Project Archive

Project leader: Marieke Brandt
Duration: 01.11.2015 - 31.10.2021
Financing: ÖAW/New Frontiers Research Groups Programme

In recent years the large borderland regions between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, in particular the governorates of Ṣaʿdah and al-Jawf, have become a central crisis zone in today’s globalizing world. Since Yemeni unification in 1990, this zone became the scene of particularly complex and violent local, national and international power struggles informed by social, economic, political, and sectarian backgrounds. Through the involvement of the regional super powers Saudi Arabia and Iran, and eventually the U.S. drone war in Yemen, this formerly peripheral area has become the focus of international attention and security concerns. Having arisen largely unnoticed during the recent decades, these local conflicts have developed potentials with national and international impact, affecting stability and security in Yemen, the Middle East, Europe and the world community as a whole. In addition, without a profound historically, socially and politically informed analysis of recent and current developments in this area, a key moment of the “Arab Spring” movement and the emergence of new fault lines between Sunni and Shia denominations throughout the Near and Middle East would escape our understanding.
This project explores and explains the profound social, denominational, economic and political transformations in the provinces of Ṣaʿdah and al-Jawf during the recent decades by the means and tools of social anthropology and neighboring fields. Special consideration is given to the role of local actors in the implementation of broader political and sectarian programs and economic endeavors. The project builds on one of the oldest research traditions of the AAS - the exploration of South Arabia - which is linked to the famous names of Eduard Glaser, David H. Müller, Walter Dostal and Andre Gingrich.
Being based in Vienna, the project’s cooperation with internationally renowned experts from the universities of Princeton, London, Sydney, and Sana’a ensures its integration into the international research scene.

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.

Project leader: Barbara Götsch
Duration: 01.03.2018 - 31.12.2021
Financing: 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.

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.

Emerging Socialities and Forms of Piety in Indonesia

Project leade: Martin Slama
Collaborators: Dayana Lengauer
Duration: 01.06.2014-31.12.2018
Financing: FWF (Projekt: P26645-G22)
Website: Islamic Interfaces

The project “Islamic (Inter)Faces of the Internet: Emerging Socialities and Forms of Piety in Indonesia” aims at generating an anthropological account of Islamic religiosities in contemporary Indonesia as it is embedded in the everyday uses of social media and communication technologies.

Focusing on the largest Muslim majority country, the project is designed to contribute to the emerging anthropological literature on social media, contemporary religiosities, and developments within Indonesian Islam. The project attempts to explore new ground in these three fields by linking Islamic everyday piousness and regular religious gatherings to social media usage (such as Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp). Following the latest anthropological literature, the project understands the internet as a collection of interfaces among which social networking sites feature prominently, not least because they become increasingly integrated into people’s everyday lives. This is particularly true for Indonesian uses of social networking sites. These interfaces, as the name of the most popular site, i.e. Facebook, suggests, provide ample opportunities to exhibit visual and textual material, including people’s religious expressions. In the Indonesian context in particular, social networking interfaces have become sites where the country’s many “Islamic faces” are displayed – and it is these emerging forms of conveying and expressing Islam as well as the socialities that are generated in these intersecting online/offline realms this project attempts to study.

The project has a particular focus on the first generation of Indonesians that discovered the internet, i.e. when they were students in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as on Islamic preachers that are often part of this media-savvy generation. An investigation of their online and offline Islamic practices, their emerging socialities and forms of piety demands carrying out fieldwork in the major cities on Java which show a strong presence of users, such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Bandung and Surabaya. By following their networks and their Islamic preachers the project extends to cities outside Java as well, such as Makassar and Manado as well as Palu and Ambon. Together with the major cities on Java they form one space of emerging socialities displaying particular expressions of Islamic piety in interlinked online/offline realms. These realms are explored in a joint effort of Austrian and Indonesian researchers by deploying a combination of offline and online qualitative methods.

Project leader:
Barbara Götsch

Duration:
21.8.2017 - 20.2.2018

Financing:
AAS / City of Vienna (MA7)

Im globalen Wettstreit der Städte erscheint der Begriff „Smart City“ als besonders attraktive Zuschreibung. Es handelt sich dabei um einen weitläufigen Überbegriff, der Eigenschaften wie hochtechnologisch, intelligent, vernetzt, innovativ, nachhaltig und partizipativ transportiert, und von verschiedenen Städten zu strategischen Zwecken unterschiedlich genutzt wird. Das Projekt „Smart city – smart citizens?“ beleuchtet was Wien bzw. Singapur jeweils unter „Smart City“ verstehen und wohin der Transformationsprozess jeweils führen soll. Insbesondere untersucht das Projekt wie Akteur/innen der Stadtplanung diesen Prozess im Hinblick auf die Bürger/innen vorantreiben: sowohl was Informations- und Entscheidungsprozesse betrifft als auch was Vorstellungen von den Kompetenzen von zukünftigen Bürger/innen betrifft.

Project leader: Eva-Maria Knoll
Duration: 01.10.2014-31.12.2017
Funding: core-funding

This medical-anthropological project investigates the organization and interaction of two forms of mobility listed by John Urry as essential in the contemporary globalized world.
Drawing on insights from mobility studies, island studies and ocean studies, mobility and connectivity are considered as creative reactions to restrictions, limitations and remoteness – the outstanding features of island communities.
The project is associated with the Max Planck Fellow Group "Connectivity in Motion: Port Cities of the Indian Ocean" of MPI Fellow Burkhard Schnepel, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale).

Project leaders: Maria-Katharina Lang, Christian Jahoda
Consultants: Eva Allinger, Jorinde Ebert, Christiane Kalantari
Cooperations: SEECHAC (Société Européenne pour l'Étude des Civilisations de l'Himalaya et de l'Asie Centrale), Paris; Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale Giuseppe Tucci, Rome; National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa, PR China; University of Vienna
Project Duration: 06.01.2012-15.11.2017
Budget: AAS/ISA, SEECHAC, private foundations, Eurasia-Pacific Uninet

Based on preparatory work starting in January 2012, the third international SEECHAC colloquium took place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna from 25-27 November 2013. This conference brought together over 30 international scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines and fields of study (beside social anthropology in particular archaeology, art history, numismatics, philology and study of religion) who presented their respective recent research on "Interaction in the Himalayas and Central Asia: processes of transfer, translation and transformation in art, archaeology, religion and polity from antiquity to the present day". Among the topics discussed at this interdisciplinary colloquium was direct or indirect cross-border relationships and the transfer and transformation of knowledge and specific cultural traditions as well as interrelationships across geographic, cultural and media borders (for example, painting, sculpture, ritual, text) and trans-religious dynamics in borderland regions.

A book publication with the results of the colloquium (co-edited by Eva Allinger, Frantz Grenet, Christian Jahoda, Maria-Katharina Lang and Anne Vergati) appeared in March 2017 (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press).

Project leader:: Maria-Katharina Lang

Collaborators: Tsetsentsolmon Baatarnaran (NUM), Erdenebold Lhagvasuren (Mongolian University of Science and Technology), Lucia Mennel, Christian Sturminger, Johannes Heuer
Cooperations: Weltmuseum Wien, National University of Mongolia (NUM), Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Bogd Khan Palace Museum, Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg, Völkerkundemuseum der J. & E. von Portheim Stiftung Heidelberg
Duration: 15.10.2013 - 31.07.2017 (Ausstellungen bis Ende 2018)
Financing: WWTF (Project SSH13-051) / AAS
Websites: www.nomadicartefacts.net, www.wwtf.at

The project follows and examines the movements of artefacts, in this case Mongolian ritual objects, through various spatial, socio-political and institutional contexts. The topography and the “knowledge” of these things are interwoven with cultural transfers between Europe and Asia, with Viennese and Mongolian science and museum history and practice, with the impacts of political suppression and democracy processes in Mongolia, and with modes of human-object interactions and the power of things.

The research started from a collection at the Weltmuseum Wien (WMW) in relation to public spaces in Mongolia such as museums, Buddhist monasteries, public altars and ritual places in the natural landscape as well as private spaces inside yurts. What transformations have these spaces undergone in periods of socio-political transition? The project will continues and intensifies the dialogue and transfer of knowledge between Mongolian and Austrian scientists and institutions: processes of transformation within the WMW here serve as a basis for comparison. Mongolian ethnographica collected at the turn of the 19th century by Hans Leder document the various strands of the objects’ history: the artefacts’ itineraries from public spaces such as public ritual altars in the natural landscape or from the sacred space inside yurts in Mongolia, their complicated transfer to the Viennese and other European ethnographic museums and their “lives” as museum objects. Through these movements their meanings have been changed and new relations and networks created. While similar and comparable objects in Mongolia were not “conserved” in European museums, they were handled differently there. During the purges in the late 1930s religious artefacts had at least to disappear from public space. A few monasteries were spared the destruction and transformed to public museums. The histories and transformations of these museums from their establishment to the present time are one local focus of research. With the transition to democracy and capitalist market oriented economy new museums have been created. Museum collections are sometimes regarded as “trésors”. But trésors of what? Of an ambivalent history, of modes of collecting, of the history of cultures, of fragile cultural encounters, or of a (lost) social life of things? Bearing these ambiguities in mind, the research intends to present frictions, transformations and transitions, assemblages, memories and the efficacy of things related to (ethnographic) museums and collectibles. Ways of dealing with and exhibiting ethnographic artefacts, including scientific and artistic methods of “moving” objects and perceptions, are elaborated and presented in multi-perspective ways.

