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Although throughout the history of anthropology the ethnography of urban societies was never an important topic, investigations on cities in Africa contributed to the early theoretical development of urban studies in social sciences. As the ethnography of rural migrants in towns made clear, cultural diversity and creativity are foundational and permanent elements of urban cultures in Africa (and beyond). Currently, two new aspects complement these insights: 1) Different forms of mobility have received a new awareness through the concept of transnationalism. They are much more complex, including not only rural–urban migration, but also urban–urban migration, and migrations with a destination beyond the continent. 2) Urban life-worlds also include the appropriation of globally circulating images and lifestyles, which contribute substantially to the current cultural dynamics of cities in Africa. These two aspects are the reasons for the high complexity of urban contexts in Africa. Therefore, whether it is still appropriate to speak about the “locality” of these life-worlds has become questionable. At the same time, these new aspects explain the self-consciousness of members of urban cultures in Africa. They contribute to the expansive character of these societies and to the impression that cities in Africa host the most innovative and creative societies worldwide.
Herder's concept of a national literature [...] serves as a differential category formulated in opposition to the concepts generated by universalistic rationalism and the Classicist aesthetics which is based on it, this being an aesthetics which is incapable of accommodating cultural difference. Thus Herder's concept is to be read – primarily as one looking for ways of conceiving cultural difference syncronically as well as diachronically.
From the very outset of European expansion, scholars have been preoccupied with the impact of proselytization and colonization on non-European societies. Anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Bronislaw Malinowski, who witnessed these processes at the beginning of the twentieth century while at the same time benefitting from the colonial structure, were convinced that the autochthonous societies could not possibly withstand the onslaught of the dominant European cultures, and thus were doomed to vanish in the near future. The fear of losing their object of research, which had just recently been discovered, hung above the heads of the scholars like a sword of Damocles ever since the establishment of anthropology as a discipline. They felt hurried to document what seemed to be crumbling away. Behind these fears there was the notion that the indigenous cultures were comparatively static entities that had existed untouched by any external influences for many centuries, or even millennia, and were unable to change. This idea was shared by proponents of other disciplines; in religious studies, for example, up to the late 1980s the view prevailed that the contact between the great world religions and the belief systems of small, autochthonous societies doomed the latter to extinction. However, more recent studies have shown that this assumption, according to which indigenous peoples have not undergone any changes in the course of history, is untenable. It became apparent that groups supposedly living in isolation have extensive contact networks, and that migration, trade, and conquest are not privileges of modern times. Myths and oral traditions bore witness of journeys to faraway regions, new settlements founded in unknown territories, or the arrival of victorious foreigners who introduced new ways and customs and laid claim to a place of their own within society.
One of the critical questions that Kenyans have continuously asked is what went wrong in January and February 2008 with the 'peace' they had hitherto enjoyed. There have not been readily available answers to this fundamental question. The collection of papers presented in this book attempt to provide, as a starting point, possible explanations for the events of early 2008 including key background issues in Kenyan history since pre-independence times. Based on a series of public lectures titled (Re)membering Kenya organized by the volume editors together with Twaweza Communications and sponsored by the Goethe-Institut Kenya, the Institute for International Education and The Ford Foundation the lecture series became a way of trying to get scholars to engage meaningfully with the Kenyan public on critical matters pertaining to their nationhood - even if this entailed first calling to question the 'lie' about the very ideas and practices upon which that nationhood is assumed to stand. A key lesson drawn from the unfolding discussions at the Goethe-Institut Kenya was that the 2007 elections' debacle was merely the cusp of momentous crises to do with among other issues, governance, law and order, Parliament's abdication of its role in ensuring accountability from the Executive, dilemmas of identity and socio-economic marginality. The book is the first of three volumes under the (Re)membering Kenya series whose overall objective is to cast some new light on the various trajectories that informed the happenings of January 2008. The present volume brings together some of the best interpretative writing and suggestions on pertinent questions, past and present, ranging from the architecture of Kenya's ethnicity, Kenyanness, generational competition, socialization and violence, iconic representations of identity to the ongoing debate on the efficacy of the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC). It is hoped that the issues debated during the public lectures and documented herein will spur further discussions in other spaces within civil society organizations, among activists and in newspapers where the public might continue to expand their thinking on the complex task of (Re)membering Kenya.
