird social games and art projects, pieces of idiosyncratic research and activist interventions (and mixes of these!) as parts of the final assessment.

In this course you will a.) learn about art, ethnography and activism by pushing and exploring their respective boundaries, b.) generate new ways of research and new publics in the spaces between these fields, c.) explore questions of visibility and invisibility, surveillance, anonymity and concealment.

The course is jointly hosted by a British artist (Simon Farid) and an ethnographer (Götz Bachmann).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJMwBwFj5nQ

Commentary:
https://www.uni-bremen.de/fileadmin/user_upload/fachbereiche/fb9/zemki/docs/comments/Comments_WiSe20-21/M8_Pohlmann.pdf

Kurzbeschreibung:
This seminar is for all students with interests in Filmmaking. The focus is set on production. Students will form a filmcrew and learn how to organize and produce a short film after a script. Screen writing is a small part of this seminar. The first step is the creation, revision and optimization of a script. If the pandemic restrictions allow we will have a Casting and location scouting. We will shoot the film with DSLR Cameras and different lenses. The postproduction will be realized with Final Cut in our Studio.
Even with the most strict restrictions due to Corona we will be able to produce a film together.