Cornelia Goethe Centrum für Frauenstudien und die Erforschung der Geschlechterverhältnisse (CGC)
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In their study on "The modern anthropology of Southeast Asia", Victor King and William Wilder raise the question in how far the region can be taken as a field of anthropological enquiry. After their initial discussion of cultural and social trends as well as anthropological studies, they conclude that the common issue of the region is its diversity. They come to the rather pragmatic solution that "South-East Asia constitutes a convenient unit of study, ... but ... we should not think of it in terms of a bounded, unified and homogenous socio-cultural area" (King/Wilder 2003: 24). We doubt that there are homogenous socio-cultural areas anywhere else. These are usually constructed through the invention of traditions and ideological simulations. The interesting case with regards to Southeast Asia is, why no such homogeneity has been constructed, not even by anthropologists or sociologists. ...
The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media. After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives?
Communication in the Web 2.0 context mainly works through images. The online video platform YouTube uses this form of visual communication and makes art forms of Western societies visible through their online videos. YouTube, as cultural reservoir and visual archive of moving images, accommodates the whole range of visualising creative processes – from artistic finger exercises to fine arts. A general characteristic of YouTube is the publishing of small everyday gestures of the ‘big ones’ (politicians, stars), like small incidents and their clumsiness in everyday actions, e.g. Beyonce´s fall from the stage or Tom Cruise’s demonic pro-scientology interview. Through their viral distribution on different platforms, these incidents will never be covered up or disappear from the public view. At the same time big gestures and star images are replicated and sometimes reinterpreted by the ‘small people’ who present themselves in the poses and attitudes of the stars. Generally, a coexistence of different perspectives is possible. YouTube allows polysemic and polyvalent views on the everyday and media phenomena. This article relies on YouTube research 2 that started in 2006 at the New Media Department of the Goethe University of Frankfurt. The results of the research have already presented representative forms and basic patterns, that is to say, categories for the clips appearing here. These kinds of clips, recurring in the observation period, have an impact on the basic representation of art or artistic expression within moving images on this platform. Methodologically the focus leads to the investigation (which has to be adequate to the specifics of the medium, or ‘media adequate’) of new visual structures and forms which can create – consciously or unconsciously – an art form. After focusing on the media structures, it will be discussed whether any and, if so, which ‘authentic’ new forms were developed solely on YouTube and whether these forms are innovative and can be characterised as avant-garde. This article first takes a small step in evaluating how to get from a general communication through means of visuality in web 2.0, an often endless chatty cheesy visual noise 3 – to the special quality of a consciously created aesthetic. From where do innovative aesthetic forms emerge, related to their media structures? 4 Are they the products of ‘media amateurs’ 5 or do we have to find new specifications and descriptions for the producers? The definition of a ‘media amateur’ describes technically interested private individuals who acquire and develop technology before commercial use of the technology is even recognisable. Just as artists are developing their own techniques, according to Dieter Daniels, media amateurs are autodidacts who invent techniques, rather than just acquire knowledge about them (see for example the demo scene, the machinima, brickfilm producers as well as many areas of computer gaming in general 6). The media amateur directly intervenes in the production processes of the medium and does not just simply use the medium. What is fascinating is the media amateur’s process of self education – not the result – and the direct impact on the internal structure and the control of the medium. 7 Media amateurs open a previously culturally unformed space of experience. This only partially applies to most of the YouTube clips in the realms of the visual arts; it is here most important to look at the visual content. This article discusses all these concepts and introduces new descriptions for the different forms of production: the technically oriented media master, the do-it-yourselfer, the tinkerer, the amateur handicraftsman and the inventor. It outlines a basic research project on ‘visual media culture’ (a triangulation of research on media structure and iconography) of the presented online video platform. It is a product of the analysis of clips focusing on the media structure, analyzing the creative handling of images and the deviations and differences of pre-set media formats and stereotypes.
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.
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.
This paper discusses the sustainability impact (contribution to sustainability, reduction of adverse environmental impacts) of online second-hand trading. A survey of eBay users shows that a relationship between the trading of used goods and the protection of natural resources is hardly realized. Secondly, the environmental motivation and the willingness to act in a sustainable manner differ widely between groups of consumers. Given these results from a user perspective, the paper tries to find some objective hints of online second-hand trading’s environmental impact. The greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the energy used for the trading transactions seem to be considerably lower than the emissions due to the (avoided) production of new goods. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for second-hand trade and consumer policy. Information about the sustainability benefits of purchasing second-hand goods should be included in general consumer information, and arguments for changes in behavior should be targeted to different groups of consumers. Keywords: online marketplaces; online auctions; consumer; electronic commerce; used products; second-hand market; sustainable consumption
Considering migration to be a gendered experience, in this article, I focus on the gender-specific processes of cultural production and tradition-building in the context of migration and pose the following questions: What happens to gendered biographies in a migration context? What role does gender play with respect to the rupture, renewal, or building of traditions in migration processes? Drawing on the basic assumption that "gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures," which in turn shapes the processes of migration (cf. Curran, 2006, 199), I make use of the concept of gender defined as an accomplishment, as a performance in daily interaction practices:
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property of situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to the individual, and focuses on interactional and, ultimately, institutional arenas. (West et al., 1987, 126)
D2.1. provides further elaboration of the original research design and informs about ideas for the final Volume II of bEUcitizen. It is closely connected to task 1 of work package 2: specifying various concrete tasks for the different work packages and formulating overarching questions suitable to provide substantive cohesion and integration of the overall project. The elaboration of 10 crosscutting topics (to become chapters in the “horizontal” book, D2.3.) is a first step towards this goal. Discussing these cross-cutting topics is supposed to feed, infuse and inspire the work done in the different work packages and to build cross-cutting connections between them. Themes 1-10 merge into a valuable overview of the multi-faceted research on (EU) citizenship. They access the main issues of EU-citizenship and citizenship in general from different angles and different disciplines. Taken together these contributions help to identify barriers towards EU citizenship and ways to overcome them. Each Theme formulates questions how it might feed and be fed by further information and findings in the other work packages.
D2.1. is mainly meant for internal use. Its functions are firstly to inform about preliminary ideas, eventual contributions to planned final results and secondly to make out some more of less specific guiding questions that connect the work done by the single researchers in every different work package to the project as a whole. This task implies a normative yardstick, a clear picture of what would be a "good" EU citizenship practice. Elaborating on such a normative yardstick is a meta-topic that cuts across the range of cross-cutting topics presented in this working paper.