Project Book: Nomadic Artefacts. A Scientific Artistic Travelogue edited by Maria-Katharina Lang, Austrian Academy Press, 2016

An interdisciplinary Survey in Medieval Western Europe and Southwest Arabia

Project leader: Andre Gingrich, Walter Pohl, Christina Lutter, Stephan Prochazka
Collaborators: Salvatore Liccardo, Odile Kommer, Andrea Nowak
Cooperations: Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Vienna, Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Duration: 01.07.2014 - 30.06.2017
Financing: DOC-team Stipendium (AAS)
Associated Project: "Visions of Community. Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE)" (https://viscom.ac.at/)

By starting from central authors, this interdisciplinary team project aims at examining how ethnonyms matter for the manifestation of ethnicity in medieval contexts of Southwestern Arabia and Western Europe, and where major similarities and differences occur.

Impulses, innovations, interactions and interdependence Vienna / Malé

Project leader: Eva-Maria Knoll
Duration: 01.03.2013-30.06.2017
Financing: mixed

Crucial impulses for the development of tourism in the Maldives since the 1970s were already laid in the late 1950s, when the Viennese Hans Hass explored the Maldivian lagoonswith his research vessel. Building on his first experience with the underwater world of the Old Danube lake, Hass became a pioneer of scuba diving, underwater photography and exploration of the underwater world. These impulses from Vienna's Danube beach aroused an interest in the underwater world in generations of holiday makers and contributed to shaping tourism on the Maldivian coral reefs. Following recent impulses arising from the stress caused to coral reefs by global warming, research has been carried out at the University of Vienna on restoration, renaturation and the creation of artificial reefs.
From a social anthropological perspective, this project examines the various human/nature interactions between the Maldivian coral reefs and landlocked Austria as a 'global assemblage' of human and non-human actors. The concept of the 'impulse' (from Latin impellere, 'strike, drive, induce') will thereby be refined in terms of an incentive.

Subproject-leaders: Abdullah Baabood, Andre Gingrich, Ali lshawi, Roxani Margariti, Daniel Varisco
Partner Institutions: Austrian Academy of Sciences, Qatar University, Emory University
Duration: 01.01.2016-01.05.2017
Financing: Quatar National Research Fund (QNRF)

This project will combine ethnographic fieldwork among elderly pearl divers, fishermen, boat captains, owners of dhows and their wives with analysis of the heritage recorded in textual sources.

The Austrian-Palestinian Encounter and its National and Religious Flows

Project leader: Leonardo Schiocchet
Duration: 01.05.2015-30.04.2017
Financing: Lise Meitner Grant (FWF)

The main axis of Palestinian fluxes in Europe was Germany in the 1960s and Scandinavia in the 1980s-1990s. However, since Chancellor Bruno Kreisky's era, Vienna has played a decisive role in fostering and supporting Palestinian civil society and a secular Palestinian nationalism. Despite the relative absence of academic research on the Austrian case, in the last 10 years the Palestinian community in Vienna has been officially represented or directly supported by many Palestinian-Austrian, Arab and Austrian institutions, and deeply tied to main Austrian political parties. However, religious institutions also aggregate Palestinians and reclaim the polyphonic concept "The Palestinian Cause". How do nationalism and religion flow through transnational Palestinian networks engaged in the Austrian-Palestinian encounter? Do these flows intersect and, if so, how? How does Europe, and particularly Vienna, influence the relation between these variables?

Researcher: Gantulga Munkh-Erdene
Supervisor: Maria Katharina-Lang
Duration: 15..10.2016-25.03.2017
Financing: Ernst Mach Grant (Eurasia-Pacific Uninet)

In Mongolia, following the mining boom, two phenomena have emerged. Those are: development or mega projects and cultural heritage issues. According to the Law of Cultural Heritage, if the companies or organizations want to use any land for economic activities those subjects have to reserve a research for protection and preservation of cultural heritage on the target area of their project. The research must be undertaken by academic or scholarly organizations or individuals. Following this process, several research questions have risen, such as: Is it a revival of traditional culture? What methods emerged concerning the protection process of the cultural heritage? What are the scholars’ activities and roles on this field? However, it is common to consider the revival of Mongolian cultural heritage in connection to the collapse of Soviet Union’s communist regime after being suppressed for over 70 years. Today, we are witnessing another round of similar discourse, which we call revitalization of cultural heritage. For Mongolia, a country with 25 years of democratic history experiencing western development policy, the conventional interpretation regarding oppression of and liberation from the Soviet regime is no longer valid to understand the politics of cultural heritage in Mongolia. Therefore, alternative interpretations are now necessary to comprehend current and further processes of cultural heritage. In this research, I try to explore the new explanation or the new trigger of cultural revival in Mongolia.

The pilgrimage to Mecca as an example for diversity and mobility

Project leader: Valeria Heuberger
Duration: 01.10.2015-31.12.2016
Financing: MA 7, Kultur-, Wissenschafts- und Forschungsförderung der Stadt Wien für 2013

The project deals with the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, hajj - which belongs to the pillars of Islam -, performed by Viennese Muslims. How about the organization of the pilgrimage and which role play Muslim associations for the handling of the trip to Mecca? In the project the time period from the second half of the 20th century until today will be covered. To methods used belong interviews with experts from Muslims associations and with Muslims before and after the hajj. Participant observation of preparatory courses organized by Muslim associations will be another tool as well as media screening of German and non-German, for example Turkish, print media providing information and reports about the trip to Mecca performed by Viennese Muslims.

PhD-project:: Tsetsentsolmon Baatarnaran
Supervisor: Maria Katharina-Lang
Duration: 15.02.2016-15.10.2016
Financing: Ernst Mach Grant (Eurasia-Pacific Uninet)

This study sets out to explore the concept of ‘national’ (ündesnii) or ‘traditional’ (ulamjlalt) Mongolian culture and art and its historical and contemporary transformation. It examines the context of a number of processes of cultural construction that took place in Mongolia in the socialist and post-socialist eras. This study focuses mainly on musical culture, but touches upon other genres of art including film, literature and the visual arts. My main approach is to take a critical stance towards the current concepts and categories in cultural production and to explore the processes they were constructed. Not limiting myself within a specific art genre, I discuss ethnographic examples relevant to my argument towards transformative impact of state policy. In each case I am concerned with processes of transformation in terms of the understandings and normative definitions of those categories in state policy, academic literature, and in public culture. In dealing with the concepts of socialism and post-socialism, I do not aim to characterize two clear-cut or monolithic categories. Rather, I try to explore the varied aspects, shifts, appropriations and manipulations of art and its politicization in both eras.

Young Egyptian Intellectuals between self-expressions and demands of their interests

PhD-project: Sabine Bauer
supervisor: Andre Gingrich
Duration: 24.04.2013-31.07.2016
Financing: ÖAW/DOC-Stipendium

The project wants to shed a light on the social and cultural impacts of the revolution and the following transformation phase on identity and alterity constructions of young Cairene students. The actors find themselves in difficult economic and political contexts with climbing food prices, chaotic public order breakdown major income sources This crisis allows space for new self-definitions, which are often formulated through creative usage of urban and digital space. Cairo's youth is witnessing new forms of agency within the social space. Using the concept of grammars of identity/alterity (Baumann/Gingrich 2004) the project aims to anylyse strategies and patterns of appropriation of urban and digital sites to express belonging and differentiation. Therefore the project combines recent debates on identity with urban and media studies, as well as the theory of affect.

Project leader: Maria Six-Hohenbalken
Duration: 01.07.2008-31.07.2016
Financing: core-funding

Der 2003 verstorbene Ethnologe Werner Finke hatte über zwei Jahrzehnte in der Türkei geforscht. Eine der weltweit größten Sammlungen kurdischer Ethnographica am österreichischen Museum für Völkerkunde geht auf ihn zurück. 2008 übergab seine Erbin Dr. Widhalm der ÖAW seine umfassende Foto- und Filmsammlung dem Institut für Sozialanthropologie der ÖAW. In unterschiedlichen Teilprojekten werden diese Materialien sukzessive aufbereitet und ausgewertet.

Project leader: Helmut Lukas
Collaborator(s): K. Hakami (KSA/Univ. Wien), P. Chindaritha, (BA/Thailand)
Duration: 01.01.2007 - 30.06.2016
Financing: ASEA UNINET / BMWFW

Nachdem im März/April 2009 eine erste Datenerhebung zum Raumkonzept sowie eine ergänzende Erhebung zum numerischen System der Maniq durchgeführt worden war, standen im August/ September 2010 Raumkonzept, Orientierung und Mobilität der Maniq, einer Sammler-Jäger-Ethnie im Süden Thailands, im Zentrum der Untersuchung. Aufgrund widriger Bedingungen konnten die Ziele dieser Pilot-Feldforschung (Sammeln von Basisdaten für ein FWF-Projekt) jedoch nicht in vollem Umfang erreicht werden. Mit dem Projektthema verbundene Workshop-Teilnahmen waren u.a.: „Space, Numerical Systems and Color Terminologies: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Analysis" (Wien, 8.-9.10.2010) und "Hunter-gatherers and semantic categories: An interdisciplinary workshop on theory, method and documentation" (Neuwied, Deutschland, 30.5. - 4.6.2010).

