Kläger, Florian, “The Earthward Gaze and Self-reflexivity in Anglophone Novels of the 1970s”, in: Alexander C.T. Geppert (Hrsg.), Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture after Apollo, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

This article examines how looking at perspectives of the Future contributes to distinguishing milieus in the “middle-classes” of urban Kenya. The rise of millions of Africans out of poverty since 2000 has triggered a debate on the so-called “African middle-classes”. This debate, however, has to date not yet addressed the specifics and differences of particular subdivisions of this middle-income-group that would help to understand what is significant beyond their similar financial situation. In response to this gap, this text examines how particular views on Future contribute to distinguishing social milieus, i.e. sociocultural groups with different conducts of life. By examining empirical data for the Neo-Traditional milieu and the Social Climbers – milieus established through empirical data from fieldwork in Kenya for the Project “Middle-Classes on the Rise” – I examine how sociocultural aspects that are crucial for members of a specific milieu also affect their perspectives on the Future. I will show that these perspectives arise from a distinguishable approach to values, patterns of consumption, and in Kenya – as well as in many other African contexts – features like ethnicity, urban-rural ties, forms of religious affiliation or the relationship to the extended family.

Link to publication 

This article explores the evolution of a developmentalist discourse for colonial Somalia and the attempts of the colonial government to present agricultural plans and labor policies as efforts to bring about social and economic development for colonial subjects and profit for colonial investors. In the long term, these efforts provided both a justification and a scope for the colonial venture. Fostering intensive farming and commercial agriculture, development planning institutionalized forced labor, disrupted the local production of foodstuff, and made the colony dependent on foreign imports.

Link to full publication here.

In Transfers of Belonging, Erdmute Alber traces the history of child fostering in northern Benin from the pre-colonial past to the present by pointing out the embeddedness of child foster practices and norms in a wider political process of change. She demonstrates that child fostering was, for a long time, not just one way of raising children, but was seen as the appropriate way of doing so. This changed profoundly with the arrival of European ideas about birth parents being the ‘right’ parents, but also with the introduction of schooling and the differentiation of life chances. Besides providing deep historical and ethnographical insights, Transfers of Belonging provides a new theoretical and conceptual frame for social parenting.

Find more information here.

(Forthcoming in March 2018)

Reconnecting State and Kinship seeks to overcome the traditional dichotomy between state and kinship, asking whether concepts associated with one sphere surface in the other, tracking the evolution of these concepts through time and space, and exploring how this binary is reinforced within the social sciences.

Find more information here.

Die sechs in dieser Ausgabe versammelten ethnografischen Studien fokussieren unterschiedliche ungewisse Zustände in Uganda, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Deutschland und der Schweiz. Zudem werden sechs Beiträge von Wissenschaftler_innen präsentiert und kommentiert, welche die prominente Rolle der Zukunft – als soziale Wahrnehmung von Zeit und Zeitlichkeit im Umgang mit Ungewissheit – beleuchten. Die empirischen Studien in dieser Ausgabe thematisieren Fragestellungen im medizinischen Bereich, untersuchen prekäre ökonomische Umstände, den Umgang mit natürlichen Ressourcen sowie den Mangel an persönlicher Freiheit in bestimmten Situationen.

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Between the medieval conception of Christendom and the political visions of modernity, ideas of Europe underwent a transformative and catalytic period that saw a cultural process of renewed self-definition or self-Europeanization. The contributors to this volume address this process, analyzing how Europe was imagined between 1450 and 1750. By whom, in which contexts, and for what purposes was Europe made into a subject of discourse? Which forms did early modern ‘Europes’ take, and what functions did they serve? Essays examine the role of factors such as religion, history, space and geography, ethnicity and alterity, patronage and dynasty, migration and education, language, translation, and narration for the ways in which Europe turned into an ‘imagined community.’ The thematic range of the volume comprises early modern texts in Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Latin, and Spanish, including plays, poems, and narrative fiction, as well as cartography, historiography, iconography, travelogues, periodicals, and political polemics. Literary negotiations in particular foreground the creative potential, versatility, and agency that inhere in the process of Europeanization, as well as a specifically early modern attitude towards the past and tradition emblematized in the poetics of the period. There is a clear continuity between the collection’s approach to European identities and the focus of cultural and postcolonial studies on the constructed nature of collective identities at large: the chapters build on the insights produced by these fields over the past decades and apply them, from various angles, to a subject that has so far largely eluded critical attention. This volume examines what existing and well-established work on identity and alterity, hybridity and margins has to contribute to an understanding of the largely un-examined and under-theorized ‘pre-formative’ period of European identity.

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Europa ist in der Krise, aber wann war es das nicht? Die Beiträge in diesem Band untersuchen die Rolle der Literatur bei der Imagination und Figuration Europas als Produkt von und Lösung für Krisen.

