2019 - 2021

The indigenisation of Adivasis fulfils different objectives in the field of development practice and international “aid” processes. The development activists this project follows attempt to achieve these objectives through the narrativisation of Adivasi indigeneity.

This research investigates how a particular group of Adivasi communities try to consolidate the sustainability of their and other disadvantaged communities’ economic self-reliance. It examines how the social activists engaged with these Adivasi groups try to realise such economic self-reliance through creating a new, fairer, and more sustainable economic system, on the basis of supposedly indigenous/tribal/Adivasi values. The project analyses how these development activists connect the different actors involved in these self-reliance efforts via narratives of Adivasi indigeneity.

The activists manage to enlist the large group of different development actors and their financial support necessary for such a “just” shift in economic relations through the harnessing of a particular brand of Adivasi indigeneity in their stories. This conceptualisation of indigeneity corresponds largely with essentialised eco-romanticist imaginaries of “the indigenous”, and therefore “the Adivasi”, based on internationally current, reified notions of indigeneity.

Through first identifying the dominant elements of these Adivasi indigeneity narratives, and then analysing the pitfalls inherent in them, this research brings to light the inconsistencies between activist-imagined Adivasi indigeneities and the multiplicity of conflicting identities of Adivasi peoples in India today.

The central question this research therefore asks is whether the efforts of the Adivasi activists to create a more sustainable economic system, informed by Adivasi values, help sustain a progressive and self-reliant Adivasi movement? Or is the activists’ jumping on the indigenist rhetoric bandwagon, in fact not a useful strategy for Adivasis to overcome economic inequalities, (re)enforced and (re)produced by the complex intermeshing of ethnicity and caste in India? Can narrative-intensive indigenism deal with Adivasi intersectionality – the intersection of the multiple forms of discrimination Adivasis face? Or do indigenism’s anachronistic elements – in particular the activists’ adherence to an ecologically romantic conceptualisation of Adivasi values – render the activists’ rhetorical strategies counterproductive, and thereby create obstacles to sustaining the momentum of their movement?

Project leader:
Claudia Aufschnaiter

Duration:
04.09.2020-14.07.2021

Financing:
core-funding

Colonial and postcolonial imaginaries of the Andaman Islands have represented the  archipelago in the north-eastern Indian Ocean as a natural prison, a terra nullius, a site of nationalist martyrdom in the Indian anti-colonial struggle, and a repository of indigenous “exotica”.

Popular descriptions label the islands as both a “melting pot” and a “frontier”. Successive waves of migration since 1858 have created a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual mosaic referred to as “Southeast India” and “Mini-India”. Convicts incarcerated by the British were joined by partition refugees from eastern Bengal, Adivasis from Chota Nagpur, and Telugu- and Tamil-speaking migrants from southern India. The 500-odd remaining indigenous people of tribal ethnicity are confined to reserved territories, depend on government support, or refuse contact.

Strategically located at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, the islands play a crucial role in India’s current military expansion with its aim to counter Chinese naval presence in the Indo-Pacific.

Once the site of British “civilising” missions, a coercive penal system, violent Japanese occupation during WWII, and a formerly thriving but now outlawed timber industry, the Andamans are the location of conflicting postcolonial imaginaries. From environmentalists’ pleas to “save” the “fragile” islands, to tourism marketing as a tropical paradise holiday destination, the Andamans are a poly-semiotic place at the friction point of centre-periphery tensions.

I focus on three questions in this research:

• Firstly, how does the Indian mainland/centre see the islands?

• Secondly, how do different islanders see, on the one hand, the mainland – both contemporary and in terms of memorialised places of family origin – and, on the other, “their” own islands and their internal divisions?

• Thirdly, how do marginalised subaltern islanders conceive of their position on the islands’ periphery – on the one hand vis-à-vis the political centres of Port Blair and Delhi, and, on the other, vis-à-vis the politically dominant groups on the islands? 

