CCV - City Call Vienna: The Journey

CCV - City Call Vienna: The Journey https://youtu.be/bt0zpM90Nko via @YouTube. You are invited to see more on http://kck.st/2aiDkJV

CCV - City Call Vienna: http://kck.st/2aiDkJV

Dresden

Recently I found this work online, it is written by Martin Roessler. The EPaper gives a historical overview of Ethnology in the german-speaking countries. He means on page 20, that Ethnology and the NSRegime were subject to reciprocation, but he states, that political influences were stronger on the science, than the other way round. Except that the NSRegime was interested in colonial affairs, ethnologists during WWII pronounced racist stands and the hierarchical order of peoples from the view of an extreme nationalism. Some people in Dresden were Otto Reche´s alumni, notably one Michael Hesch, who wrote a Festschrift for Reche 1939 and who became the director of the Museums of Ethnology and Zoology in 1941. He was a member of the NSParty since 1933 and it seems, that his friendship with Reche was of great help for him, because his NSCareer was furthered in the years after 1941. He had been responsible for erbbiologische Abstammungsgutachten and later moved to Vienna, where he was a member of the Anthropological Society. He not only was scientifically influential during WWII, he also acquired certain ranks in the uniformed NSMilitia, namely one SSRank called Hauptsturmfuehrer. Sadly enough, the Museum of Ethnology´s website has only two or three sentences left for the time of WWII in Dresden.

Dresden

A group to find out more about the Dresden Museum of Ethnology and Institute was formed during the first part of the seminar concerning the german-speaking regions during WWII. The Dresden Museum keeps an old collection since 1560, which was found by Kurfuerst August of Sachsen. The Inventarien describe these collections furthered by the King of Poland, who was August the Strong since 1794. Adolf B. Meyer founded the ethnographical department 1875, to be a part of the Museum of Natural History. Meyer had close contact with Rudolf Virchow and Adolf Bastian, two scientists important for the german-speaking countries. Remember Adolf Bastian and his work with Francis Boas, who later moved to North America. During WWII Dresden was destroyed, but luckily most of the museum collections were saved in time. As early as 1946 the anthropological collection arrived in the Museum.

Here is an excerpt of the time table, the time in question is only touched with some sentences on the website http://www.voelkerkunde-dresden.de/site.php?g=geschichte&css=fc (2007-10-16 04:58 PM):

1940 - 1945
Auslagerung von Archivunterlagen und Sammlungen. Vernichtung eines Teils der in Ausstellungen verbliebenen Großobjekte während der Bombardierung Dresdens.

1945/46/47
Nach Beendigung des II. Weltkrieges Trennung der Museen für Tierkunde und Völkerkunde. Das Museum für Völkerkunde wird der Hauptverwaltung der Staatlichen Museen, Schlösser und Gärten im Lande Sachsen unterstellt.

This Museum of Ethnology has a Wikipedia article here http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_f%C3%BCr_V%C3%B6lkerkunde_Dresden (2007-10-16 05:00 PM), where the same contents, as above mentioned, are repeated. Here is a list of Departments in Germany http://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/ethno/links.html#2 (2007-16-10 05:06 PM), this already of big help for students in the seminar held by Professor Gingrich at the University´s Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology.

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The German-Speaking Countries

Gingrich, Andre (2005) The German-Speaking Countries. Ruptures, Schools, and Nontraditions: Reassessing the History of Sociocultural Anthropology in German, In: Barth/Gingrich/Parkin/Silverman, Sydel (2005) One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. Chicago: Chicago University Press, PP. 61 - 153

Contents

1 Prelude and Overture: From Early Travelogues to German Enlightenment

2 From the Nationalist Birth of Volkskunde to the Establishment of Academic Diffusionism: Branching Off from the International Mainstream

3 From the Late Imperial Era to the End of the Republican Interlude: Creative Subaltern Tendencies, Larger and Smaller Schools of Anthropology

4 German Anthropology during the Nazi Period: Complex Scenarios of Collaboration, Persecution and Competition

5 Anthropology in Four German-Speaking Countries: Key Elements of Post-World War II Developments to 1989

The following text is an excerpt and overview of the first part in the first chapter to explain critique and research approach.

Ad 1) After George Stocking, the presentist approach to Anthropology nowadays implies criticist and internationally oriented positions. Professor Gingrich uses nontraditions "to refer, on the one hand, to dispersed, hidden, and half-forgotten treasures with little continuity and, on the other, to certain schools with a lot of continuity that, however, do not represent any positive tradition today" (Gingrich 2005: 61). The basic implications of a presentist stand are:

1. Historical traditions that had consequences for sociocultural anthropology as perceived today in an internationally valid sense
2. The international, transnational and global dimensions of today´s anthropological discourses and debates
3. The linguistic and temporal limits of examining the historical record of anthropology in German.

