I carried out some follow-up fieldwork in Northern Kyrgyzstan in order to finish my book which is due at the end of September this year. I had a wonderful time, met old friends and made new ones and really enjoyed the cool and starry nights in my village in Talas province, and the hot days in the capital Bishkek.
I wrote a blog post for allegralaboratory.net on Anonymous Peer Review and how it is often achieving the opposite of what it is supposed to. With helpful hints on how to review better!
MA-Seminar Winter term 2015 / 2015 at the University of Konstanz
The seminar introduces theoretical concepts that have sparked debates in anthropology and sociology in recent years. We will examine these new approaches in the seminar by drawing on the milestones of theoretical development already achieved. Furthermore, in the interests of grounded theory we will examine and discuss concrete case studies in each seminar class, and what advantages and disadvantages these current concepts have in comparison to the more established approaches. Can we understand central themes such as society, state, social organisations, history, temporality, gender, identity or ethnicity better than before with these new theories? In addition to an in-depth examination of each approach, the seminar will thus at the same time keep a sharp eye on ‘progress’ and innovation in the social and cultural sciences.
All students enrolled in the Masters Programme “Anthropology and Sociology” or related disciplines at the University of Konstanz are eligible to attend.
BA-Seminar in Sociology, University of Konstanz, Germany
Winter term 2015 / 2016 (starting mid-October 2015)
Dispute is a human universal and an integral part of social life. Why this is so, however, has been interpreted differently in the social sciences. How do disputes start at all? What happens when we argue? When does an argument become a legal dispute? When does a dispute divide us, and when does it bind us together even stronger? And when is a dispute actually ended?
Scholars of legal anthropology and legal sociology have studied different dispute settlement procedures since the 1960s. In the sociology of law this has occurred primarily in the context of Western state jurisdiction. In legal anthropology, it has occurred in the non-European context, focussing on non-state actors such as councils of elders or religious leaders. In the course of (post-)colonisation, Western-style state jurisdiction was exported to the global South, while dispute settlement procedures (ADR, Alternative Dispute Resolution) enjoyed increasing popularity in Western societies. Both developments are scientifically controversial as their practical success is questionable.
In the seminar we will read texts from legal anthropology and legal sociology. Furthermore, we will draw extracts from classical ethnographies, and try to grasp theoretically how disputes and their proceedings have been studied in non-Western societies, along with new approaches, and phenomena well-known to us such as disputes over the neighbourhood apple tree, the fascination with “court shows,” as well as the trans-local arbitration of disputes in international courts. Moreover, the seminar is also dedicated to qualitative methods, through which dispute settlement procedures can be investigated.
All students enrolled in a sociology BA or a related discipline at the University of Konstanz (Germany) can attend.
Radio Interview for Radio France International. ‘Buddhist Nationalism in Myanmar.’ May 27, 2015. available here (2 parts):
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Seminarraum, Villa Jaffé, Wallotstraße 10, 14193 Berlin
Audio file zum Vortrag:
Ein Problem der Ethnologie besteht darin, „den Staat“ zu fassen, da er sich der herkömmlichen ethnologischen Methodologie entzieht: Er kann „an sich“ nicht teilnehmend beobachtet werden. Der Staat ist eine politische Leitkategorie, eine Fiktion, die von Menschen kontinuierlich hervorgebracht und erhalten werden muss. Eine Anthropologie des Staates muss daher eine tangentiale Herangehensweise an dieses vielschichtige Phänomen wählen. In meinem Vortrag stelle ich dar, inwieweit Verfassungspolitik eine geeignete Möglichkeit bietet, die performative Hervorbringung von Staat in Momenten zu beobachten, in denen er qua verfassungsschöpfendem Akt, oft nach einer Krise, neu konstituiert wird. Eine ethnologische Sicht auf Verfassungspolitik nimmt die Prozesse und Strategien von Akteuren in den Blick, die in Bezug auf „die Verfassung“ handeln. Der Vortrag fokussiert die politische Teilhabe von Nichtexperten an der Konstituierung staatlicher Ordnung und untersucht den Einfluss zunehmender Globalisierung auf nationalstaatliche Prozesse.
Judith Beyer ist Juniorprofessorin für Ethnologie an der Universität Konstanz. Sie hat Ethnologie, Öffentliches Recht und Slavistik in Tübingen studiert und am Max Planck Institut für ethnologische Forschung in Halle (Saale) mit einer Arbeit zu Rechtspluralismus im zentralasiatischen Kirgistan promoviert. Ihr aktuelles Projekt untersucht Land- und Eigentumsregimes religiöser Minderheiten im südostasiatischen Myanmar. Judith Beyer ist spezialisiert auf Themen der Rechts- und Politikethnologie und forscht zu Staat, Staatenlosigkeit, Verfassungspolitik und Autorität. Sie interessiert sich für Ethnomethodologie, oral history und die Verwendung von Photographie in Forschung und Lehre.
