Anthropology Research Seminar (Institute's colloquia) at the Spring Semester 2023

Everybody who is interested is welcome! It starts at 6.15 pm!

Ciné Liminal Program

We're happy to present you the program and theme for the following semester!
The new name under which we will continue the work of Ethno?Kino Seasons refers to transitional stages and periods, to the blurring of fixed boundaries, to the occupation of the borderlands and to the in-betweens of stories, people and things.
The liminal will also guide us through our new season, where we will show films that look beyond the conceptually normative and divisive, that focus on structural marginalization, revolution and resistance, or that make us rethink our relations to gender norms and our more-than-human environment.

Q&A with filmmmaker Chase Joynt after the screening of his award-winning documentary “Framing Agnes” at Kino Rex in Bern

Helvécia - Decolonizing History ?!

The quilombo of Helvécia in Bahia emerged from the struggle for freedom against the German-Swiss colony of Leopoldina in the mid-19th century. In the atmosphere of an audiovisual installation we will discuss with historian Izabel Barros, artist Denise Bertschi, photographer Dom Smaz and journalist Milena Machado Neves about their and other approaches to the past and present of Helvécia. How can decolonial and marginalized histories be written and represented? What archives can be used to do so? What does it mean to negotiate the (post)colonial history of Brazil in Switzerland? And what responsibilities and what opportunities does this entail?

Andrea Bordoli’s short film “Di Visi Di Pietra Memorie” was recently primed at Festival Mente Locale – Visioni sul Territorio.

The short film won the “Archivi” prize at the Festival for the creative ways it merged archival materials and contemporary aesthetics.

Co-organizing the Biennial Conference of the IASC

The Commons We Want: Between Historical Legacies and Future Collective Actions.
Our institute will co-organize the Biennial Conference 2023 of the IASC (International Association for the Study of the Commons in Nairobi, Kenya (19-24.6.2023.)

UniAktuell: «Nicht in die Norm zu passen, ist auch ein Akt der Selbstliebe»

Die Sozialanthropologin Serena Owusua Dankwa erforschte die Lebensgeschichten von Frauen in Ghana, die Frauen lieben. Dafür liess sie westliche Vorstellungen von sexueller Identität und von der LGBTQ-Szene hinter sich.

FM1 Today: «Sie wissen genau, dass sie mit solchen Aktionen Leute gegen sich aufbringen»

Klimakleber sind in aller Munde – nicht nur im positiven Sinn. Die Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten sorgen mit ihren Aktionen immer wieder für rote Köpfe. Warum provozieren sie bewusst? Und wo sind ihre Grenzen? Ein Experte ordnet ein.

Beiträge zum mehr-als-menschlichen Anthropozän

Im Wintersemester 2022 haben Studierende der Sozialanthropologie an der Universität Bern – inspiriert vom Feral Atlas (Tsing, Deger, Keleman Saxena & Zhou) – eigene Beiträge zum mehr-als-menschlichen Anthropozän recherchiert und verfasst. Im Zentrum stand die Frage, welche ökologischen Welten hier vor Ort in der Schweiz entstehen, wenn nicht-menschliche Wesen mit menschlichen Infrastrukturprojekten kollidieren. Die Erfahrungsberichte von Studierenden im Bachelorstudium zeigen, wie sich „wilde Ökologien“ außerhalb der menschlichen Kontrolle entwickelt und ausgebreitet haben. Unser alternativer Feral Atlas weist – basierend auf lokale ethnografische Beobachtungen – auf dringende ökologische Herausforderungen unserer Zeit hin. Das Seminar wurde geleitet von Prof. Michaela Schäuble.

Dreadlocks, Reggae, Winnetou - Was bleibt von der Debatte um kulturelle Aneignung?