There are three critical consequences of the critical insterest of Professor Gingrich´s approach outlined

1. The explicit embracing of the broad set of values to share, which are secular democracy and humanism. This would necessitate precise ideological criticism and careful, distantiated evaluation
2. The reassessment of hegemonic traditions of the past with relatively little interantional relevance. Peripheral and subaltern traditions never received local recognition and they appear much more interesting now, than what was respected and taught then.
3. A new consideration of the extremely hierarchical nature of academic institutions in the German-speaking countries, "these hierarchical academic positions answered to wider political interests much more explicitely than academic positions elsewhere" (Gingrich 2005: 63).

This part of the book concerning the German-speaking countries goes on with subchapters titled The German Enlightenment, Enlightenment Explorers, Language Studies and First Concepts, Limited Consequences.

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Seminar

University seminars and lectures started again. I will enjoy a seminar concerning the "german-speaking" institutes during WWII, to which I was admitted for. It is a blocked seminar, so attending is easily manageable. An overview of the history in Social and Cultural Anthropology I not only gained during lectures, but also in a previous seminar work group concerning students of the Vienna Institute. Here is a list of my work and collected links or texts relating to the previous seminar:

• Ia: Korrespondenz
• Ib: 1956
• Ic: 1953
• Id: Schebesta
• Ie: Einleitung
• If: DJW
• Ig: Fragebogen
• Ih: DOeW Literatur
• Ii: Universitaetsarchiv
• Ij: Einladung
• Ik: Wiesbauer- Hohenwart
• Il: OeAW
• Im:Jagellonen University Archives
• In: Wiener Messe
• Io: Zeitzeugen Dr. Gingrich
• Ip: Sulzmann
• Iq: Lexikon Klee
• Ir: Hampl
• Is: Henninger, Krampflitschek, Mylius, Schweeger- Hefel
• It: Center fo Military History
• Iu: Ariadne
• Iv: Wiesenthal Center
• Iw: Gall
• Ix: List
• Iy: Dr. Portisch
• Iz: Personenstand
• Iaa: Institutsarchiv
• Iba: Aspekte
• Ica: Boker Tov
• Ida: Schreibweisen Pluegel
• InterviewMeeting: 1, 2
• Universitaetsarchiv Wien: 1, 2, 3, 4

• Context XXI
• Goldstern
• Muehlfried: R. Bleichsteiner
• Rabinovici, Doron: Instanzen der Ohnmacht
• Shoa. De
• Shoa Foundation
• Warum?

I hope I can complete my work, soon. I got lots to do, a. to prepare the new semster, b. for the tourism bureau and c. to prepare my ceramics shop. I will have to acquire a licence to run the online business, because I have to make a living.

Kunstasyl: Art and Asyl in Not

This very sympathetic group called Asyl in Not offers the opportunity to acquire objects of art and support refugees and migrants at the same time: KunstAsyl will take place in Vienna October 24, 2007. More than 90 Austrian artists offer more than 100 works of art to support Asyl in Not´s work by offering this catalog of art objects. Asyl in Not is an organsiation to support asylum seeker in Austria, over and over. Many families, although they lived and worked in Austria for five or more years, were exposed to ministerial officers, who repetitively dumped them. Local politicians and communities in contrary helped these mainly poor people, whose families were detached in the middle of the night without warnings. Children cannot even speak the language of the countries they were deported to ... mothers do not know about their under age children ... the minister himself uttered in a local news broadcast, that the officers "were only practising Austrian laws". The minister is of the same political party, namely OeVP, that cooperate(d) with the right-wing FPOe in parliament. Two thirds of the uniformed officers in this country vote for the FPOe, as much as I know.

Please forward this message and support Human Rights for grown-ups and Children´s Rights. Please forward to people, who can afford these pictures! http://www.kunstasyl.at If you cannot be there, please write a letter about your will to buy to Director Otto Hans Ressler at Im Kinsky Kunst Auktionen, the address is Freyung 4, 1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe. Fax #: 0043153242009. Thank you!

What: Kunstasyl Art Auction: Austrian Artists donate their works of art to support the organisation Asyl in Not When: Mittwoch, Oktober 24, 2007 3:00 Where: Semperdepot Lehargasse 6 Vienna, Vienna 1060   Austria

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Okto: AnthrOkto?