Seit Ovid in den Metamorphosen vom Raub der phönizischen Königstochter Europa durch den als Stier getarnten Zeus erzählte, hat der europäische Kontinent einen krisenhaften literarischen Gründungsmythos. Vom Rolandslied bis zum politischen Essay über den Kiewer Maidan, von der Bühne Shakespeares bis zum spanischen Gegenwartstheater wird Europa seither von der Krise her gedacht. Der fächerübergreifende Sammelband diskutiert die Rolle der Literatur als Reflexionsmedium für die Konstruktion der kulturellen wie der politischen Idee von Europa vor dem Hintergrund historischer und aktueller ökonomischer, politischer, religiöser und militärischer Krisen.

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Vital Conjunctures Revisited —
Gender in Times of Uncertainty

AutorInnen:

Nadine Sieveking, University of Leipzig
nadine.sieveking@uni-leipzig.de

Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, University of California Berkeley
johnsonhanks@berkeley.edu

Erdmute Alber, University of Bayreuth
erdmute.alber@uni-bayreuth.de

Sie finden den vollen Text als PDF zum Download hier. (in englischer Sprache)

"Mittelklassen, Mittelschichten oder Milieus in Afrika? - Gesellschaften im Wandel"

Sie finden den Flyer zum Download hier.

"Antimuslimischer Rassismus dekolonial"

von Iman Attia & Mariam Popal

Link zur Publikation

 Hier können sie die Publikation erweben

"Zur Analyse soziokultureller Differenzierung von Mittelschichten im Globalen Süden"

von Dieter Neubert und Florian Stoll

Sie finden den Text als PDF zum Download hier.

Mit Beiträgen von

Kroeker, L. (2016): The Kenyan Middle Class and Responses to Social Security.

und Neubert, D. & Stoll, F. (2016): Socio-cultural Diversity of the African Middle Class.

Sie finden den vollen Text als PDF zum Download hier. (in englischer Sprache)

"Deutschland verfügt im internationalen Vergleich über eine reichhaltige Vielfalt an geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Kleinen Fächern. Die vom Bundesforschungsministerium von 2007 bis 2012 geförderte erstmalige Gesamtkartierung der Kleinen Fächer an deutschen Universitäten dokumentiert, dass die Landschaft der Kleinen Fächer in Deutschland einem reichhaltigen und vielfältigen Biotop gleicht, auf das man stolz sein kann."

Auch die Bayreuth Academy ist in der neuen Publikation des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung auf Seite 14 vertreten.

Diaspora studies has developed in recent years from disparate enquiries into diasporic phenomena in political science, anthropology, history, geography, and literary and cultural studies. Its emergence as a full-fledged transdisciplinary research field has been predicated to a large degree on an interest in questions of dispersal and mobility. Based on the proceedings of an international conference by the Marie Curie Initial Training Network CoHaB, this volume undertakes to shift the focus to phenomena of home-making and the articulation of a sense of belonging in diasporic contexts. Contributors from a broad range of disciplines discuss a variety of historical and geographical instances of diasporas, exploring the methodological and theoretical challenges posed by the subjects of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’. Including an interview with Homi K. Bhabha on these subjects and the place of theory in diaspora studies as well as contributions by such central figures as Pnina Werbner and Ihab Hassan, the volume aims at offering a new prospectus of the range and potential of academic work on the cultural formations of diaspora.

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Sophiatown, the iconic suburb in Johannesburg, is at the heart of many narratives around identity and belonging. Sceptical of both concepts mentioned; the author investigates the multiple ways in which people 'un/do' Sophiatown - both as a myth and a suburb - in the present. The focus on heritage, image politics and on people's ways of making futures by creating references to a myth in everyday practices.

Based on the author's dissertation, the book sheds light on cultural projects
and exhibitions. And shares lessons about museology and artistic interventions
learned in and with Sophiatown.

Find more information here.

Symbolic representation is a crucial subject for and a potent heuristic instrument of diaspora studies. This special focus inquires into the forms and functions of symbols of diaspora both in aesthetic practice and in critical discourse, analyzing and theorizing symbols from Shakespeare to Bollywood as well as in critical writings of theorists of diaspora. What kinds of symbols and symbolic practices, contributors ask, are germane to the representation, both emic and etic, of diasporics and diasporas? How are specific symbols and symbolic practices analyzed across the academic fields contributing to diaspora studies? Which symbols and symbolic practices inform the academic study of diasporas, sometimes unconsciously or without being remarked on? To study these phenomena is to engage in a dialogue that aims at refining the theoretical and methodological vocabulary and practice of truly transdisciplinary diaspora studies while attending to the imperative of specificity that inheres in this emerging field. The volume collects a range of analyses from social anthropology, history and ethnography to literary and film studies, all combining readings of individual symbolic practices with meta-theoretical reflections.

Infos zur Publikation hier:
https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/448801

avec des contributions de:
Mohand Akli Salhi, Abdelaziz Amraoui, Ricarda Bienbeck, Isabelle Charpentier, Verena Domberg, Moulay Driss El Maarouf, Maroua El Naggare, Omar Fertat, Mechthild Gilzmer, Lamia Bereksi Meddahi, Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner, Khadija Mouhsine, Nahed Nadia Nouredine, Khaled Zekri.

Find more information here.