Old Tales, Ancestors, and Ceremonies. Bronze Gongs of Guangxi in Ancient History and Present Time

Project leader: Helmut Lukas
Duration: 01.08.2007 -
Cooperations: Nationalities Research Institute of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region/GZAR, Nanning, PR China; Anthropology and Ethnology Research Inst. and Southeast Asia Research Inst., Guangxi University for Nationalities, Nanning, PR China; Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, PR China. In Austria: Museum of Ethnology Vienna (today: World Museum Vienna)
Financing: Eurasia-Pacific Uninet

The focus of this innovative and interdisciplinary project is the ritual use of bronze gongs in the mountain villages of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (GZAR) inhabited by several ethnic groups. In GZAR more than 1000 ancient Dongson bronze gongs were excavated, and even more ancient drums are used in rituals by many ethnies (Zhuang, Yao, Sui, Miao, Yi etc.) till today. Despite many cultural changes this ritual use of bronze gongs reveals a persistent cultural continuity and builds a bridge connecting the present generation with its ancestors. Nowhere else can be found such a big number of ancient gongs and nowhere are so many gongs still in use. This remarkable fact appears to have escaped the notice of social anthropologists, since up to now there was no research done on this topic. In the past, the bronze gongs of the Non-Han tribes of S-China still resisting Han authority were a central symbol of political power. Consequently, the Chinese conquerors tried to capture them and to convert them into symbols of Han domination. Till this day the bronze gongs fulfil various social and religious functions. New trends: Bronze gong festivals ordered and arranged by the local governments. The ritual use of bronze gongs seems to play more and more a decisive role in emphasizing the ethnic identity amongst an amazingly multi-ethnic society. On account of their historical and cultural importance, the bronze gong motif is deliberately used as "logo" for GZAR.

In 2002 Lukas visited GZAR and documented a Zhuang ritual (in which the frog-goddess is at the center). He published an article on this topic in the same year. In a 2nd field stay in 2008 Lukas visited Guangxi and Yunnan and collected additional data on the ritual use of bronze gongs. Based on these investigations Lukas together with his partners in China developed a concept for an anthropological research project. In 2015 a research project on Franz Heger was initiated. Project title: „Franz Heger (1853-1931) – Eine Rückbesinnung. Weltstadt Wien im internationalen Wissenschaftskontext" („Franz Heger (1853-1931) – A reconsideration/reexamination. The cosmopolitan city of Vienna within the context of the international scientific community"

PhD-project: Barbara Götsch
Supervisor: Andre Gingrich
Duration: 1.11.2010 – 29.02.2016
Financing: Dissertationsprogramm der phil. hist. Kl. der ÖAW

This interdisciplinary project explores questions of basic human sociality. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork with an NGO-team in Rabat, Morocco. The focus of attention is on the practice of cooperation on the team, looking at communication, conflict and cognition (“theory of mind”) against the background of the current cultural and political environment.

A reconsideration/reexamination. The cosmopolitan city of Vienna within the context of the international scientific community

Project leader: Helmut Lukas
Contract researcher: Mag.a.Mag.a Sonja Peschek, Bakk.phil (sinologist, anthropologist)
Duration: 15.06.2015 – 15.12.2015
Financing: Stadt Wien (municipality of Vienna), MA7 / Austrian Academy of Sciences

This project deals with Heger's research activities and their impact on the international scientific community. The focus is on Heger's pioneering achievement in the research of bronze gongs of Southeast Asia (incl. Southwest China) at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1902 Heger conceptualized the best-known and up to now widely accepted classification of bronze drums (since the 1920s known as Dongson drums). The worldwide acceptance of Heger's classification scheme can be seen from the fact that in 2004 his book "Alte Metalltrommeln aus Südost-Asien" (1902, 2 volumes) was translated into Chinese. The archaeologist and anthropologist Franz Heger was curator of the anthropological-ethnographic collection of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna and the first director of the Museum of Ethnology Vienna (today World Museum Vienna).

Shiftings in Space Perceptions, Mobility Strategies, and Conceptions of Kinship

Project leader: Ines Kohl
Collaborator: Akidima Effad
Duration: 01.09.2011–31.08.2015
Financing: FWF (Projekt P23573-G17)
Website: www.ines-kohl.com/research-projects/sahara-connected/

The Sahara Connected project deals with the Tuareg´s modern mobility in the Central Sahara and its deeply interweavements with transnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalization. The objectives of the project are investigations about changing space perceptions, strategies and tactics of mobility and conceptions of kinship and new developed social and spatial networks among the contemporary Tuareg society. A large part of the Tuareg is pushed into making transnational border crossings in order to gain new life strategies. In the last decade the Tuareg have developed a space of agency between Libya, Algeria, Niger and Mali. Thereby the boundaries between legal and illegal become merged, and the differences between trade, smuggling and migration become blurred. The Tuareg organize transportation, they provide the transport facilities, and deliver passengers and goods through the Sahara. This illegal transnational border business is called afrod. Those Tuareg who are the agents in this business are transnational cosmopolitans, who embody new elites of their society: They give directions to new ideas and developments and shape the modern Tuareg society. These transnational cosmopolitans are in the spotlight of the Sahara Connected project. On their example crucial shiftings in the modern Tuareg society will be identified:
We will deal with characteristics of the trans-Saharan tracks and shall grant a comprehensive study and analyses of the Tuareg´s unique form of transnational movements (afrod). The fact, that a large part of the Tuareg society is getting increasingly attached to displacement, deterritorialization and consequently also to hybridization, allows us to examine the implications of the transnational movements in terms of changing space perceptions, and the interpretation and appraisal of the imagined community (temust). Finally we shall illuminate critically traditional conceptions of kinship, articulate how the transnational movements affect change in groups, and investigate in new social and spatial networks, beyond sticking on social origin and group membership.
Methodologically the Sahara Connected project is founded on a pluralism: Multi-sited ethnography, participant observation and travelling along with mobile subjects (following the people and following the plots), together with a collection of life stories, comparative analyses, and visual anthropology.

Constructions of social groups and interethnic relationships in a Himalayan State of India.

Project leader: Guntram Hazod
Collaborator(s): Mélanie Vandenhelsken
Duration: 01.02.2010 - 31.01.2015
Cooperation: Centre for Human Sciences, New-Delhi; Namgyal Institute of Tibetology, Gangtok, Sikkim, India
Financing: FWF (project P21886-G17)

The Indian State of Sikkim presents a significant ethnic diversity: people organised in Indo-Nepalese castes cohabit with so-called “tribes” (the autochthonous Lepcha and Limbu as well as Rai, Gurung, etc. and a group of Tibetan culture and language, the Bhotia). As everywhere in India, these populations are organised in administrative categories (Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, etc.) meant to be “compensatory discrimination.” This system has the paradox of seeking to resolve economic problems by characterizing these groups according to cultural criteria. It consequently maintains a representation of social divisions and inequalities in terms of ethnic belongingness and differentiation (i.e. ethnicity) as well as ancient ethnic tensions. It moreover triggers a “process of tribalisation” in which ethnic groups tend to identify themselves to “tribes” – as it is understood in India – in order to be included in the advantageous administrative categories. This situation raises questions regarding the relations between the State and the ethnic groups in Sikkim. This research programme intends to answer the following questions: do the ethnic solidarities in Sikkim oppose or accompany the building of a centralized State, what are the modalities of the building of ethnic solidarities and what role does the State play in this process? We propose to examine these questions by a crossed analysis of state policies towards the ethnic groups (past and present) and of the construction of collective identities in Sikkim based on a study of various dimensions of belongingness (households, clans, castes, etc.) – including local history of these social units –, of categories of otherness, inter-ethnic relations (mainly over labour and rituals) in several rural areas of Sikkim, and movements of identity affirmation. The hypothesis and expected result is that everyday relations between ethnic groups draw boundaries between them, which cut across categories implemented by the administration (mainly “tribe” and “caste”) while these categories are prevalent in the administrative and political organisation and in ethnic movements of identity affirmation. Such study comparing “State built ethnicity” with local histories and organisations, and combing “instrumentalist” and “constructionist” theoretical approaches will lead to a new understanding of ethnicity and inter-ethnic relations in Sikkim.

The residential concentration of the Turkish and Chinese communities and their image in the media in selected Viennese districts (2005-2012)

Project leader: Valeria Heuberger
Duration: 01.10.2013-31.12.2014
Financing: MA 7, Kultur-, Wissenschafts- und Forschungsförderung der Stadt Wien für 2013

The projects deals with the Turkish and Chinese communities in Vienna and their images in selected print media – also such published by the referring community - between 2005 and 2012: One assumption is that the Chinese are more positively portrayed than the Turks. Another topic concerns the issue of residential concentration of both migrant communities in selected Viennese districts like the 5th, 10th, 15th, 16th and 20th. Among the methods used are for example participant observation, “mapping” and “go-alongs”.