Some weeks ago I attended lectures at Okto. Two colleagues of Social and Cultural Anthropology studies were there, too. We had a little talk about Ethnowelle, afterwards. The lecture held by Mr. Jungwirt focused on various forms of the application of rights in the media. Since I plan to start my own media projects in the near future - I got to make a living and pay my bills - I began to read about copyrights and more applied laws relating to visual media and boradcasting. We discussed some quite interesting points of publishing, i. e. YouTube content and copyright laws, or the causes of difference in European and U. S. laws, as for intellectual property rights. I plan to attend more lectures to start my program.

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FQS: Virtual Ethnography

The Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung released a new edition covering Virtual Ethnography in September. Complete texts are provided in English, German and Spanish. What is Virtual Ethnography?

The label "virtual ethnography" includes a broad range of methodological approaches aimed at answering the complexities of the object of research and the different ways in which this object has been constructed. Virtual ethnographers, ethnographers of the Internet or of cyberspace are faced with the need to answer very pressing questions such as how to use heterogeneous data (text, audiovisual data, etc.) in their analysis, or how to combine research in front of the screen and in the virtual field. (1 Beaulieu/Dominguez/Estalella/Gomez/Read/Schnettler 2007)

There is a chapter about Cyberethnography, whereas ethnography is "a written represenation of culture":

Cyberculture is a prolific area of research, and ethnography occupies a central position in studying cybercultures (BELL, 2001). In brief, ethnography is "a written representation of culture" (MAANEN, 1988). It strives to create descriptions of individual or collective subjectivities for the purpose of understanding different cultures. (2 Gajjala/Rybas 2007)

The authors develop ethnographic methods to investigate the internet by basing their research on the epistemologies of doing. In the conclusion they call for a "process-oriented multi-modal cyberethnographic engagement".

Several reviews and conference reports consummate the edition. All texts are available via *.pdf - download, publications date back to the year 2000.

____________________________________________________________

1 Domínguez, Daniel; Beaulieu, Anne; Estalella, Adolfo; Gómez, Edgar; Schnettler, Bernt & Read, Rosie (2007) Virtual Ethnography. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(3), http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-07/07-3-E1-e.htm

2 Rybas, Natalia & Gajjala, Radhika (2007). Developing Cyberethnographic Research Methods for Understanding Digitally Mediated Identities [33 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(3), Art. 35, http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/3-07/07-3-35-e.htm

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Virtual assistance in studies

The Academic Commons recently published the news about Top 100 Learning Tools including a link to the commented list, here it is:  http://www.academiccommons.org/weblink/goto/175. The Commons ask for new technologies in learning, how they can be used and what effect they have. Library browsing enables search for topics and keywords or tags. Learning professionals were asked to name their favorite learning tools, The Learning Toolbox lists them by category. Most of the listed programs are either free for private use, or cost little to use for commercial purposes. I save much time using a desktop search engine, it indexes my science folders. My top tools supporting work are:

Personal Tools	Research & Producer Tools
RSSOwl LinkedIn Del.icio.us IE 7 Mozilla Firefox Outlook 2003 & Business Manager Adobe Reader Yahoo! Mail Google Maps LingoPad CeltX PowerArchiver hijackthis TV-Browser TweakNow RegCleaner Std Gmail FileZilla ZoneAlarm AVG Anti-Virus Live One Scan Jap LG PC Suite	Copernicus Basic AnthroTech Amazon Google Scholar Citavi Word 2003 Access 2003 Power Point 2003 Publisher 2003 PDF Creator Blogger LiveJournal MyBlogLog BlogCatalog AVS Media Suite Paint.Net LiveWriter Animake YouTube Slideshare Picasa Yahoo! Groups Google Groups Olympus Voice Album

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Urban Dictionary

I found this Urban Dictionary, online. Every day, there are new definitions online, go watch the alphabetic list for September 28. The idea behind the service to be obtained via RSS, phone, web or API/program, is to build a slang dictionary by users. This is a very interesting thing from the anthropological view, because words are given an explanation and example. Plus, all the word creations are explained from an emic view, which means in this context: People, who are speakers of the English language, bring in their vocabulary of daily routine. For an overview what Linguistic Anthropology is, please read the Wikipedia article with a list of references. Directly related to Social and Cultural Anthropology is Ferdinand De Saussure, who supplied anthropologists with a model of language: Langage, langue and parole are the criteria for the theory of language as a set of symbols. This classification influenced Structuralism, whose most prominent Claude Lévi-Strauss provided for anthropology the binary pairs and triangles of relationship. Examples for binary pairs are: wet - dry, hot - cold, hungry - full, poor - rich.