Project leader:
Claudia Aufschnaiter

Duration:
15.07.2015-14.07.2021

Funding:
core-funding

“Öffnen von Fenstern in eine Bildwelt, um besser durch Zeiten der Krise zu navigieren”

Die Wiener Bildsammlungen, die zu den weltweit bedeutendsten Beständen historischer Photographien zu Afghanistan und Tibet gehören, stellen eine Ressource von unschätzbarem Wert nicht nur für WissenschaftlerInnen, sondern auch für KünstlerInnen und Interessierte dar. Nur ein Bruchteil davon wurde bisher in Büchern veröffentlicht oder in Ausstellungen präsentiert. Die Materialien werden erstmals archiviert, digitalisiert und der Öffentlichkeit digital und in Form von Ausstellungen zugänglich gemacht. Gleichzeitig soll damit alten und neuen Formen der Erinnerungskultur zwischen Europa und Asien nachgespürt werden.

Project leader:
Christiane Kalantari

Collaborators:
Alexandra Pruscha

Duration:
01.05.2020 - 30.04.2021

Financing:
Covid19-project funding/Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien

Projektleitung: Barbara Götsch
Projektlaufzeit: 01.03.2018 - 31.12.2021
Finanzierung: ÖAW/Erstmittel, Poech Erbschaft

This project engages with the “aspirational” future visions promoted by cities and regions in Southeast Asia in their effort to attract investments, tourists and talents. Next to the landmark construction of futuristic high-rises, this competition entails the comprehensive restructuring of technical infrastructure as well as the aspiration to create ‘ecologies of expertise’ (Ong 2005) and more recently an emphasis on sustainability and conviviality. This project looks at the ways in which this is played out in particular in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. It critically reflects on the presentation of self and visions of the future of the cities of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Projektleitung: Marieke Brandt
Projektlaufzeit: 01.11.2015 - 31.10.2021
Finanzierung: ÖAW/New Frontiers Research Groups Programme

In den vergangenen Jahren ist die weitläufige, entlegene Grenzregion zwischen Jemen und Saudi-Arabien, insbesondere die Provinzen Ṣaʿdah und al-Jawf, zu einer der zentralen Krisenregionen unserer globalisierten Welt geworden. Seit der jemenitischen Einheit 1990 wurde dieses Gebiet zum Schauplatz von komplexen lokalen, nationalen und internationalen Machtkämpfen, die soziale, ökonomische, politische und religiöse Ursachen haben. Diese Konflikte haben sich in den vergangenen Dekaden weitgehend unbemerkt entwickelt und bedrohen heute durch die Involvierung der regionalen Supermächte Saudi Arabien und Iran die Stabilität und Sicherheit der ganzen Region. Ohne die profunde historische, soziale und politische Analyse der jüngeren Geschichte dieser Region würden sich Schlüsselbereiche des Arabischen Frühlings und der Entstehung neuer Bruchlinien zwischen Sunniten und Schiiten im Nahen und Mittleren Osten unserem Verständnis entziehen.
Dieses Projekt untersucht die sozialen, religiösen, ökonomischen und politischen Veränderungen der letzten Dekaden in den Provinzen Ṣaʿdah und al-Jawf mit den Methoden und Instrumenten der Sozialanthropologie und ihrer benachbarten Disziplinen. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit findet die Rolle lokaler Akteure bei der Implementierung politischer, religiöser und wirtschaftlicher Programme. Das Projekt baut auf einer der ältesten Forschungstraditionen der ÖAW auf – der Erforschung Südarabiens – die mit den berühmten Namen Eduard Glaser, David H. Müller, Walter Dostal und Andre Gingrich verbunden ist. Das Projekt kooperiert mit angesehenen Forschungseinrichtungen im In- und Ausland, allen voran mit Experten der Universitäten von Princeton, London, Sydney und Sana’a.

„Global Eurasia – Comparison and Connectivity“ ist ein gemeinsames Projekt der in der Hollandstraße angesiedelten ÖAW-Institute. 2019-2020 werden drei internationale und interdisziplinäre Tagungen stattfinden, bei denen aus interdisziplinär-vergleichender Sicht verschiedene Schwerpunktthemen behandelt werden. Die Erarbeitung dieser Themen und Fragestellungen erfolgt jeweils in Kleingruppen, die sich aus Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern mehrerer Institute zusammensetzen. Im Zentrum stehen dabei die inhaltliche Weiterentwicklung der Themen und die Ausarbeitung vergleichender Gesichtspunkte, durch die Verbindungen zwischen den an der ÖAW laufenden Forschungsprojekten gezogen werden können und die die Entwicklung zukünftiger Forschungslinien und Projektanträge in diesem Bereich ermöglichen.

