This complementary seminar to the lecture “Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology 2” 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 a historical introduction into the development of the concept of culture and anthropological research. Throughout the semester, we will be discussing a range of authors – both those commonly regarded as classics as well as marginalized voices. We will critically engage with their key contributions to our discipline, asking how they help us to look at the world around us. But we will also discuss how they limit our understandings, what their blind spots are and what it means to dismantle or “decolonize” certain legacies.
The seminar provides a space to work with the texts, discuss the concepts in a friendly, student-focussed atmosphere. It aims at enhancing your understanding of the material and skills in critical reading, researching literature and writing in different styles (reading summaries, glossary articles and essays).
At the same time, this seminar provides the opportunity to improve your 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.


Literature:
Engelke, Matthew. 2018. How to Think Like an Anthropologist? Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2015 [1995]. “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as Non-event.” In: Silencing the Past: Power and Production of History (20th Anniversary Edition), Boston: Beacon Press.
Mauss, Marcel. 1925. The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, London: Routledge
Gluckman, Max.1940. Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand, Bantu Studies, 14 (1): 1-30
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish, London: Penguin Books
Ortner, Sherry B. 2006. Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture. In: Ortner, Sherry B. (Ed.) Anthropology and Social Theory. Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press.
Benedict, Ruth. 2005 [1934]. Patterns of Culture. New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin
Hurston, Zora Neale. 1935. Mules and Men, New York: J.B. Lippincott
Graeber, David 2014. What’s the Point if we Can’t Have Fun?, https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun
de la Cadena, Marisol. 2019. An Invitation to Live Together Making the “Complex We”, Environmental Humanities (2019) 11 (2): 477–484.

Zoom

Am Fr., 19.05.2023, 10:00 - 14:00, findet das Seminar aufgrund einer anderen Raumbelegung ONLINE statt!

"The seminar deals with methods and design processes common in the creation of software and websites: Doing interviews and observations, defining users needs and evaluating existing products. This is connected to an introduction of texts on the practices and culture of IT product design. A significant part of the practical content will follow this text: https://urbook.fordes.de/"

This is an introductory course in Anthropology of Middle East. Thus, we embark on a historical journey from the conclusion of WWI to the present to discover how the current map of nation-states developed through colonial activity. We also tap into ME's political economy. We then discuss topics such as petro-capitalism, extremism, Islam, and women. On this voyage, we hope to destabilize established cliches about the region and discover new ways of thinking about this vital region.
The goal of this course is to introduce students to some major political, social, and cultural issues and practices in the Middle East, with a focus on significant events, movements, and ideas that shaped the Middle East's history over the last century and continue to influence its current realities.

The North Sea is relatively young, salty, cold, large, and shallow (ca 20m in the South to 400 meters at the edge of the continental platform). It has a wide bi-diurnal tidal range (of up to 9m) and a highly dynamic wind regime, which easily reaches gale speeds, lulling a cradle of waves. It is crossed by several sandbars, some of which are home to essential fisheries while others represent navigational hazards. Sometimes a dreaded adversary others a wonderful ally, the North Sea nurtured ice age hunting gatherers, facilitated the movement of Celts, Romans, Saxons and the (t)raiding forages of the Vikings, fostered the constitution of the Hanseatic League, lost ground to the Netherlands and was at the core of the 17th to 20th century struggles for European domination. The North Sea has remained a periphery, albeit with its fisheries, fossil fuels, wind, and tidal power, one of crucial economic importance. It constitutes a distinct and highly dynamic cultural environment that profits from and continuously re-elaborates its heritage, which in many ways resisted and transformed Christianization and Modernity, and which now spearheads the planning and domestication of the ocean. This course explores the ways of understanding, dwelling and relating of the peoples of the North Sea, and how they and their environment constitute one another.