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Quote of the Day:
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. - Herman Melville

A Scientific Theory Of Culture

Malinowski´s language is quite antiquated. He uses terms like "primitve men", a phrasing not used in anthropology, anymore. The volume is easy to read and very interesting, Malinowski refers to many early anthropologists, like Lewis H. Morgan or James G. Frazer. He explains his view of science thoroughly and concedes a kind of scientific spirit to early human beings. Here are the contents for you:

Contents

Preface (Huntington Cairns)

A Scientific Theory of Culture

I. Culture as the Subject of Scientific Investigation

II. A Minimum Definition of Science for the Humanist

III. Concepts and Methods of Anthropology

IV. What is Culture?

V. Theory of Organized Behaviour

VI. The Concrete Isolates of Organized Behavior

VII. The Functional Analysis of Culture

VIII. What is Human Nature?

IX. The Derivation of Cultural Needs

X. Basic Needs and Cultural Responses

XI. The Nature of Derived Needs

XII. The Integrative Imperatives of Human Culture

XIII. The Instrumentalyl Implemented Vital Sequence

The Functional Theory

Sir James George Frazer

   Index

The book contains Bronislaw Malinowski´s outlines on the theory of culture. His approach is functional and in the chapter General Axioms of Functionalism he provides a list of axioms:

A. Culture is essentially an instrumental apparatus by which man is put in a position the better to cope with the concrete specific problems that face him in his environment in the course of the satisfaction he needs.

B.  It is a system of objects, activities, and attitudes in which every part exists as a means to an end.

C. It is an integral in which the various elements are interdependent.

D. Such activities, attitudes and objects are organized around important and vital tasks into institutions such as the family, the clan, the local community, the tribe, and the organized teams of economic cooperations, political, legal, and educational activity.

E. From the dynamic point of view, that is, as regards the type of activity, culture can be analyzed into a number of aspects such as education, social control, economics, systems of knowledge, belief and morality, and also modes of creative and artistic expression. (Malinowski 1964: 150)

Further on Malinowski states a cultural process, in which human beings are involved. He names three dimensions of this cultural process, which are artifacts, organized groups and symbolisms, whereas Function and form are related (Malinowksi 1964: 155 ff.) In his chapter Function defined, it is a very short one, Malinowski explains his approach through concepts of use or utility and relationship. Later Malinowski speaks of functional isolates, he values legitimate for cultural analyses.

   Malinowski, Bronislaw (1964) A Scientific Theory Of Culture. And Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press

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Will the "West" become the universal modell of mankind?

The following text is going to line out important parts of Maurice Godelier´s lecture, the name of whom I will be abbreviating with G. Professor André Gingrich translated G.´s "Wiener Vorlesungen", id est Vienna Lectures, from the French language into German. I attempt to translate the important parts into English. The bibliographic data - for students and librarians - published in the German edition are:

Godelier, Maurice (1991) Wird der Westen das universelle Modell der Menschheit? Wien: Picus Verlag, ISBN 3-85452-304-1

The Vienna Lectures were - and are - a series of events to present research in relation to the future of society, progress and tendencies in social issues, and the opportunities of cultural and social developments. Having started in spring 1997, these series of lectures became an intellectual jour fixe. Opinion leading and innovative texts were furthermore published in print to serve a wider audience.

Godelier speaks about his work as an anthropologist, which he conducted from 1967. He observed the transformations to be imposed on the Baruya, a tribe living in Papua - New Guinea. These changes in everyday life and the way of thoughts started 1951, when the Baruya were found on the island. Later, namely 1960, the Australian government colonized them. In 1975, the Baruya were declared independent and UN membership turned them into witness bearers of westly progress in this part of the world. Godelier asks then,

But did not the fall of the Berlin wall initialize a new westernizing progress from November 9, 1989 on?

Godelier argues, that the westernizing process of expansion not only comes from the West, but he also names Japan and four or five little dragons as factors. Japan and these dragons, he mentions, have preserved their political sovereignity and cultural identity; whereas Buddhism has played a decisive role. The westernizing progress goes on and on without transporting all elements that are associated to it. Godelier queries

What is the West in its deeper sense today? What are the underlying elements of it?

Godelier means elements associated with the West, that could be dissociated and combined anew - in social and cultural reality and in other parts of the world. As for Godelier, the West is a mixture of the real and the imaginative, of facts and normative forms, of modes of action and modes of thought; all of which result in an affecting and scuffing pool of energy to move around three axes. These axes are three institutional blocks inheriting their own logic: Capitalism, parlamentary democracy and Christianity. The westly strenghts apply to a combination of three realities, that appeared in different times in history and paired rather late. The West is not a modell without flaws, in contrary, complaints come from all over the world: The West colonizes, conquers, is rich and sucks resources; eyes are closed, when liberties are absent, in case regimes serve or ally with the West; in the West coexist rights and disparity, and some are of the opinion still, that capital accumulation base on the legal exploitation of work. Godelier then focusses on tribal societies by asking

What is a tribe?