Project leader: Eva-Maria Knoll
Duration: 01.03.2010-31.12.2014
Financing: core-funding

Different kinds of medicine- and health-related mobility are currently booming in Asia. When it comes to biomedical health care there are areas still disadvantaged. Patients in these regions might lack proper medical treatment due to geographical remoteness or due to a lack of local expertise. Thus patients and health-care providers alike are forced to become mobile. Asia furthermore is a booming destination of medical tourism since a growing number of patients from the Global North are seeking high-tech medical health care in this part of the world.

This research project focuses on diverse forms of conflict loading interactions between medicine and travel in Asia. The investigation of causes, patterns, and consequences of medical mobility and of its flows and counter-flows is based on anthropological fieldwork in connection with archival and literature studies.

World Views and their Relevance in every-day life

Project leader: Gebhard Fartacek
Duration: 01.01.2007 - 15.10.2014

On the basis of my previous research concerning the cognitive construction of holy places in peripheral areas of present-day Syria and local beliefs in jinn (demons, spirits) there is an evidence that “folk-religious” beliefs play an important role for conflict resolution and coping with life. In this project the interrelation of different kinds of conflict and different strategies in conflict-resolution will be analyzed systematically. The collection and interpretation of data will follow the approach of case-reconstructive research. Ethnographic field research will take place in Northern Arabia as well as along the Arabian/Persian Gulf.

Project leader: Gebhard Fartacek
Duration: 11.08.2009 – 15.10.2014
Short-titel: Zar Kult

This research project focuses on the performance of zar-rituals along the Arabian/Persian Gulf, which is mainly practiced by the minority of "Black Arabs". Based on a pilot study – which took place in Khuzestan in fall 2008 – it can be summed up that the (so called) "zar-cult" seem to play a highly significant role for the construction of collective identities and ethnic demarcations. Moreover, for the spiritual leaders (mama zar; baba zar) and other protagonists it provides a religious and social network which range all over the different countries of this region.

The main issue of this project is the development of anthropological research questions and working-hypotheses concerning the (epistemological) relevance of the "zar-cult" for the construction of ethnic boundaries and processes of socio-cultural transformations at the Arabian/Persian Gulf. The ethnographic field research will take place in Kuwait, Iran, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, as well as in Oman. The collection and interpretation of data will follow the approach of case-reconstructive research.

Project leader: Guntram Hazod
Cooperation: Tibetische Akademie für Sozialwissenschaften, Lhasa
Project duration: 01.10.2011-31.09.2014
Financing: Erstmittel

The historical-anthropological project draws on the author's earlier works on the historical geography and topology of the Tibetan Empire (7th-9th Century CE). Methodologically based on text and ethnographic fieldwork, the study aims to clarify open questions of the territorial order of the early Tibetan state. It mainly concerns questions of the identification of historical toponyms, and the historical and clan-historical contexts of key political sites and districts of the empire. Particular attention will be paid to the description of so far not documented evidences of the early history of Central Tibet, - ruin sites, grave fields, stone monuments, rock carvings, of which a number have already been recorded by the author during earlier campaigns. A precise cartographic, graphic and photographic documentation accompanies this study, which will be conducted in collaboration with the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa (TASS). The planned book publication will be a compilation of revised previous studies of the author as wells as of several newly prepared contributions.

Project leader (and collaborator): Christian Jahoda
Collaborator(s): Hubert Feiglstorfer, Christiane Kalantari
Cooperation: Tsering Gyalpo, Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa, Patrick Sutherland, University of the Arts, London
Duration: 1.10.2009 – 30.09.2014
Financing: FWF (Project P21806-G19)

The main goal of the project is to study the various structural and historical interrelationships between society, power and religion in pre-modern Western Tibet (primarily Purang and Guge during the period between the 10th and 17th centuries). This is done with particular regard to processes of interaction, conflict and integration and by adopting a collaborative transdisciplinary approach characterised by combining research in the fields of Tibetology, social anthropology and art history. A strong focus will be on the prevailing forms of social, political and religious organisation and the development of and changes in the religio-political order and corresponding concepts, thereby paying attention also to internal and external conflicts. This includes a profound study of the royal lineage(s) from whose ranks the powerholders and eminent religio-political leaders (such as the royal lama Yeshe Ö) came as well as of clans, aristocratic and religious lineages of local or Central Tibetan origin. Based on hitherto unknown textual evidence and a variety of new findings from the Khartse area and other sites where the Great Translator Rinchen Zang po, one of the most influential religious figures of Western Tibet, was active, it is intended to attain a better understanding of the latter’s activities and functions, also including retrospective views of later periods. Detailed analysis will also concern the cult of local and protective deities which played an important role not only within folk religion and monastic Buddhism but was also of great importance for members of the royal lineages and accordingly represents a fundamental element linking and integrating the social, political and religious spheres.

Project leader: Stephan Kloos
Duration: 01.08.2013-31.07.2016
Financing: FWF Einzelprojekt P 25997-G15
Website: www.stephankloos.org

This project used ethnographic research methods to produce the first comprehensive study of the pharmaceutical production of Tibetan medicine in exile. Besides generating hitherto non-existent qualitative and quantitative data on the topic (what quantities are produced where, and under what conditions, etc.), it particularly focused on contemporary exile-Tibetan notions of pharmaceutical efficacy, safety and quality. How are these concepts defined or redefined in pharmaceutical practice and on the traditional pharma market, and how are these redefinitions connected to larger transformations of exile-Tibetan culture and society?
This study builds on the results of Stephan Kloos’ previous work, which shows how Tibetan medicine has become a central domain where modern Tibetan culture, identity and nation are configured. At the same time, Tibetan medicine itself is increasingly defined and evaluated through its pharmaceutical products, mostly in the form of pills. By examining the production of Tibetan pills and the construction of their efficacy in a wider context, this research reveals the ways in which the capitalist market, global health policies, and transnational regimes of pharmaceutical regulation or intellectual property rights congeal in local health care scenarios, ethnic identity, imaginaries of the nation, and our very notions of what we consider efficacious or not.

 

Project leader: Eva-Maria Knoll
Duration: 01.03.2010 -
Financing: mixed
Short-titel: Tourism Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is a connecting element providing a cultural space characterized by past and present mobility. Whether maritime trade, ethnic migration, expedition and conquest journeys, colonialism, military strategies, or the spread of religious movements – the Indian Ocean was and is the hub and the medium between heterogeneous regions and world views. Today the Indian Ocean ranks among the most prominent tourist regions in the world. The manifold aspects of mobility in this seascape provide potentials and advantages for trade and intercultural exchange. Simultaneously, many dimensions of mobility also are conflict-laden.
This project aims at exploring the potentials and frictions of the global touristic flows in interaction with their local socio-cultural and economic contexts. This investigation therefore is focused on selected parts of the Indian Ocean’s island world. It finds itself in a particularly precarious situation today, due to the forces of globalization. The project will throw some light on the relationship between hosts and guests as well as on the tourism industry as the organizing and structuring element in between. The aim of this project is to investigate a number of tensions of the local worlds shaped by tourism in the Indian Ocean: between the usage and appropriation of space; between mobility and place making; among touristic centers and local peripheries; or among the center stage and backstage arenas. The methods of this investigation are social anthropological fieldwork, complemented by literature and archival research.
Thereby bodily aspects like gender or health will equally be of particular interest as well as technical features. The ecological conditions of coral islands have resulted in a particular, highly technology-driven form of tourism in the Indian Ocean: on the Maldives, for example, almost every hotel is an island and each of this tourist islands is a technical marvel. By its own generation of electricity, by sweet water- and liquid waste processing units on such a limited space, the tourist island seems to be almost self-sufficient. In reality, however, these tourist islands are highly dependent on the global flows of goods, especially of food and fuel, and on the flows of staff and tourists.

Project leader: Dr. Marieke Brandt
Duration: 01.10.2011-31.09.2013
Financing: EU Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (IEF)

The tribal confederation of Khawlan b. ‘Amir (or Khawlan b. Quda’ah) in south-western Arabia consists of eight sub-tribes. The main settlement areas of five sub-tribes are located on Yemeni and three on Saudi Arabian territory. In past centuries the tribes of Khawlan b. ‘Amir were involved to different degrees in south-western Arabia’s political power structures, which were substantially affected by the Zaydi-Shiite imamate and, since 1962, by the establishment of the Sunni-dominated Republic of Yemen.

Since 2004, the Yemeni Khawlan b. ‘Amir tribes were gradually drawn into the so-called ‘Huthi’ conflict between revanchist Zaydi rebels and the central government of Yemen. The Huthi conflict can be seen as a newly contextualized continuation of a political process which began in the 9th century AD with the establishment of the Zaydi imamate in northern Yemen and led with the revolution in 1962 and the ensuing civil war to the founding of the Republic of Yemen.