Weisse Reggae-Musiker mit Dreadlocks oder neue Winnetou-Bücher haben letzten Sommer eine Diskussion um kulturelle Aneignung befeuert. Wann sind kulturelle Anleihen problematisch? Wann legitim? Wie sieht ein angemessener Umgang damit aus?
Die Debatte war emotional und oft gehässig. Dennoch hat sie nicht nur zu verhärteten Fronten geführt, wie Sozialanthropologe Rohit Jain beobachtet. Er stellt auch eine wachsende Sensibilisierung fest und findet die Debatte müsse endlich geführt werden. (Bild: Moshtari Hilal/MissyMagazine)

Nomination: Neofaschismus in Italien. Politik, Familie, Religion in Rom. Eine Ethnographie.“ (transcript. 2021)

The Institute congratulates Lene Faust, whose book "Neofaschismus in Italien. Politics, Family, Religion in Rome. An Ethnography." (transcript. 2021) has been nominated for the short-list of the "First Book Award 2023" of the Memory Studies Association.

Le travail, une histoire.

„Histoire vivante“ mit einem Gespräch mit prof. Heinzpeter Znoj

Appeal for donations for earthquake victims in Turkey and northern Syria

The Institute of Social Anthropology extends its deepest condolences and sympathy to all those who have lost loved ones or friends in the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.

Solidarität: Chancen und Grenzen transnationaler Solidarität

Online Beitrag: Sind unsere Ideale noch realistisch?

Das andere Lehrveranstaltungsverzeichnis

Video about our Institute

Swiss Graduate Program in Anthropology for PHD students

Archive

Publications

Civil disobedience and climate trials in Switzerland

Im Rahmen unseres SNF Projektes haben wir in Zusammenarbeit mit humanrights.ch (eine NGO mit Sitz in Bern) einen Bericht zu zivilem Ungehorsam und Klimaprozessen in der Schweiz veröffentlicht.

Beyond politics: in/civilities of ‘non-political’ peacebuilding for Kashmir

Drawing on ethnographic research among peace workers and their local partners, this article traces the politics of civil society peacebuilding for Kashmir at a time when both state violence in Kashmir and local and transnational resistance and activism for Kashmiris’ right to political self-determination have intensified. It uses ‘civility’ as an analytical lens focusing on the ambivalence of claims about taking a restrained and ‘non-political’ stance in the violent conflicts over territorial sovereignty in Kashmir. While ‘non-political’ peacebuilding brings people together across social and political divides and makes it possible to imagine alternatives for Kashmir’s future beyond territorial sovereignty, it is also deeply entrenched in conflictual processes of exclusion. The claims to civility draw moral and political boundaries that incite violence and radical disagreement among people and groups – as civil society and political activists or militants.

Securing conservation Lebensraum? The geo-, bio-, and ontopolitics of global conservation futures

Revisiting Ratzelian and other fin de siècle theorizations of Lebensraum, Jevgeniy Bluwstein, Connor Cavanagh and Rob Fletcher show how contemporary efforts to reformulate conservation governance at the planetary scale risk amounting to a what they call “conservation Lebensraum”, or a globally-significant “struggle for conservation space”.

Analysing the implications of conservation Lebensraum through a conceptual framework at the intersection of conservation biopolitics, geopolitics, and ontopolitics, the article highlights how global biodiversity conservation initiatives seek to respond to multiple socio-ecological crises in the so-called Anthropocene.

Resetting the forestry commons: Constitutionality as a conflict resolution strategy in African woodlands

This paper comparatively analyses three case studies in Mali, Senegal and Tanzania regarding institutions for forest commons, their grabbing during colonial and post-colonial times and local reactions. It shows how local new bottom-up institutions were build and how integrating gender and marginal groups dimensions could work in the constitutionality framework. In the cases of Mali and Senegal these constitutionality processes for managing the forest resources reduced conflicts, while in Tanzania, women had largely been left out in land deal negotiations and institution-building about the acquired land. The paper fills the gap on gender and intersectionality in constitutionality studies.

Material Culture in Transit. Theory and Practice

As the first in the Book Series, Routledge Studies in Anthropology and Museums, Material Culture in Transit Theory and Practice
constellates curators and scholars actively working with material culture within academic and museal institutions through theory and practice. The rich collection of essays critically addresses the multivalent ways in which mobility reshapes the　characteristics of artefacts, specifically under prevailing issues of representation and colonial liabilities. The volume attests to material culture as central to understanding the repercussions of problematic histories and proposes novel ways to address them. It offers valuable reading for scholars of anthropology, museum studies, history and others with interest in material culture.