He explains, that a tribe is a local society, that comprises of ensembles of kinship groups. These groups of kin feel unified by social organisation, modes of thought, rules of marriage and defense and utilization of rescources in a specified territory. So the tribal identity is a blended identity, compound by social and cultural endowment, as well as by identification of conquered or heritable territory, which has to be given to descendents. Generally, Godelier classifies two criteria in relation to tribal societies: 

a. Tribes, who lived sovereign or were already integrated in a precolonial state under the governance of a predominant tribe.

b. Via the segmentation of power, namely allocated between more or less equivalent groups, or in the hands of some on top of a given society and hereditary.

The Baruya found in 1951 were sovereign rulers on their territory. Ritual and political power was massed in the hands of associations, which traced their descent to conquerer - groups. Godelier focuses his method on the formulation of processes, that describe the westernizing; its stages and forms, which are easily traceable and reproduced somewhere else. The Baruya live in the center of New Guinea, in the mountains 2000m high. 1951 they were 1800 people having lived in approximately 12 little villages. Twelve clans, eight of them belonged to and were descendends of the conquerer group, cultivated their grounds using slash-and-burn. Additionally, irrigations on terraces and pig breeding, as well as trading salt from plants, supported them. Women cared for the pigs, men went hunting to strengthen their predominance. The society was classless, but not egalitarian organised. The westernizing process covered four stages under the influence of several forces.

Already before 1951, the Baruya acquired steel axes from Sheffield and Solingen without knowledge of the industrial Europe and led to economic and material dependence. A plane and some troops led to the imagination of a big fire bird in which divine entities looking like human beings lived. 1951, when Jim Sinclair and his troops entered the woods nearby, the Baruya were subjected to military forces. In 1960, an officer and his troops entered the valley of Wonénara to build trajectories and the local tribes were registered and deprived their right to fight each other. The officer introduced the new order in the name of Her Majesty Queen of England. Many incidents led to the fact, that the Baruya lost their right to apply their own laws on their own territory; they lost their political sovereignty and cultural autonomy. As soon as peace was instituted, they were counted and systematically controled. They were confronted with the state, a sign of civilisation and human evolution.

In 1966, Christianity was established by missionaries, which brought schools and education for the Baruya. In 1965, the administration recruited 30% of the local men to send them to work at the coastal plantations. In 1967, when the troops arrived, an anthropologist arrived. An academic representing the West; the West was complete, so Godelier states. After modes of power established, there was going to be the power of knowledge.

The Brauya society changed and some of these transformations were accepted positively by the Baruya, like having peace, living in other places than the valleys, travelling by plane or driving trucks. Some women married to live in the cities. Godelier emphasises the change of basic structures of Baruya society in gender relationships: Men fear female impurity little and women the symbols of male predominance, nowadays. To the Baruya white people are no divine entities no more, but they stay predominant. In post-colonial times the Baruya refuse to accept commands or violence.

This transformative processes will go on and change the whole world without implying its three elements, after Godelier. Christianity is not the only intrinsic religion and there is none. Political democracy should be transformed into social democracy. Capitalistic economy and its wealthiness should be distributed more efficiently and juster. The West will triumph first in Europe, later expand to the East. Godelier finishes his argument with some questions:

Do we have to accept the negative, which we recognize in the West? Do we have to applaud or should we steal away on the tips of our toes? Why should we be contented with our situation? Do we know the end of history has come and we live in the best of all worlds?

 

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Is: Cultural Diversity

The multi-cultural project has become a synonym for social failure and halfhearted sissyness of politicians, that rather restrict, than support social and cultural variety. I dwell, that I use mutli-culturalism and the multi-culturalist project in reference to miscarried politics in this (con-)text. If people use the term multi-culti or call for a multi-cultural leadership, something else is meant, as far as I am concerned. To me, they mean the playful and winning variety of a society from an emic view, from the inside, that lives in peace and who does not question for civics to prove who one would be; or which color of skin one had; or which religion one had chosen to believe in; or to which nation one belonged to; or which language one spoke; or how much money one had; these are all signs and symbols used to make a difference. I do not want to spin my discussion into Eco - istic semiotics, now.

If culture, after Geertz, is roughly a system of historically acquired/collected and interpreted symbols, the perception of variety and diversity supports people, who respect each other, because of differences explained, savored and respected. The multi-culti adjective stands for the joy and pleasure of respected differences. Authors or organisations calling for a multi-cultural society mean, that their and other cultures, societies and human beings should be accepted and respected and they speak from an emic view. From an emic view here, I mean, for instance, an author, who lives within a small-scale group within a dominating culture, who writes about a Multicultural Age. Id est Joana Bordas´s Salsa, Soul & Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age, that will be presented in a Signing Event September 26, 2007.