The aim of this work is to explore the emergence of new tribal loyalties and alliances within the Khawlan b. ‘Amir tribes that arose from their involvement in the Huthi conflict. Most Khawlan b. ‘Amir tribes had strongly supported royalist forces in the revolution of 1962 and the ensuing civil war due to historically evolved loyalties. By contrast, the Huthi conflict made obvious that the state policy of co-optation in the past few decades already led to a solid integration of most tribal leaders into the political system of the Republic. Therefore, in the Huthi conflict the majority of high-ranking Khawlan b. ‘Amir leaders positioned themselves on the side of the Republic, but many of them once again changed allegiances towards the Huthi side when the rebels gained power in Sa‘dah governorate in spring 2011. Since some of the tribal leaders did not represent the position of their own tribes, but were rather in confrontation with them, new alliances and divisions within the tribal society of Khawlan b. ‘Amir emerged.

The project addresses the complex reasons for the profound changes of tribal alignments, allegiances and alliances in the investigation area during the Huthi conflict and beyond. The source material for this investigation of Khawlan b. ‘Amir tribal politics is based on the author’s experience inside Yemen, as well as on thoroughly scrutinizing original Arabic and some Western written sources.

Interdisciplinary perspectives on their significance in past and present.  

Projektleitung: Eva-Maria Knoll
Projektlaufzeit: 01.09.2009 – 07.2013
Finanzierung: Mischfinanzierung
Kurztitel: Camels in Asia

The histories of camels and humans were, and continue to be, intrinsically linked in the arid areas of Asia and North-Africa. Humans would not have been able to survive there without this unique and remarkable creature. In addition, the distinctive interaction between humans and camels has been of continuous concern to the Austrian Academy of Sciences, ever since its foundation more than 160 years ago. This conference and publication project continues with this research tradition and aims at putting the camel and respective human/animal interactions at center stage of academic interest.

The international camel conference in October 2010 was organized as an interdisciplinary endeavor and resulted in a fruitful knowledge exchange between the two major academic branches, i.e. the natural sciences and the humanities. The comprehensive discussion on Old World camels (Dromedary and Bactrian) includes the topics of camel’s origin and domestication, breeding, caring, trading, and their significance in socio-economics, in veterinary and folk medicine, in petroglyphs, poetry and music, as well as the conservation of the last Wild Camel populations.

The conference “Camels in Asia and North-Africa” took place with about 100 participants in Vienna (October 5 to 7, 2010).

Due to its successful results the conference proceedings will be published with the AAS.

Camel songs¹

Three of the four camel songs below belong to the bogino duu genre. They are performed by men and women and can also be accompanied by musical instruments. Sung only in unofficial situations, they are easier and more variable than the urtyn duu songs. Bogino duu are highly melodic, syllabic and strophic songs, which are performed in a plain style. They have a very precise rhythm and are based on a pentatonic scale.
The songs mainly express social satire and critique, but their wide-ranging subjects also include everyday life, nomadic activities, advice, lullabies, love and animals, especially horses and camels. These songs can also be improvised according to the particular situation in order to cope with difficult relationships or everyday incidents.
Another noteworthy feature is the alliteration at the beginning of the individual stanzas that is very typical of Mongolian songs.
In contrast to the other examples of songs, Inge xȫslöx učir (song to soothe a mother camel) is an official ritual song of Mongolian animal breeders that is sung to make mother camels accept either their own newborns after a difficult birth or other camel calves that lost their mothers.

Mandarinenten (vgl. Song to Soothe a Mother Camel) Karawane beim Umzug, 2007 Kamelmelken, Altaigebirge 2007 Kamel und Otgoo, 2006

o The Decorated Yurt [MP3]    o Lover of the Caravanner [MP3]
o The Prancing Camel [MP3]    o Song to Soothe a Mother Camel [MP3]
o Lyrics [PDF]

Knoll, Eva-Maria & Burger, Pamela (eds.): Camels in Asia and North Africa. Interdisciplinary perspectives on their Past and Present Significance. Austrian Academy of Sciences Publishers, forthcoming 2012

¹ Chuluunbaatar, Otgonbayar, 2007: Zastiin Nogoodoi – Tribal Zakhchin Music of Western Mongolia. Vocals Otgonbayar Chuluunbaatar, Instruments Wolfgang Hofer, Audio CD, 33 songs, zakhchinmusic@yahoo.de

Project leader: Johann Heiss
Project coordinator: Johannes Feichtinger (Institute for Culture Studies and History of Theatre, AAS)
Collaborator(s): Marion Gollner, Simon Hadler (Institute for Culture Studies and History of Theatre, AAS) (former collaborators: Silvia Dallinger, Johanna Witzeling)
Duration: 01.01.2009 -
Website: Türkengedächtnis

The project provides a new approach to a specific group of monuments that to a singular degree have been the subject of political propaganda and a source of conflict: memorials and monuments commemorating the ‘Turks’, i.e. the Ottoman Empire, as a major adversary of the Habsburg Empire. The chief areas of investigation are the regions affected by Turkish invasions throughout Central Europe in general and the territory, which is now Austria, in particular. The period of time under investigation covers the age of the ‘cult of monuments’, i.e. the 19th and 20th centuries. The project examines the historical exploitation of images of ‘the enemy’ and reveals the conditions and processes, which made the emergence of such images possible.

Project leader: Dr. Stephan Kloos
Duration: 01.06.2011-31.05.2013
Financing: EU Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship
Website: www.stephankloos.org

Tibetan medicine is becoming an increasingly popular complementary medicine around the world. Yet, little is known about the causes and conditions of its global spread or its recent history. This project aimed to produce the first in-depth critical history of Tibetan medicine in exile from 1960 until the present, focusing particularly on the dynamics of its globalization, commoditization and pharmaceuticalization. The results of this study provide a solid and so far non-existent basis for any academic, political or technological engagement with Tibetan medicine and related “traditional” Asian medicines like Ayurveda or TCM.

Despite almost 1400 years of recorded history, Tibetan medicine has arguably never changed and expanded as dramatically and within as short a period of time as during the last 50 years in exile. Paradoxically, however, it is exactly this, the most accessible part of its history both in temporal and political terms that we have the least scholarly information about. Tibetan medicine’s recent history in exile is not only singular in terms of its contemporary pertinence, but it also remains untold. This research project fills this gap.

The study produced a detailed historical account of how Tibetan medicine was re-established in exile and developed, since then, into a globally known alternative health resource and booming industry. This historical account is marked not only by unprecedented detail and hitherto unavailable data, but also by analytical rigor and a commitment to reveal the big picture. By focusing on the dynamics of globalization, commodification and pharmaceuticalization, it locates Tibetan medicine within the context of global health policies, biopolitics and late capitalism.

Among National Elites and Local Muslims

Project leader: Martin Slama
Duration: 01.01.2010 -
Financing: AAS Grant

The project explores the Hadhrami diaspora in contemporary Indonesia from two perspectives: First, it looks at elite Hadhramis who have risen to highest status in Indonesian society on the national and regional level and who are key figures in the diaspora communities. The focus lies on the high standing of Hadhramis, their constructions of authority, and their translocal elite networking. Investigation sites are Java – particularly Jakarta, where some Hadhramis have become part of the national elite – and Indonesian peripheral regions – like Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and the Moluccas, where Hadhramis have gained influence through their Islamic organisations, established aristocratic status, or recent political leadership. Secondly, the project studies Hadhrami’s involvement in the violent conflicts that broke out in parts of eastern Indonesia along religious lines after the fall of Suharto in 1998, highlighting their roles in conflict resolution. With its focus on elite Hadhramis and Hadhramis’ roles in conflicts the project advances into a research field that promises new insights concerning the reproduction of the diaspora, the divisions inside the diaspora and Hadhramis’ influence on the development of Islam in Indonesia.

The study of elite Hadhramis raises questions regarding correlations between Arab ethnicity, Islamic authority and their institutionalisation in Islamic organisations – both in the centre and eastern peripheries of Indonesia. It does especially do so in the context of conflicts and efforts of mediation and reconciliation, asking how these conflicts affected the status of prominent Hadhramis within the diaspora and in wider society. These investigations into the elite status of Hadhramis will be supported by the study of kinship, reflecting Hadhramis’ emphasis on endogamy and genealogies. This emphasis is strongest among those Hadhramis who consider themselves as descendants of the prophet Mohammed and thus claim a certain elite status because of their genealogy – a claim which is contested by other Hadhramis.

Project leader (and collaborator): Christian Jahoda
Collaborator(s): Veronika Hein
Cooperation: Tsering Gyalpo, Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa; Patrick Sutherland, University of the Arts, London
Duration: 13.04.2008 - 12.04.2013
Financing: FWF (Project P20637-G15)  

Oral and festival traditions represent a salient feature of the society of Western Tibet which permeates various cultural spheres and activities. In this project, diverse forms of oral traditions are studied together with their performative ‘contexts’, which in fact represent an essential constitutive element of these traditions. The main focus of the investigations is on the oral and related festival traditions belonging to (or integrated into) the sphere of folk culture and religion of the local village communities. Reciprocal influences and transitional processes characterising the historical and structural relationships between the oral and festival traditions of the local village communities and those associated with the royal, aristocratic and religious elite are considered. Therefore, political and socio-economic factors and processes of cultural memory and renewal constitute central aspects of the conceptual framework of this project. The detailed comparative analysis will focus particularly on wedding songs and rituals, village festivals (mainly seasonal festivals which are often related to the cult of protective deities) and festive assemblies, folksongs (and accompanying performative elements), certain types of religious practitioners and specialists (for example trance-mediums) and in association with them certain forms of folk oratory, as well as narrative forms of oral traditions. The research methodology followed combines anthropological fieldwork (in particular audio-visual recording) with in-depth analyses of (both oral and written) texts and performance events in their respective socio-economic and po­litical setting.