A sea of islands. Menschen des Landes. Menschen der Meere. Unauflösliche Beziehungen zwischen Personen und Dingen, die zirkulieren und irgendwann zurückkommen werden. Dann erreichen Händler und Sklavenschiffe (Blackbirders) die Küsten. Die Plantagen-Ökonomie und die koloniale Gewalt halten Einzug. Missionare, Künstler:innen, Mediziner und Ethnologen fertigten exotische, häufig evolutionistische Repräsentationen und Bilder an, die uns bis heute nicht aus dem Kopf gehen, obwohl ein großer Teil dieser Bilder Projektionen unserer eigenen Gewalt- und Überlegenheitsphantasien sind. Von ca. 1880 bis 1918 befand sich ein großer Teil des nordöstlichen Neu Guineas unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft. Bis in die Gegenwart ist der westliche Teil des Landes, West-Papua, von Indonesien kolonisiert. Welche Beziehungen können wir heute jenseits von Extraktivismus, Kolonialität (Walter Mignolo) und Othering aufbauen? Wir erwarten im Juni und Juli 2023 eine Delegation von Studierenden, Doktorand:innen und Lehrenden aus unseren Partner-Universitäten in Port Moresby und Madang, mit denen wir gemeinsam eine Reihe von Themen (auch in Form von Workshops) bearbeiten werden. Im Zentrum werden lokale PNG-Theorien der Enteignung, der Kompensation und des Egalitarismus stehen, mit denen wir die Debatten um die Restitution von mehreren 100.000 Objekten, die während der deutschen Kolonialzeit in hiesige Museen gebracht und dort gehortet wurden, konfrontieren, provinzialisieren und anreichern werden. Das Seminar bereitet diese Themen im April und Mai vor. Wie können wir den andauernden Extraktivismus von Wissen, natürlichen Ressourcen und Objekten ethnographisch verstehen, theoretisieren und Alternativen formulieren? Wie können wir den westlichen Materialismus des Nehmens, Stehlens und Hortens neu lesen lernen? Welche Chancen gibt es für die transnationale Zusammenarbeit und eine transnationale Bewegung für Restitution und Reparationen?

Das Seminar wird zweisprachig (englisch-deutsch) mit vielen Gästen stattfinden. Es umfasst eine kleine Exkursion im Juni nach Köln und eine weitere mehrtätige Exkursion im Juli nach Berlin. Es benötigt als Voraussetzung auf Seiten der deutschen Studierenden Lust darauf, sich einzulassen und eigene Sicherheiten und Positionen zu hinterfragen.

The applied perspective of intercultural communication shows two different paradigms existing in this field. One is the economic perspective with its 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 and critical understanding of the notion “culture” and in varying methodological approaches. During the course we will also discuss theoretical issues of diversity-studies, intersectional perspectives and postcolonial critique.

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 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.

Over recent years we have been witnessing an increasing erosion of democracies around the globe: Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Modi, Orbán, Trump have vividly shown us that democratically elected are able to dismantle the basic fundaments of democracy, while fascist parties like in Italy are being voted into power. They restructure the electoral and legal system to secure their power, pressurize or imprison political opponents, and deploy and thrive on anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-LGBT+ and anti-environmentalist discourses.
Why are these developments such a global phenomenon? Why now? And what are these governments aiming for? Why do right-wing, authoritarian or populist parties and leaders have such an appeal to a large proportion of the population? And what does it mean for the respective societies? These are just some of the questions we would like to be able to answer by the end of this course.
The seminar aims at engaging both with key readings on authoritarianism, populism and fascism, and the core issues of the academic debate, but also at examining current cases from a comparative perspective. The output of this seminar will be a collective digital map of current authoritarian developments in the world based on your own research. In this sense, this course is designed both as a reading intensive and a learning-by-doing-research class.
This seminar will be held in English. There are no requirements regarding the level of language proficiency needed. However, participants should be interested in doing the exercises in English. Assignments can also be handed-in in German.

Literature:
Adorno, T.W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. R. and Sanford, R.N. 1983 [1951]. The Authoritarian Personality. WW Norton & Co.
Arendt, H. 2017 [1966]. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Milton Keynes: Penguin Books.
Brown, W., Gordon, P.E. & Pensky, M. 2018. Authoritarianism Three Inquiries in Critical Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Dean, M. 1999. Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage
Finchelstein, F. 2017. From Fascism to Populism in History, University of California Press
Gingrich, A., & Banks, M. (Eds). 2006. Neo-Nationalism in Europe and Beyond: Perspectives from Social Anthropology. New York: Berghahn Books
Grzebalska, W. & Pető, A. 2017. The gendered modus operandi of the illiberal transformation in Hungary and Poland. Women’s Studies International Forum
Hall, S. 1980. Popular-Democratic vs. Authoritarian Populism: two Ways of ‘Taking Democracy Seriously’, in: Hunt, A. Marxism and Democracy. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Pp.157-185
Hochschild, A. R. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land. Anger and Mourning on the American, New York: New Press
Holmes, D. R. 2000. Integral Europe. Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press
Horkheimer, M. 1974 [1947]. The Rise and Fall of the Individual. In: Eclipse of Reason, London: Bloomsbury
Pasieka, A. 2017. Taking Far-Right Claims Seriously and Literally: Anthropology and the Study of Right-Wing Radicalism, Slavic Review 76 (1)
Müller, J.-W. 2016. What is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press
Szombati, K. 2018. The Revolt of the Provinces. Anti-Gypsyism and Right-Wing Politics in Hungary. New York: Berghahn