In diesem Essay erzählt Loïc Wacquant, wie er zum Ethnographen wurde; wie er zufällig mit dem Chicagoer Box-Klub, dem Gym, in Berührung kam, der zur Hauptbühne und zugleich zum Hauptdarsteller seiner Ethnographie des Berufsboxens im schwarz-amerikanischen Ghetto wurde; und wie er dazu kam, das Buch "Leben für den Ring" zu schreiben, das auf diesen Erkenntnissen und Beobachtungen beruht, indem es Pierre Bourdieus Signalkonzept des Habitus sowohl methodologisch anwendet als auch empirisch weiterentwickelt. Er stellt auch einige biographische, intellektuelle und analytische Verbindungen zwischen diesem Forschungsprojekt über eine plebejische körperliche Fertigkeit, dem zugrunde liegenden theoretischen Rahmen und der makrokomparativen Studie über städtische Randgesellschaften, aus der es eher zufällig entstanden ist, her. Er zeigt auf, wie die praktischen Bedingungen der Feldforschung ihn dazu führten, das Ghetto nicht als Instrument ethno-rassischer Dominanz, sondern als deren Ausdruck zu verstehen. Damit wurde das Ghetto vom soziologischen Problem zu einer hervorragenden Möglichkeit für seine sozialwissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Mit diesem Artikel argumentiert er für die Feldforschung als ein Instrument für die theoretische Konstruktion, für die Wucht körperlicher Erfahrung und die Notwendigkeit epistemischer Reflexion, und ebenso betont er, dass die Textsorten und Stile der Ethnographie erweitert werden müssen, um den "Sturm und Drang" des sozialen Handelns, wie er konstruiert und gelebt wird, besser zu verstehen.
New projects, services and collaborations have recently brought the infrastructural services for African Studies a big step forward. This report gives an account of new subject gateways and digitisation projects. It discusses recent European cooperation ventures in the field of librarianship. Additionally, new developments and services of the Africa Collection at Frankfurt University Library are presented, which help to address the changing needs of researchers and to handle information overload, while keeping up with the latest developments. Nevertheless, the fragmentation and compartmentalisation of the different services still hinder more integrated information services.
Indonesia is a multicultural and multireligious nation whose heterogeneity is codified in the state doctrine, the Pancasila. Yet the relations between the various social, ethnic, and religious groups have been problematic down to the present day, and national unity has remained fragile. In several respects, Christians have a precarious role in the struggle for shaping the nation. They are a small minority (about 9% of the population) in a country predominantly inhabited by Muslims; in the past they were interconnected in manifold ways with the Dutch colonial government; they exert great influence in economy and the military, and constitute the majority of the population in some parts of the so-called Outer Islands (such as Flores, Sumba, and Timor), which are characterized by an attitude fraught with ambivalence towards the state apparatus perceived as ‘Javanese’ and ‘Muslim’. In the aftermath of the former president Suharto’s resignation and in the course of the ensuing political changes – in particular the independence of East Timor – Christians were repeatedly discredited for allegedly posing a threat to Indonesian unity, and have been involved both as victims and perpetrators in violent regional clashes with Muslims that claimed thousands of lives. Since the beginning of the new millennium the violent conflicts have lessened, yet the pressure exerted on Christians by Islamic fundamentalists still continues undiminished in the Muslim-majority regions. The future of the Christians in Indonesia remains uncertain, and pluralist society is still on trial. For this reason the situation of Christians in Indonesia is an important issue that goes far beyond research on a minority, touching on general issues relating to the formation of the nation-state.