Project leader (and collaborator): Maria-Katharina Lang
Collaborator(s): Stefan Bauer
Duration: 01.01.2010 - 31.12.2012
Financing: BMWF Funding programm: forMuse - research at museums
Website: www.formuse.at, project website at the KHM

The most extensive collection of Mongolian ethnographica goes back to the Austrian explorer Hans Leder (1848-1921). The collection is unique as it represents a snapshot of religious everyday culture in northern Mongolia at the turn of the 19th century. This part of Mongolian culture was increasingly repressed and mostly destroyed in the late 1930s. Objects were destroyed or had lost their purpose due to the fact that the complex ritual life of which the items were an integral part had been prohibited in a radical manner. In the course of this project, the various parts of the collection will be recorded, analyzed in detail, catalogued by object groups and combined in one comprehensive viewing. The consolidation of the individual parts of the collection and researching the archived material available, provide an insight into the entire collection, the process of collecting, as well as on the personality of the collector. Field studies in the course of the project intend to contrast the locations and monasteries described by the collector and to conduct interviews regarding the history of sacred objects and locations.

On the Mediation and Actualisation of Historical Images of the “Ottoman Threat” in Austria

Project leader: Silvia Dallinger, Judith Pfeifer, Johanna Witzeling
Duration: 01.10.2009 – 31.09.2012
Financing: ÖAW-DOC-team Stipendium

The interdisciplinary research project "'The Turks at (and within) the Gates of Vienna'. On the Mediation and Actualisation of Historical Images of the 'Ottoman Threat' in Austria." examines the diversity of a deeply anchored and internalised image of the “Ottoman threat” within the collective memory in Austria since the 16th and 17th Century.

The investigative priorities of this research project include the following questions:

1. How has the collective memory of the Turkish Sieges of Vienna, and thus the collective identity, been created, conventionalised and instrumentalised?
2. How deep is the concept of the “Turkish threat” anchored in the collective memory of Austrians, how is it interpreted today and in what ways can this concept be expected to develop in the future?
3. When and why are these reassessments of history generated and how can they be or are they accomplished?

When and why are these reassessments of history generated and how can they be or are they accomplished?

• The meanings, interpretations and manners of dealing with monuments in public spaces as ‘lieux de mémoire’ (Places of Memory), demonstrated through the example of the sandstone sculpture on the social housing project “Türkenritthof” (Courtyard of the Turk’s Ride) in Vienna’s 17th district (Silvia Dallinger, sociologist)
• Media representations (especially print media) and the underlying significance of the anniversaries in 1933, 1983 and 2008 (Judith Pfeifer, political scientist)
• The conveyance of (national) versions of history and the manner they are perceived and reflected upon in the training and teaching of history by teachers in Vienna’s schools (Johanna Witzeling, social anthropologist)
• The aims of our research project are to reveal myths of national historiography around 1683 through their careful deconstruction and new contextualisation,  to expose their latent functions as well as their often hidden forms of reproduction and to contribute to the scientific discussion of collective memory

PhD-project: Irene Kucera
Supervisor: Andre Gingrich
Duration: 01.03.2009-28.02.2012
Financing: Dissertationsprogramm der phil.-hist. Kl. der ÖAW

“Cultural specific challenges to peacekeeping missions: Anthropological insights of Northern Afghanistan”, is a social scientific research project that will focus on the conflict and post-conflict situation of culture and gender in Northern Afghanistan. Modern wars have a huge impact on society, culture and gender specific issues and often ethnicity or/and gender is used as an instrument of war that has as a consequence radical effects on societal mechanisms and processes. The primary target for sexual violence in war is not the individual victim itself, but the social identity or the ethnic group he or she represents. The project is intended not only to focus on dynamics that shape a society during war, but focuses on the transformation process and the happenings that have influence on this process.

Projektleitung: Andre Gingrich
ProjektmitarbeiterInnen: Eva-Maria Knoll, Fernand Kreff
Projektdauer: 01.01.2005 - 31.12.2011
Finanzierung: FWF (ProjeKt P L64-G04)
Website: >Kurzbeschreibung auf der FWF-Webseite<
Publikation: Lexikon der Globalisierung

Das Projekt "Handbuch Globalisierung" wird aus dem 2004 eingerichteten Brücken-Schlag Programm des FWF finanziert (1.1.2005 - 31.12.2007), das Ergebnisse der Grundlagenforschung in den Anwendungsbereich überführen soll.

Dieses Projekt bündelt sozialanthropologische Erkenntnisse zum Thema Globalisierung auf einer Face to Face Ebene, d.h. es konzentriert sich auf die unmittelbar alltägliche menschliche Interaktionsebene einer globalisierten Welt. Diese Erkenntnisse sozialanthropologischer Grundlagenforschung werden in Form eines Handbuches für anwendungsorientierte Praxisbereiche (von Bildungs- und Entwicklungsinstitutionen, über Medien und Wirtschaft bis hin zu NGOs, StudentInnen usw. usf.) nutzbar und zugänglich gemacht. Sozialanthropologische Beiträge zur Globalisierungsforschung stehen dabei im Zentrum, werden aber an ausgewählten Schnittstellen durch jene anderer Sozialwissenschaften (v.a. Ökonomie, Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie) ergänzt.

Das sozialanthropologische Nachschlagewerk „Handbuch Globalisierung“ umfasst an die 150 Einträge, in denen zentrale Begrifflichkeiten und Konzepte zur Thematik erläutert und diskutiert sowie anhand praktischer Beispiele verdeutlicht werden. Erstellt werden die Beiträge von rund 130 Autorinnen und Autoren, darunter namhafte internationale Vertreterinnen und Vertreter des Fachs.

Das etwa 1000 Druckseiten umfassende Manuskript wird seither vom Verlag geprüft.

Kritische Reflexionen, theoretische Ansätze und Überlegungen zu neuen methodologischen Herangehensweisen

Project Leader: Maria Six-Hohenbalken
Cooperations: Universität Oslo (Nerina Weiss)
Duration: 01.03.2008-31.12.2011
Financing: core-funding, AAS Politzer-Stiftung

In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten sind theoretische Ansätze zu einer “anthropology of violence” entwickelt und vermehrt empirische Forschungen unternommen worden, die Überschneidungen zu Globalisierungstudien, v.a. der Flüchtlingsforschung wie auch klassischen Ansätzen der politischen Anthropologie aufweisen.
Besonderer Fokus in diesem Forschungsprojekt wird auf ‚narrations of violence’ und ‚violent expressions’ gelegt. Wie wird in einer Gesellschaft mit Gewalterfahrungen umgegangen? Wie werden Gewalt und Erinnerungen an Gewalt in einer Gesellschaft ‚verarbeitet’? Gibt es Formen von Ritualisierung und welche Arten von (Re)Narration von Gewalterfahrung können festgestellt werden? Im Zuge dieses Projekts wurden zwei workshops organisiert, einer während der EASA-Konferenz in Ljubljana (08/ 2008) und ein Workshop „Violence Expressed“ in Wien (09/ 2008) und es wurde ein Sammelband publiziert ‚Violence Expressed‘ gemeinsam mit Nerina Weiss/ Universität Oslo.

A Contribution to the Historical Geography and Social Anthropology of Early and Medieval Tibet

Project leader: Guntram Hazod
Duration: 01.08.2006 - 31.07.2011
Financing: FWF
Short title: The Great Lineages of Central Tibet [Die Klans von Zentraltibet]

In the earliest sources we encounter the central Tibetan area on both sides of the Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) river as the settlement area of (predominantly) patrilinear clans whose identity is not least defined by the ancestral link to a particular territory. The line from which the Tibetan kings emerged (Yarlung Dynasty, 7–9th C.) was originally just a segment in this world of tribal interconnections, which had not ceased to exist after the decline of the dynasty. Attention should be paid to the identification of the numerous aristocratic lines, whose traces largely display a high degree of historical continuity: From the time of the pre-imperial principalities (before 7th C.) until late in the post-dynastic period and beyond, we find the bearers of these great clan names in key positions of the political and religious history of the country.

Methodologically, text (i.e. elaboration of primary sources) and field research form the base of this historical and socio-anthropological research project, the primary aim of which is to identify and localise the clan histories of Central Tibet. This includes the attempt to record the geographical positions of the settlements and the historic movements of the individual lines with their specific local-historic connections in the phases of early and medieval Tibet. This work is to lead to cartographically documentable results, which ideally will be specified by the data from the fieldwork.

PhD-project: Eva-Maria Knoll
Supervisor: Ulrike Felt
Duration: 01.01.2004 - 04.07.2011
Financing: mixed-funded   
This doctoral theses project belongs to the first anthropological enquiries into the transnational dimensions of assisted conception. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ulrike Felt (Department of Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna) was the first advisor of this doctoral project.