Finanzierung:
ÖAW

Webseite:
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/global-eurasia/

Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE) VISCOM

ISA’s long-term interdisciplinary grant project part in historical anthropology is entering completion. While the grant's contract period (2011-2019) has come to a close by the end of 2019, about 25% of main comparative and analytical project results are at various stages of elaboration and will be published before the end of 2021.

VISCOM focuses on the question of how particular communities and identities are constructed in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. The project proposes a comparative approach focusing on Christian, Islamic and Buddhist examples in order to explore the interaction between religious and political 'visions of community'.

For almost a decade, several networks among ISA's staff have actively contributed to the largest interdisciplinary grant project in Austria's humanities at the time, i.e. the special research realm (SFB) "Visions of Community" (VISCOM): Investigating and comparing processes of community formation in South West Arabia, Tibetan-speaking parts of Europe, and central Europe between Late Antiquity and early modern times. The project was funded by the Austrian Science Fund, the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. As a collaborative research endeavour between historians, philologists and socio-cultural anthropologists, VISCOM contributed decisively to ISA's interdisciplinary and European standing while promoting the careers of its junior and senior participants.

This project was carried out by the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, under the direction of Walter Pohl (Institute for Middle Ages Research). Comparative research was undertaken through a cooperation of Social Anthropologists (Institute for Social Anthropology – Andre Gingrich), Tibetologists (Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia – Birgit Kellner, Vincent Eltschinger [formerly Helmut Krasser(✝)]) and specialists in the field of Austrian and Eastern European History (University of Vienna - Christina Lutter, Oliver Schmitt).

Project leader (South Arabia):
Andre Gingrich

Collaborators (based at the ISA):
Johann Heiss, Magdalena Moorthy Kloss, Odile Kommer

Webseite:
https://viscom.ac.at

Project leader: Christian Jahoda
Duration: 01.01.2017 - 31.10.2019
Financing: Innovationsfonds „Forschung, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft“, ÖAW

The geographic and cultural-linguistic focus of the project is past and present-day Tibet. The three main topics are 1) materiality and material culture in early imperial Tibet, 2) materiality and material culture in Buddhist architecture and art and 3) concepts and practices related to materiality and material culture. Social anthropological, art historical, architectural and Tibetological research is combined with materials-related assessments.

Publications (selected)

Feiglstorfer, Hubert. 2018. Examining earthen building methods at the Nyarma monastery in Ladakh. In: Joffroy, Thierry et al. (eds) Terra Lyon 2016: Articles sélectionnés pour publication en ligne / articles selected for on-line publication / artículos seleccionados para publicación en línea. Villefontaine: CRAterre, pp. 1-12.

Feiglstorfer, Hubert. 2019 [spring-summer]. Mineral Building Traditions in the Himalayas: The Mineralogical Impact on the Use of Clay as Building Material. Walter de Gruyter: Munich.

Feiglstorfer, Hubert. 2019 [summer-autumn]. Material Aspects of Building and Craft Traditions: Spatial Program – Building Material – Natural Environment: A Himalayan Case Study. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.

Hazod, Guntram. 2018. Territory, kinship and the grave: On the identification of the elite tombs in the burial mound landscape of imperial Central Tibet. In: Hazod, Guntram and Shen Weirong (eds) Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015). Beijing: China Tibetology Press, pp. 5-106.

Hazod, Guntram. 2019 [spring]. The graves of the chief ministers of the Tibetan empire: Mapping chapter two of the Old Tibetan Chronicle in the light of the evidence of the Tibetan tumulus tradition. In: Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, Paris.

Jahoda, Christian. 2018. Notes on the performance and meaning of the Sherken and Namtong festivals in areas of historical Western Tibet. In: Hazod, Guntram and Shen Weirong (eds) Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015). Beijing: China Tibetology Press, pp. 679-704.

Jahoda, Christian and Kalantari, Christiane (eds). In preparation [to appear in 2019]. Early West Tibetan Buddhist Monuments: Architecture, Art, History and Texts. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.