I stress, that with the muticultural project(-s) I mean the failed implemenations of coherent laws and institutions in - not only Western - societies, and therefore I suggest a new approach by the means of cultural diversity and variety. I think, that a broader perspective of variety should bear acceptance and respect corresponding to cultures and resulting social issues. The discussion is not about multi-cultural tolerance or the finding of differences: The quest goes for respect of differences, even if they were not uttered, and for acceptance of otherness, be it Black, white, religious, poor, gender-related or any other sign or symbol of otherness. If a model of diversity and variety counteracts single-minded lines of thoughts and weak agency, these categories will be good enough to allow debates. The fact or quality of being diverse connotes cultural diversity, which denotes a noticable cultural heterogeneity: Human beings do not have to follow ideologies of some theory, because there are Human Rights to hold egalitarian societies together. I want to refer to recent discussions about building mosques: The media did not inform the public, correctly, which is the case quite often. Take the Viennese example: A given house is to be refurbished. One room will be equipped to say one´s prayers. So why do parts of the local population demonstrate against renovation and a religious center? I think the following is an outline:

1. I think the public was informed wronlgy. It is not a big mosque they were talking about, it is a small place of spirituality.
2. Parts of the public do not know about democracy and the religious freedom so many people fought and died for.
3. Xenophobia: Fear from extremists and fanatics turned into hate of the mass (media).

To me the question arises, if enlightenment in all fields of society is at stake. It is, I am sure. I am looking forward to critique and comments. Moreover, I appreciate actions to support Human Rights and respect. Cultural diversity offers a range of possibilities, whereas mutliculturalism in my opinion rather limits opportunities by referring to only some notions of being human. So it matters, I assume, to talk about Cultural Diversity and manifoldness, and not to limit (endless) variety to multi, a countable number.

               

 

 

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Quote of the Day:
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. - Albert Einstein         

Addendum Breaking News 8.20 PM: Now, I saw Andrea was blogging about the Islamic Youth http://andreabenlassoued.at/?p=229, additionally there is an initiative out, by the Concerned Anthropologists!

Rouch

This is the Comité du film Ethnographique, which has the Jean Rouche Bilan in the Musée de l´Homme in 2008. There is an entry form and a statement about ethnographic film. The festival addresses professionals in Anthropology and cinema. Innovation is asked!

Jean Rouch was born in 1917 and died in an accident 2004. Rouch co-founded the Bilans, IMDb has his filmography and more performance data. Marcel Mauss was his teacher, and Rouch is the founder of the Cinema Verité: Direct interaction of the filming and the filmed mark this style of non-fiction film making, which includes reflexivity and the camera provocation to evoke veritable interviews.

What: Festival International Jean Rouch Le film documentaire et le film ethnologique ont donc poursuivi des chemins qui les ont fait peu à peu se croiser sinon se rejoindre dans une exploration commune des nouveaux langages de límage et du son. - Ces orientations actuelles qui font des langages audiovisuels des instruments spécifiques de connaissance sont issus pour une bonne part des expériences menées depuis les années cinquante et notamment par Jean Rouch. Where: Musée de l´Homme 17, place du Trocadéro Paris, 75116   France

              

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re:place 2007

The 2nd International Conference re:place 2007 focuses on the histories of art, media, technology and science. It takes place in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, November 2007. Some lectures are held, or rather workshops, covering technology, arts and refering i. e. to Digital Humanities in the Opening Session, classic Islamic Art to new media art in Panel 3, and so on. Panel 9 deals with cross-cultural perspectives on for instance African Digital Imaginaries. MediaArtHistory provides the scheduled program.

MAH lists authors and titles to create a repository for researchers, on the community list there is Anthropology found! Sheila Petty writes about Transnational Identities in the context of Cyberspace, Maria V. Giulietti dialogues over New Media Native Art, Tam County refers to concepts in pre-modern China, his paper is called From Nothingness to Technology. Mary L. Morbey considers Cybercolonialism and Cyberglobalization on topic, Martin Rieser has Locative Media and Spatial Narrative for us. Barbara Paul bears partial perspectives, transversal politics and situated practices as of multicultural feminism in mind. To register and access the EPapers one needs a valid EMailaddress and a password.