In the last three decades assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have turned from an obscure curiosity into a prosperous part of the global health care market. A global technology embedded in local moral worlds and framed by national laws and regulations has resulted in a plurality of ‘options beyond borders’. This work describes the unfolding and multiplying of a respective techno-social and moral ART landscape labelled as reproscape. The reproscape is both a condition for and an effect of the merging of a medical with a tourist gaze – a ‘medico-tourist gaze’ in reproductive tourism.

The insights are based on ethnographic data from five selected European locations, from the virtual site internet and from the perspectives of diverse actors involved. The reproscape is explored along three research dimensions: A descriptive dimension focuses on the elements and conditions of the reproscape; a more agency-focused dimension deals with the question of how people are making use of this ART-centred landscape; a third dimension focuses on assessing and characterising the manifold movements in the reproscape.

Grounded in physical space, the reproscape is characterized by several forms of transgressions: The spatial transgression of nations’ borders, the biotechnological transgression of bodily determined reproductive limits, and the transgression of legal and moral limits. Reproductive tourism thus is a three-dimensional locomotion comprising spatial, technical, and moral movement. Navigating the reproscape provides the freedom do to what is not done at home, namely seeking ART services that are regarded as cheaper or better, or that are not allowed at home.

By tracing reproductive tourism in different local and circumstantial settings this work contributes to our basic understanding of a multiple socio-technical landscape that is always both the condition for and the result of reproductive tourism.

Navigating Socio-technical and Moral Landscapes: Reproductive tourism in Europe, Dissertation Universität Wien 2011

Konzepte, Strategien und Grenzen am Beispiel Asiens (Ringvorlesung)
Projektleitung: Helmut Lukas, Maria Six-Hohenbalken
Kooperation: KSA-Institut der Universität Wien
Projektlaufzeit: 01.02.2010-31.01.2011
Finanzierung: Erstmittel

Das ISA-Team der ÖAW präsentiert in dieser Ringvorlesung am Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie (Universität Wien) Ergebnisse seines mittelfristigen Forschungsprogramms „Konsens und Konflikt in Asien und im östlichen Mittelmeerraum". Basierend auf allgemeinen theoretischen Einführungen zur Konsensbildung zeigten die Teilnehmer/innen unterschiedliche theoretische Konzeptionen und methodische Herangehensweisen im jeweiligen Forschungsgebiet auf. Als Folgeprojekt ist eine gemeinsame Publikation der ISA-Mitarbeiter/innen geplant. Vortragende: H. Lukas, M. Six-Hohenbalken, J. Heiss, A. Gingrich, S. Dallinger, J. Pfeifer, J. Witzeling, E.- M. Knoll, G. Fartacek, M. Slama, G. Hazod.

Zur Bedeutung von Religion in Diasporen und Migrationsgemeinschaften

Projektleitung: Maria Six-Hohenbalken
Projektlaufzeit: 01.09.2007 - 31.12.2010

Globalisierungsstudien haben zu lange religiöse Themen vernachlässigt. Erst nach 9/11 wurden Debatten über Religion in migratorischen Kontexten geführt, allerdings oft in einer dichotomen, vorurteilshaften Weise. In diesen kontroversiellen Debatten über den gegenwärtigen Islam können nicht-westliche religiöse Gemeinschaften oft nur in einer verteidigenden, rechtfertigenden und marginalisierten Position partizipieren. Forschungen widmen sich meist Themen wie Fundamentalismus, Verletzung von Frauenrechten oder transnationalen politischen Netzwerken. Ziel des Projekts ist es religiöse Kommunitäten in unterschiedlichen nationalen „settings“ zu untersuchen und mit dieser komparativen Studie zur Theoriendiskussion über Religion in migratorischen Kontexten beizutragen. Dabei wird Augenmerk auf ethno-nationale religiöse Kommunitäten wie auch auf ‚alte‘ und ‚neue‘ Formen diasporischer und transnationaler religiöser Beziehungen gelegt sowie auf friedliche Koexistenz und religiöse Alltagspraxis.

Eine sozialanthropologische Untersuchung christlich-muslimischer Beziehungen in der indonesischen Peripherie

Dissertationsprojekt: Christian Warta
Betreuer: Andre Gingrich
Projektlaufzeit: 1.01.2008 - 31.12.2010
Finanzierung: Dissertationsprogramm der phil.-hist. Kl. der OeAW

In diesem Projekt werden die Beziehungen zwischen indonesischen Christen und Muslime analysiert. Das Hauptaugenmerk in den empirischen Feldforschungen liegt auf der Erhebung, Analyse und Interpretation gegenwärtiger religiös motivierter soziokultureller Prozesse im multiethnischen Papua.

„Fremde Völker“ in historischen Tonaufnahmen am Beispiel der deutsch-österreichischen Kriegsgefangenenprojekte, 1915-1918

Projektleitung: Britta Lange
Projektlaufzeit: 01.07.2008 – 31.12.2010 (Unterbrechung wegen Mutterschutz)
Finanzierung: FWF, Lise-Meitner-Programm (Projektnummer: M1055-G15)

Während des Ersten Weltkriegs führten deutsche und österreichische Anthropologen, Linguisten und Musikwissenschaftler umfangreiche Forschungen an Kriegsgefangenen durch. Sie befragten und dokumentierten ihre „Feinde“ aus Europa und den abhängigen Territorien in Osteuropa, Asien, Afrika und Ozeanien, wodurch große Sammlungen von exemplarischen Tonaufnahmen der Sprachen, Musik und Gesänge vieler „fremder Völker“ entstanden. Das Projekt befasst sich – im deutsch-österreichischen Vergleich – mit den historischen wie aktuellen Verflechtungen von Wissenschaft und visuellen Materialien mit diesen historischen Tondokumenten. Ihre Position und Bedeutung wird innerhalb der Geschichte der ethnografischen Tonaufnahme und der Ethnografie selbst untersucht, inklusive kulturgeschichtlicher Fragestellungen nach Machart und methodischem Kontext. Das Projekt ist seit Mitte Oktober 2008 wegen Mutterschutz und Elternkarenz von Britta Lange unterbrochen.

Ein Beitrag zur Forschungsgeschichte der Kultur-und Sozialanthropologie in Westasien sowie zur kurdologischen Forschung

Projektleitung: Maria Six-Hohenbalken
Projektlaufzeit: 01.09.2007 - 01.09.2010

Ziel des Projektes ist es mittels Archivmaterialien und unveröffentlichten Forschungsergebnisse neue Erkenntnisse über ethnonationale Bewegungen und inter-ethnische Beziehungen in diesem Raum zu gewinnen. Bestände in österreichischen Archiven ermöglichen, dass ein Fokus auf die Entwicklungen von der Mitte des 19. bis in die erste Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts gelegt wird.

Von 1994 bis 1998 wurde in einem FWF Projekt (Leitung: Prof. Seibt, Kommission für Byzantinistik der ÖAW) der österreichische Bestand an Literatur über Kurden systematisch gesichtet und in Form einer kommentierten Bibliographie publiziert. Die sehr umfangreichen Archivbestände sind erst teilweise bearbeitet. Im Zuge dieses Projektes werden diese Forschungsarbeiten (u.a. kultur- und sprachwissenschaftliche) und Expeditionen (v.a. naturwissenschaftliche) analysiert und publiziert. Weiters werden Archivbestände über die politischen Beziehungen, Militärmissionen und Handelsverbindungen mit dem Osmanischen und Persischen Reich sukzessive bearbeitet (k.u.k. Orientalische Akademie) und besonderes Augenmerk wird auf Archivbestände einzelner Missionen gelegt (Mechitaristen, Jesuiten).

Project leader: Stephan Kloos
Duration: 01.03.2008 - 31.08.2010
Financing: FWF

What do the struggle for Free Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile-government, and the survival of Tibetan culture have to do with Tibetan medicine? A lot, if common exile-Tibetan rhetoric claiming that Tibetan medicine “preserves Tibetan culture” and “reasserts the Tibetan nation” is any indication. Taking such assertions and similar findings of postcolonial scholarship as a starting point, this project investigated how a medical tradition and its herbal pills acquired not only clinical but also cultural and political efficacy, and what this means for Tibetan medicine as a whole.

Producing the first comprehensive ethnographic and historical account of Tibetan medicine in exile to date, this study found that “healing” the fractured Tibetan nation is as much a medical matter as Tibetan medicine is a political affair. Contemporary Tibetan medicine in exile cannot be understood independently from Tibetan culture and nationalism. Similarly, accounts of exile-Tibetan politics and governance remain incomplete without paying serious attention to Tibetan medicine’s central political role. This simple observation – though well established in postcolonial work on India and elsewhere – has so far been missing in studies on both the Tibetan diaspora and Tibetan medicine in exile.

Tibetan medicine in exile plays multiple and at times conflicting roles – clinical, ethical, cultural, political, scientific – simultaneously. It does so by producing an alternative Tibetan modernity, which enables it to redefine Tibetan culture and re-imagine the Tibetan nation, thus promising to save or “heal” both. Tibetan medicine in exile thus stands at the center of modern efforts to reshape Tibetan culture, diasporic governance and nationhood. At the same time, through its alternative modernity it also addresses the ills and desires of Western modernity by offering wholeness and compassion compatible with modern science, capitalism and realpolitik.