Sawt, Bodies, Species. Sonic Pluralism in Morocco von Gilles Aubry

Die Dissertation von Gilles Aubry «Sonic Pluralism. An Artistic Research on Postcolonial Aurality, Embodiment, and Ecological Voices in Morocco” (betreut von Prof. Dr. Michaela Schäuble) ist in Buchform mit dem Titel Sawt, Bodies, Species. Sonic Pluralism in Morocco (open access) erschienen

Swiss Academies Factsheet: The New Global Connect: Mega-Infrastructure Projects and Their Local Impacts

Interrupted Futures. Transformed Activist and Research Knowledge Practices in Times of 'Crisis'

Drawing from personal and collective experiences, as well as ongoing fieldwork with urban activists in Zurich and the Fridays for Future movement in Mexico, in this article, the authors explore how interrupted future imaginaries observed during the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic play a significant role in reshaping the knowledge repertoires (della Porta and Pavan 2017) of both activist and academic endeavours and create possibilities for changed forms of future-making.

Drylands Facing Change: Interventions, Investments and Identities

London: Routledge,Taylor & Francis. Kronenburg Garcia, A. K., Haller, T., van Dijk, H., Samimi, C., & Warner, J. (Eds.). (2022).
This open access edited volume is the result of the EU COST Action Drylands Facing Change that involved Tobias Haller as work package leader. It examines the changes that arise from the entanglement of global interests and narratives with the local struggles that have always existed in the drylands of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia/Inner Asia.The chapters discuss global land rush and commons grabbing, historical expansion of northern neoliberal orders, urbanization, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the spread of violent extremism.

Smart Complaints? ‘Wild’ Things and the Promise of (Un)happiness in Urban Crowdsourcing Apps

uniFOKUS: Speisetabus - die kulturelle Konstruktion des Ekels

Warum funktionieren Tauschmittel? Der gesellschaftliche Rahmen des Geldes

SAGW Bulletin 3/22: Geld: seine Werte, seine Wandlungen

Ein Winter ohne Zentralheizung und Funktionskleidung?

Nollywood-Inspired Migrant Filmmaking in Switzerland: Practice, Performance and Meaning

This book introduces the emerging, but still little-known, phenomenon of Nollywood-inspired filmmaking by African migrants in Europe. Using the unique example of a performance ethnographic case study in Switzerland, it shows how members of the African diaspora represent themselves through audio-visual media and what influence the post-colonial images of the Nigerian video film industry have on their image production.
Drawing on Jean Rouch’s Shared Anthropology and the methods of Performance Ethnography, this book provides an in-depth look at the complexity of migrants’ everyday lives and showcases Nollywood-inspired transnational filmmaking practices. In its refreshing and accessible writing style, it also illustrates the performance ethnographic research process, highlights the pitfalls and challenges of collaborative film projects, and critically engages with fundamental questions of social research in decolonial settings.

From commons to resilience grabbing: Insights from historically-oriented social anthropological research on African peasants

This paper aims to show the relevance that institutions governing common-pool resources (CPRs) play in peasant resilience. It outlines nine variables for resilience taken from socio-economic and ecological anthropological theories focusing on subsistence and minimax strategies and used for the comparative historical analysis of African case studies. The variables could be found under pre-colonial common property but were no longer operating during colonial and postcolonial times leading to commons grabbing and the undermining of local resilience.

«Die SDGs laufen Gefahr, sich zur Anti-Politik-Maschine zu entwickeln»

Large-Scale Land Acquisition in Ghana. Institutional Change, Gender and Power

From earthquake victims to citizens: dependencies and precarious claims on the state in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

Based on ethnographic research after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan-controlled Azad Kashmir, this article uses ‘disaster citizenship’ as a conceptual lens focusing on how people renegotiated their relationships with the state in the context of political interventions for reconstruction.

Sanctioning Disciplined Grabs (SDGs): From SDGs as Green Anti-Politics Machine to Radical Alternatives?

The universalist ambition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and 169 targets as a global plan of action for people, planet, prosperity and peacebuilding deserves analytical scrutiny from multiple angles. While the SDGs are largely heralded as a paradigm shift compared to their predecessor Millennial Development Goals (MDGs), we argue that four fundamental dynamics undermine or severely hamper SDGs as a game changer to address the deep-running sustainability challenges facing the planet.