Panel at the German Anthropological Association (GAA), Sept 30 – Oct 3 2015, Marburg, Germany
Organized and chaired by Judith Beyer
Introduction
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Crisis is a temporal concept, indicating a turning point (from the Greek krisis). Its use suggests that it alternates with stable states of being-in-the-world that are predictable and calm. Whereas the anthropological literature of the 1950s and 1960s analysed crisis and conflict in congruence with models of harmony, anthropological research in the last decades has emphasised war, violence and trauma as “existential experiences.” In this body of literature, attention has shifted away from understanding “mounting crisis” as a phase in a sequence of events aimed to restore social equilibrium (Turner 1972). Rather, recent approaches discuss the “ontological alienation” of persons whose bonds “to the everyday world have become stretched, distorted, and even torn; sometimes irreparably so” (Lester 2013). Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bodoni (2014) have recently classified “the present crisis” as a crisis of agency and of territorial sovereignty. So is crisis a concept of particular Western thinking and acting – an expression of modernity? Eric Wolf (1999) approached crisis differently, arguing that crises are part and parcel of social life everywhere and that the distinction between normality and crisis is to a large extent fictitious.
Drawing on classical and recent anthropological analyses of crisis for our own research, this workshop seeks to explore the equivalents of the concept from emic points of view. How do our informants conceptualise and word their often precarious ways of living? When do they experience moments of “judgment,” “separation” and “choice” (all synonyms of crisis) in their personal lives? And how do their personal or collective “crises” relate to a more permanent state of exception that increasingly presents itself as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics (Agamben 2003)
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Presentations and Abstracts
Annett Bochmann
Universität Siegen
State of Exception versus Local Accomplishments: Producing a Public Bureaucracy during Distributing Rations in a Refugee Camp
Based on audio-visual data I examine practices of the ration distribution in a Burmese refugee camp in Thailand, looking at how food is distributed and how camp inhabitants themselves generate the ‘distribution event’ as a form of a public bureaucracy in its strict sense and miniature examination. These practices exemplify how camp residents generate and maintain a stable social order and rules for the camp.
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Patrice Ladwig
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Dystopia, future-Buddhas and messianistic thinking. States of exception in Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhist millennial movements
By analyzing historical and contemporary material from Buddhist millennial movements in mainland Southeast Asia and their backgrounds in Buddhist cosmology, this presentation discusses possible connections between concepts of states of exception and Buddhist millenarianism as a sign of social crisis.
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Theodoros Rakopoulos
University of Bergen
From a “crisis” concept to a concept in crisis? The solidarity economy in Greece
The uses of solidarity as a concept have been exacerbated by the crisis but its analytical validity has not undergone thorough solidification. The rise and current hibernation of the solidarity economy movement is the main case in point to unpack the tensions in the interplay between the local and theoretical aspects of the notion. Referring to my ethnography, I shall elucidate this interplay and explore the movement’s prospects, especially in the current, more friendly, political framework.
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Dorle Dracklé
Universität Bremen
Crisis and insecurity: politics, bureaucracy and virtual economy
“Há crise” (“We are living in a crisis”) expresses a general feeling in southern Portugal. In this poor region, people see their lives threatened by the current changes. “Há crise” describes precisely this moment of insecurity and menace, vacillating between various political, bureaucratic and economic strategies and plans for the future.
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Tommaso Trevisani
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
From rasval to restrukturizatsiya: Metamorphoses of workers’ identity crises in Kazakhstan’s former Soviet steel town
Since early post-Soviet years of disruption and hardship, industrial workers’ sense of crisis underwent a change towards more individualized discomfort with their social conditions and work identity. Today’s workers’ understandings, reactions and choices, show discontinuity with the past crisis.
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Monica Vasile
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
The Crisis: rhythm and turning points
The paper will explore crises as turning points in relation to rhythm. Lives and work can be perceived as rhythmical, but the rhythms are seldom regular over long spans of time. Taking the example of timber traders in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains, it will be shown how the economic crisis that peaked in 2008 changed trade practices.
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Silke Oldenburg
Universität Basel
Crisis – everywhere or nowhere? Goma’s ‘normal state of exception’ as horizon
Goma in Eastern DRC is a context where critical events have turned into ‘critical continuities’ (Vigh), where crises and ordinary life seem to be interchangeable. This is the background for young people’s comments who often state that they either don’t know “real peace” or that the situation is “just normal
judith beyer 