What: re:place 2007 re:place 2007 will be an international forum for the presentation and the discussion of exemplary approaches to the rapport between art, media, science and technology. With the title, 're:place', we propose a thematic focus on locatedness and the migration of knowledge and knowledge production in the interdisciplinary contexts of art, historiography, science and technology. When: Donnerstag, November 15, 2007 12:00 to Sonntag, November 18, 2007 12:00 Where: Haus der Kulturen der Welt John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 Berlin, 10557   Germany

  

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Thought provoking 21st century

1 About 21st Century Anthropology

Please read this post on antropologi.info: Keith Hart and Thomas H. Eriksen: This is 21st century anthropology and the associated texts, like the speech.

2 About Mainstream

I would like to start my reasoning with a citation of the IG-History at the University Vienna. "In der Gesellschaft gilt das Dogma, dass Heterosexualität in allen Lebensbereichen die Norm darstellt und dass Abweichungen gegen diese Dualität nicht nur unerwünscht, sondern sogar bedrohlich sind. Gerade was die menschliche Sexualitaet anbelangt vertritt der Mainstream extrem verlogene Ansichten" (Institutsgruppe Geschichte under Antiheteronormativ). This says, that mendacious dualisms concerning sexuality adhere to the Mainstream of society.

I would not want to anthropologically investigate the mainstream. Society has enough of mainstream sources and testimonials, I think. And especially the Central European public I mean with it. I felt embarrassed having had a lecture about Swedish XMas decoration, some years ago. This is certainly not what I expect from Social and Cultural Anthropology. It is not, that I don´t like Sweden, I have learned Swedish for one semester, I admit - I only can read it, not speak - but: White, catholic or other christians and well living?

Nope. I prefer to learn and write about people, unheard and unseen, whelmed with bias. Well, just some thoughts... probably relationships and communication...

Center for 21st Century Studies: http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/21st/index.shtml   2007-09-03 5:21 PM

SCAE: Social and Cultural Anthropology Efficiency Award

5 Blogs preferred in Social and Cultural Anthropology:

1. Antropologi.Info by Lorenz Khazaleh
2. AnthroBlogs by John Norvell
3. Ethno::Log by the Institute for cultural/social anthropology and african studies
4. Digital Ethnography by Michael Wesch
5. Schlau und Schoen? by Andrea Ben Lassoued

Congratulations, you won the Social and Cultural Anthropology Effiency Award!

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. Here are the rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the SCAE with a link to the post that you wrote. This is the image:

Please read this text on memetags and start your "5 Blogs preferred in Social and Cultural Anthropology" - list. The tag is - SCAE - to add as a blog tag.

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Scientific Thought Production

1 Read, re - read, read again, and - !Bibliographies: Read everything your professors suggest. Many of the faculty publish bibliographies, librarians also provide services on questions. There are some kinds of reading being applied to science: Reading from top to bottom, looking for phrases, like my theory is... And, of course reading each line to get the deeper sense of a text. I read everywhere, I always did, but for scienctific reading newcomers I would suggest to carry a book with you, whenever, wherever. Read in the bus, in the subway, read waiting for somebody or on the couch. You will get used to it.

2 Collect Ideas: Always carry a notebook with you, or record your thoughts.
Collect these notebooks. Ideas and other notes might be seen from a different view weeks, months or years later. Watch TV or surf the net, browse book stores, talk to people you do or don´t know: Opinions and thoughts shared often produce a flow of thoughts in new directions. Brainstorm on paper at least once a week. Record association chains, write down your dreams. Keep these collected data safe, in boxes, books or store them on CD.

3 Write a blog: Writing a blog will give you the opportunity to write on a regular basis. Also, reflecting about style and developing an own style is supported by this kind of writing. There are many books out on the market about writing. Read them. Write. Otto Kruse wrote this fantastic book called Keine Angst vor dem leeren Blatt: In eight chapters he describes the obstacles often experienced and he explains how to start best. He says, that the prospective author has to be open to write down nearly everything. He then suggests to write for two weeks, every day. Clustering is a method commonly known in creative work. Pick a word, it does not matter which one, like fear, book, wood, picture, or research, and write it into the middle of a white sheet of paper. Then build strings around it by associating each string with more and more words, untile the sheet of paper ist full. I have an example for you, on poverty: See picture!

Train this weeks, months, this makes your thoughts visible. I have to admit, I was an excellent writer in High School, but not on scientific grounds. Scientific writing is learning and doing step-by-step, first collect ideas and thoughts. Then think about what you want to do with the text. Then - Kruse calls it - transform your structured notes, ideas, and thoughts into clauses. And so on. Thilo Baum´s walkthrough in thirty minutes serves another purpose of writing, namely Journalism. Free-Writing is offered by Lutz Werder in Kreatives Schreiben: This is a very easy technique, just write for five minutes without stopping. Whatever comes to your mind, consequently. Although I work on laptop often, paper gives me this feeling of having all collected information at once: Sheets of paper may be spread all over the table. More and mor blogs are suggested to support psychological work, too. I do not want to reaveal a list, please research yourself.