In the past 30 years, anthropologists increasingly came to acknowledge the role and importance of other species besides Homo sapiens for our interlocutors, questioning the nature/culture divide. Thereby throwing the definition and boundaries of the discipline into question and calling for a displacement of our focus to better engage multiple species. Multispecies ethnography recognized established and emerging symbiotic relations involving, constituting, affecting or affected by humans. The change of focus opened important questions about more-than-human sentience, the ethics and justice of interspecies relations, about rights and obligations. The displacement of attention, however, drew important critiques over the positions of anthropology in the advocacy towards forms of environmentalist colonialism. Nevertheless, Indigenous scholars noted how human exceptionalism and racism have been tightly interrelated colonial discourses endorsing dehumanization and exploitation of Indigenous peoples and their territories. The notion of multispecies justice poses profound challenges. This course will examine how more-than-human have constituted communities. We will analyse the difficulties and possibilities to address more-than-human sentience, rights and duties. And we will explore how these communities have engaged with issues of multispecies justice, and ways to address our emerging multispecies relations.

4 SWS
wöchentliche Termine plus Blöcke im Juni 2023

Since the recent uprisings in Iran the slogan Jin - Jiyan - Azadi (Women - Life - Freedom) has spread around the world. Women in the Middle East and beyond use this slogan in solidarity, but also because it speaks to their own struggles. It has been mentioned e.g. in the declaration of solidarity signed by all fractions of the German Parliament and projected on the Brandenburg Gate. But, not all know that this slogan originates from the Kurdish Women's Movement.

In this joint seminar with the University of Rojava, we aim to take a closer look at what we call "epistemologies of struggle" by which we mean the ways in which movements frame their understandings of the world, their goals and strategies.

The autonomous University of Rojava is based in Qamishlo in the North-Eastern Syria – also often referred to as Rojava – which is the site of one of the most interesting current attempts to establish a new form of living together. Despite the war and constant attacks by Turkey, the people in Rojava are trying to build a society based on ideas of grassroots democracy, feminism, ecologically sustainability, and a model of autonomy that aims to be an alternative to national independence in the struggle against – what Kurdish movements have framed as – “internal colonialism” by the states Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

This seminar aims at discussing the epistemologies of the Kurdish Movement in the light of a broader history of struggles for and debates on self-determination, independence and statelessness, radical democracy, anarchism and anti-capitalism, eco-municipalism and intersectional feminist critique. We want to bring the specific concepts of the Kurdish Movement in dialogue with those of movements in Germany, e.g. the current climate justice movement in Germany (and beyond). What understandings of life, urgency, colonialism, equality, justice, capitalism and its alternatives do these movements envisage? These are some of the questions that we want to research and discuss collectively in the joint seminar.

The seminar is divided into three parts: one preparational and one joint part, followed by reflection sessions. The first part has the aim to give some background knowledge to the situation in Rojava, the history of the Kurdish Question, and to discuss key issues on collaborative learning, as well as to prepare presentations you will hold in the joint sessions. As this seminar is research-based, we do not provide a finished syllabus. Instead, together with the participants, we will decide which topics to address. We therefore ask the participants to actively engage in the shaping of the seminar.

The Bremen-only sessions will take place on Monday afternoons. While the five joint sessions will take place on the following block-dates in June: Sunday, 11.06.2023, Monday, 12.06.2023, Sunday, 18.06.2023, Monday, 19.06.2023, Monday, 26.06.2023, each 12:00 - 16:00.

The seminar will be held in a combination of English and Kurdish. Knowledge of Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic or Farsi is helpful, but not a requirement for this seminar. Simultaneous translation English/Kurdish will be provided in the collaborative sessions. No specific level of English proficiency is required.

Literature:
Akkaya A. H. and Jongerden, J. (2012). Reassembling the Political: The PKK and the Project of Radical Democracy. European Journal of Turkish Studies (14) [Online], http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4615
Çağlayan, H. (2020). Women in the Kurdish Movement: Mothers, Comrades, Goddesses, Palgrave Macmillian
Flader, U. & Gürer, Ç. (2019). Building Alternative Communities within the State: The Kurdish Movement, Local Municipalities and Democratic Autonomy. In: Niamh McCrea/Fergal Finnegan Funding, Power and Community Development. Policy Press
Flach, A, Ayboğa, E und Knapp, M: Anja Flach (2016): Revolution in Rojava. Democratic Autonomy and Women’s Liberation in Syrian Kurdistan.
McDowall, D. (2004). A Modern History of the Kurds. I.B. Tauris.
Welat Zeydanlıoğlu. 2008.“The White Turkish Man’s Burden”: Orientalism,Kemalism and the Kurds in Turkey, in: Neo-colonial Mentalities in Contemporary Europe? Language and Discourse inthe Construction of Identities, edited by Guido Rings and Anne Ife, Newcastle upon Tyne,UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008, pp.155-174.
Schmidinger T: Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds.
Film by Mylene Sauloy / ARTE: Syria stellt Frauen gleich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEpXUCMSDqA

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Seminar Language: English

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Seminar Language: English

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Seminar Language: English