Kalantari, Christiane. 2018. Drinking for enlightenment. Remarks on a beer song (chang gzhas) from Western Tibet and its comparative historical context. Hazod, Guntram and Shen Weirong (eds) Tibetan Genealogies: Studies in Memoriam of Guge Tsering Gyalpo (1961-2015). Beijing: China Tibetology Press, pp. 607-636.

Kalantari, Christiane and Allinger, Eva. 2018. The spiritual career of Buddha Śākyamuni on the portal of Khorchag (Khojarnath). Towards a reconstruction of the whole narrative cycle on a Royal Western Tibetan temple (early 11th c.). In: Asianart.com, Santa Fe/ USA (Ian Alsop ed., Kathmandu/Nepal); asianart.com/articles/khorchag/index.html.

A transdisciplinary survey of the recent situation of refugees in Austria

Project leader: Andre Gingrich, Maria Six-Hohenbalken

Collaborators: Leonardo Schiocchet, Sabine Bauer-Amin

Cooperations: Institute for Urban and Regional Research (AAS), Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (Univ. Vienna), Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History (AAS), Institute of Iranian Studies (AAS)

Duration: 01.03.2017 - 31.10.2019

Funding: Innovation Fund of the AAS

The project was carried out by the “Network for Refugee Outreach and Research” (ROR-n) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and intends to make an important contribution to a more objective public discourse about refugees based on scientific data. A transdisciplinary perspective was ensured by the cooperation of experts from urban and regional research, migration research, political science and Iranian studies.

Social network theories and theories of ethnicity were the most important theoretical approaches. Practically oriented, the project aims to develop policy recommendations in the form of feasible good-practice measures for stakeholders and proposals for sustainable solutions in various spheres of integration. Furthermore, the results of this project will be incorporated into a panel study covering an investigation period of more than five years.

In terms of methodology, 135 partially structured narrative biographical interviews with respondents from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were planned. Native speakers in Kurdish (Sorani, Badini), Syrian and Iraqi Arabic, Pashto and Farsi-Dari will conduct the interviews. Forty respondents will be interviewed a second time within the duration of the project. For a systematic analysis and comparison of the relevance of the spatial context on the integration paths of the refugees, data acquisition took place in Vienna as well as in smaller Austrian communities. Focus group discussions and a sample of expert interviews were planned to further supplement the data pool, to check the results and derive perspectives of action. Thus, political and administrative representatives, religious authorities, stakeholders, social workers, and representatives of NGOs and migrant associations etc. were also be involved.

Further key aims include the compilation of a unique Austrian data pool, initializing mutual learning processes and fostering scientific exchange and cooperation with institutions in countries with a longer tradition of refugee immigration, such as Germany and Sweden on the one side and Austria’s Eastern European neighboring countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary) on the other side. The distinguishing innovative feature of this project lies in its transdisciplinary nature and in the close interdependencies between research-oriented and practical goals. This led to results that are relevant to the social sciences, stakeholders, political decision makers and refugees.

View our open access publication on the project.

Project leader: Georg Traska / Institute for Cultural Studies and Theatre History

Collaborator: Valeria Heuberger (ISA)

Project duration: 01.11.2017 - 31.08.2019

Funding: Sparkling Science / ÖAD

Project leader: Eva-Maria Knoll
Duration: 01.01.2019 – 31.07.2019; verlängert bis 31.01.2020
Financing: Philipp Politzer Endowment, ÖAW

This project compares the 'biosocial' struggle with inherited blood disorders in Europe and the Maldives from a medical-anthropological perspective. It links the Maldives-focused core-funded project "Genetic Responsibility and Remoteness" to the EU-funded “THALassemia In Action” (THALIA) project of the Thalassemia International Federation (TIF).
Over the last few years an increase in migratory movements and flight of people from regions in which hemoglobin pathologies (mainly thalassaemias and sickle cell disease) have become prevalent challenges to European health systems. This project examines if and how genetic responsibility and remoteness are interrelated in two different localities, how this tension is spatially, institutionally and socially anchored, and how different actors aim in theoretical and practical terms at improving the respective situation of (island or migration-related) 'remoteness' (Ardener 1987).