4 Research
I research all the time. I have this software called History Collector, it help. I tend to suffer information overload. If this happens to you, urge yourself to rest for two to four days.
The internet, books, catalogues and databases serve information gathering very well. Try to find out, what services your local library or University offer. Talk to colleages, and record or write the most important issues into your notebook.

5 Sources
Baum, Thilo (2005) 30 Minuten fuer gutes Schreiben. Offenbach: Gabal (2nd edition)
Kruse, Otto (2005) Keine Angst vor dem leeren Blatt. Frankfurt / New York: campus concret (11th Edition)
Werder, Lutz von (1992) Kreatives Schreiben von Diplom- und Doktorarbeiten. Berlin: Schibri

© Amber, Sybil 2007 Anthropo Logic Journals.

 

              

                                                                                                                                        © Sybille Amber: Intellectual Property 2005/2006/2007

Town Talk

Theory and research were presented in Vienna, July 17 - 19, 1982; the volume Town-Talk resulted from this coop to publish results on a worldwide level. Walter Dostal was the chair of the Vienna Institute, then, as is André Gingrich, today. The introduction prefigures The Global Approach, which is "the analyses of urbanism and urbanization on a worldwide level"  with regard to The National and Regional Processes of Urbanization and Aspects of Urban Culture (Ansari/Nas 1983: 3 f.). Several papers explain various scientific approaches, "The approaches of the contributors cover a wide range of the study of urban urban phenomena: action-behaviourist, politico-economic, dependency and underdevelopmental, world systems, symbolic and aesthetic." (Southall 1983: 6) Aidan Southall formulates his interest in "Cities in Time and Space" (Ansari/Nas 1983: 7), and later he writes, "I would argue that in the post-industrial age urbanization is still concentration, but in a new sense, at a new level. It is no longer a local concentration contrasting urban and rural areas, but a global concentration corresponding to the global scale of the world capitalist system, in which even socialist countries are partially involved." (Southall 1983: 19) The author then explains what he means, "The concentration is no longer one of buildings, or bodies, or even of face to face relationships, but rather a concentrated network of electronically mediated relationships."(Southall 1983: 19)

Oshomha Imoagene analyses 1 The nature of West African cities, 2 Patterns of migration in West Africa, and 3 Urbanization and underdevelopment in West Africa. West Africa has long history of cultures, and so in urbanization, where with i. e. Yoruba, "In this places land was communally rather than lineage owned and individuals had rights to their share as long as theirs crops grew."(Imoagene 1983: 68)

Joyce Aschenbrenner and Kathryn Skinner present a paper about art traditions in urban communities of the  U. S. A., where the suburbs were striken by poverty and development programs supported political and economic life, "For the artists in our research, the distinction between art and other areas of life is not clearly delineated; several noted the artistic values expressed in clothing and decorating onself and one´s house, in cooking and other mundane activities."(Aschenbrenner/Skinner 1983: 116).

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Contents

Introduction (G. Ansari and P. J. M. Nas)

1. Towards a Universal Urban Anthropology (A. Southall)

2. New Directions in Urban Anthropology (P. C. W. Gutkind)

3. The Struggle for the Third World City (W. J. M. Prins and P. J. M. Nas)

4. Charcteristics of Urban Growth in the Gulf States (G. Ansari and I. Qutub)

5. Urbanism, Urbanization and Underdevolpment: The West African Experience (O. Imoagene)

6. From Pre-Industrial to Modern Igbo Towns (A. A. Dike)

7. Viable Traditions in Urban Japan: Matsuri and Chonaikai (K. Aoyagi)

8. Family Art Traditions in Contemporary Society (J. Aschenbrenner and K. Skinner)

9. Divorce and Development in Kuwait (A. H. Hussein)

10. The Historical Development of Urban Anthropology in Venezuela (M. Suárez and R. Torrealba)

11. Urban Anthropology in the U. S. A.: Current Work and Directions for the Future (L. Plotnicov)

12. Past, Present and Future of Dutch Urban Anthropology (P. J. M. Nas and W. J. M. Prins)

Contributors

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Ansari, Ghaus/Nas, Peter J. M. (Editors) (1983) Town-Talk. The Dynamics of Urban Anthropology. Leiden: Brill.
  

Recently, I found some tests referring to Urban Legends: This is a field, which interests me lots. Talking about Urban Legends, I noted, that many of my friends reflect on some of these legends. Anyway, About.com has a domain on Urban Legends and Folklore, which suggests to research this vast field by applying scientific knowledge about mythology.

Amber, Sybil (2007) Anthropo Logic Journals.