Project leader: Johann Heiss, Johannes Feichtinger
Cooperations: Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History, AAS
Duration: 2010-2019
Financing: core-funding

Das Projekt besteht in der Koordination eines internationalen Forschungsnetzwerks, das sich zur Aufgabe gemacht hat, die Komplexität und Diversität des Orientalismus zu untersuchen. In Zentraleuropa haben sich verschiedene Umgangsformen mit dem Anderen herausgebildet, die zu einer Pluralisierung nationaler, regionaler und kultureller Identitäten führten. Die sichtbare Präsenz eines 'inneren Orients' sowie die relative Nähe des 'äußeren Orients' manifestierten sich in einer Ambiguität – einerseits in strikten Abgrenzungsprozessen, anderseits in der Aneignung von Wissen über den 'orientalisierten' Anderen. Aneignungsprozesse dieser Art konnten sowohl das friedliche Zusammenleben sichern als auch Wege für Zivilisierungsmissionen ebnen. Diese Ambivalenzen bilden den Ausgangspunkt unserer vergleichenden Analysen. Nach einer ersten Konferenz in Delhi im Januar 2010 fand im April 2011 eine Folgekonferenz an der ÖAW in Wien statt.

The Formation of a Transnational Sowa Rigpa Industry in Contemporary India, China, Mongolia and Bhutan

Project leader: Stephan Kloos
Collaborators: Calum Blaikie, Mingji Cuomu, Harilal Madhavan, Tawni Tidwell
Duration: 01.04.2014 - 31.03.2019
Financing: ERC Starting Grant

“Traditional medicine” has recently emerged from a highly marginalized position in many parts of the world to become a rapidly expanding and highly innovative multi-billion dollar global industry. However, despite growing academic, economic and public interest in the “traditional” pharmaceutical industry, we know little about its larger dynamics, shape, and wider socio-economic and public health implications. This 5-year interdisciplinary study of the emergent transnational Tibetan medicine (or “Sowa Rigpa”) industry in India, China, Mongolia and Bhutan aims to fill this gap.

The Sowa Rigpa industry, in which traditional Tibetan medicine is transformed into a mass-produced commodity for domestic and international markets, is a particularly illustrative and timely case of the traditional pharmaceutical industry at large. On the one hand, it is still small enough to be studied by one team of experienced researchers, and on the other hand, its industry is only now emerging and taking shape, allowing a real-time investigation of its development.

This project breaks new ground by being the first comprehensive, large-scale, interdisciplinary study of Sowa Rigpa in a transnational context. It conceptualizes Sowa Rigpa- raw materials, pharmaceutical producers, markets and administrations as parts of a pharmaceutical assemblage, thus enabling an analysis of the larger dynamics and connections that shape this industry as a socio-cultural, political, economic and public health phenomenon. In this way, not only a hitherto non-existent “big picture” of a traditional pharmaceutical industry can be generated, but also the increasingly fluid intersections of science and religion, ethics and politics, capitalism and culture in the contemporary world can be charted.

An Analysis of Historical Sources

PhD-Project: Magdalena Moorthy Kloss
Supervisor: Andre Gingrich, Maria-Christina Lutter
Duration: 1.5.2013 – 28.2.2019
Financing: FWF/SFB Viscom

Magdalena’s doctoral research explores the complex phenomenon of slavery in medieval Yemen through the analysis of historical sources from the 12th to the early 15th century. Using the theoretical and methodological tools of historical anthropology, she has collected numerous mentions of slaves scattered throughout a diverse range of medieval Arabic sources from Yemen in order to reconstruct the lived realities of slaves at the time. Of central interest to this work are the different social positions and roles occupied by slaves during that time, as well as the impacts of gender, ethnic background, and religious denomination on them. Ethnographic works from the 20th and 21st centuries are also drawn on to assess the legacy of historical slavery in contemporary Yemen.

A Survey on the Basis of al-Hamdānī’s Main Work

PhD-Project: Odile Kommer
Supervisers: Andre Gingrich, Maria Christina Lutter
Duration: 24.04.2013 – 28.2.2019
Financing: AAS/DOC-team-fellowship; FWF/SFB VISCOM

This project aims to explore ethnonyms and their contextualization in Yemeni sources from the 9th and 10th centuries CE, mainly based on texts of al-Ḥasan al-Hamdānī (ca. 280 H/893 CE – 334 H/945 CE). By a historical anthropological approach, I examine the strategic use of ethnonyms by the authors, and how inter-ethnic differentiations were constructed in the textual sources.