Project leader: Andre Gingrich
Collaborator(s): Martin Slama, Johann Heiss
Duration: 01.02.2007 - 31.07.2010
Financing: FWF (Projekt P19677)

This project explores the networks of the Hadhrami diaspora in Indonesia. It represents the extension of a previous research project based at the Social Anthropology Unit, Austrian Academy of Sciences, bearing the title “Hadhramis in Indonesia. Ethnic Identity of Yemeni Diaspora Groups Today”. Having conducted field research in the core region of the Hadhrami diaspora in Indonesia, i.e. the island of Java, as well as in Sumatra and Bali, the current project extends its focus to peripheral regions in Indonesia, namely to Central and North Sulawesi (Palu, Gorontalo, Manado), the Moluccas (Ternate) and West Irian Jaya (Sorong). Furthermore, the current project includes the Hadhramaut as a research site, since it became clear during the previous project that diaspora networks between Indonesia and the Hadhramaut are gaining in importance.

This project studies three networks of relationships: the networks between the Hadhrami communities and the host societies in Indonesia, the networks connecting the diaspora with the Hadhramaut, and the global networks of the Hadhrami diaspora as facilitated by global media and communications. Thus, theoretically this project relies on current approaches in social and cultural anthropology that connect the study of diaspora societies with research on phenomena of contemporary globalisation. Furthermore, this project has its focus on the constructions of homeland and diaspora, of centre and periphery, among Hadhramis in Indonesia. In addition to the study of Hadhramis’ integration into the local societies and of its transnational relations, this project focuses also on the intraethnic relations of Hadhramis who are divided into two groups in Indonesia: firstly, the so-called ‘Alawiyyīn or sāda, claiming descent from the prophet Mohammad and practicing a traditional, sūfī influenced Islam and secondly, the other Hadhramis, who are active in or at least closely associated with the modernist/reformist Islamic organisation al-Irsyad.

Given its methodological emphasis on ethnography and comparison, this project is designed to partake in a wider reflection on the method of comparison in anthropology. In fact, this project studies regional variations by comparing the different research sites in peripheral eastern Indonesia among themselves and with the research sites of the previous project in Java, Sumatra and Bali. Topics that will be compared are Hadhramis’ relations to the local population, their transnational relations and their internal relations, namely between the ‘Alawiyyīn and the Irsyadis. Topics that suit distant comparison concern ‘Alawiyyīn religious practice by comparing their religious and ritual life in Indonesia with the Hadhramaut. Furthermore, the rich work of historians on the Hadhrami diaspora enables the researchers of this project to study temporal variation.

Die Sozialstruktur der vorkolonialen Toba-Batak im Vergleich zu Gesellschaften am Festland Südostasiens (Buchprojekt)

Projektleitung: Helmut Lukas
Projektlaufzeit: 01.01.2005 - 30.06.2010
Finanzierung: Erstmittel

In dieser stark erweiterten und revidierten Version der Habilitation von Helmut Lukas wird die vorkoloniale Sozialstruktur der Toba-Batak Nordsumatras mit der von Ethnien des kontinentalen Südostasien (besonders der Jarai Vietnams) verglichen. Einen Schwerpunkt der umfangreichen Arbeit (Großformat, 535 Seiten) bildet die Analyse der sakralen Herrscher bei den Toba-Batak und den Jarai. Der Band erscheint zugleich als „Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 14" und als „Berichte des Österreichischen Instituts für China- und Südostasienforschung Nr. 58".

Projektleitung: Andre Gingrich
MitarbeiterInnen: Andrea Strasser, Stefan Krist
Projektlaufzeit: 04.05.2007 - 30.06.2010
Finanzierung: Erstmittelprojekt
Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten von Johanna Stigler †

Johanna Stigler war Sozialanthropologin und Slawistin. Sie war Expertin für die Geschichte und Kultur der Ethnien des Kaukasus. Der Schwerpunkt ihrer Forschungen lag in den 1980er Jahren auf Verwandtschaftsorganisationen und –terminologien in Georgien. Später trat sie mit Arbeiten über das georgische Judentum hervor.
Johanna Stigler studierte in Innsbruck und Wien und war ab der ersten Hälfte der 1980er Jahre in Ethnolog/inn/en- und Historiker/innen/kreisen in Wien und Tiflis eine hoch geschätzte und angesehene Wissenschaftlerin. Anfang 2007 ist sie 44-jährig völlig unerwartet und unfassbar für alle, die sie kannten, gestorben.

Im Rahmen des Projektes suchen Dr. Andrea Strasser und Mag. Stefan Krist nach allen abgeschlossenen (publizierten und unpublizierten) Arbeiten von Johanna Stigler und bearbeiten, redigieren und edieren diese und erstellen ein druckreifes Manuskript. Dieses ist geplant als Buch in der Reihe „Denkschriften“ des Verlages der ÖAW zu veröffentlichen. Damit werden für einen breiten Interessent/inn/enkreis – Sozialanthropolog/inn/en, Historiker/innen, Judaist/inn/en, Linguist/inn/en, Politolog/inn/en, Migrationsforscher/inn/en etc. – diese inhaltlich bedeutenden und sprachlich wertvollen Arbeiten, die jetzt nur sehr schwer oder gar nicht auffindbar sind, zugänglich gemacht.

Die Neu-Abgabe beim, und Druckfreigabe durch den Verlag der ÖAW sind per 01.02.2010 bereits erfolgt.

Book-project: Anja Fischer and Ines Kohl
Duration: 01.01.2009 – 30.06.2010
Financing: FWF, Universität Wien
Website: www.kohlspross.org/10.htm

Where is Saharan Anthropology going to?

Tuareg, an originally nomadic society living and acting in the Central Sahara and on its Sahelian fringes, which is one of the extremest habitats of the world, are linked with mobility, creative adaptation and interaction processes. The forced penetration of the colonial powers in the middle of the nineteenth century caused profound changes in the social, political and economic structure of the Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq). Thus the Kel Tamasheq are divided into five artificial countries: Niger, Algeria, Libya, Mali and Burkina Faso. During the last decades Kel Tamasheq are forced more than ever to switch between nomadic and urban life, they are squeezed into sedentarisation processes, and some of them are urged into transnational border crossers. This turns the life of Kel Tamasheq into a pretty challenging situation. But they are not victims, they rather developed creative strategies and prove a high ability towards transformation processes ever since.

The leading experts and young innovative scholars analyse recent tendencies in Anthropology of the Sahara in this book. They plead for a shift in terminology, a new theoretic approach on nomads and a rethinking of historical studies. The book explores different categories of mobility, the creation of certain cosmopolitanism, and deals with transnational movements, national strategies and changing belongings. Ongoing discourses in questions of slavery, social stratification, sense of tradition and identity result in analyses of changing norms and values. This is illustrated on the basis of new trends in gender, marriage, fertility and sexuality, or body concepts of female fatness aesthetic. Kel Tamasheq musical style influencing the World Music Scene, strategies in dealing with tourism and relations with Europeans and development projects demonstrate globalisation in the Sahara. Finally the book describes why the region is getting a playground for global economies and clarifies the recent turbulences in the Sahara. This volume presents for the first time Kel Tamasheq in the global environment, and features with multifarious examples the Saharan life in transition.

Contributors and Authors:
Dida Badi, Nadia Belalimat, Annemarie Bouman, Anja Fischer, Alessandra Giuffrida, Jeremy Keenan, Ines Kohl, Baz Lecocq, Sarah Lunacek, Marko Scholze, Gerd Splitter, Susan Rasmussen, Benedetta Rossi

In press – 2010 – I.B.Tauris Academic Studies: London, New York

Eine ethnologische Spurensuche in Syrien

Buchprojekt: Gebhard Fartacek
Projektlaufzeit: 01.01.2005 - 31.03.2010

Auf Grundlage lokal tradierter Erzählungen, die im Zuge ethnologischer Feldforschungen in der heutigen Arabischen Republik Syrien erhoben wurden, wird der Frage nachgegangen, in welchen Situationen des alltäglichen Lebens gefährliche Geister und Dämonen zum Schaden der Menschen in Erscheinung treten und welche Bedeutungen diesen Ereignissen beigemessen werden. Im Mittelpunkt des theoretischen Forschungsinteresses stehen die strukturellen Beziehungen zwischen den lokalkulturellen Konzeptionen über das Wirken der Djinn und der Konstruktion von Zeit, Raum, Identität und Moral.

Dissertationsprojekt: Maria-Katharina Lang
Projektlaufzeit: 01.01.2007 - 31.12.2009
Betreuung: Andre Gingrich
Finanzierung: Dissertationsprogramm der phil.-hist. Kl. der OeAW

Ausgangspunkt des Dissertationsprojektes ist die rund hundert Jahre alte Sammlung mongolischer Ethnographica des Forschungsreisenden Hans Leder im Museum für Völkerkunde (MVK) Wien. Durch die umfassenden Sammlungen Hans Leders im MVK Wien und anderen europäischen Museen lässt sich eine Momentaufnahme der religiösen Alltagskultur in der Mongolei um 1900 rekonstruieren. Zentral steht dabei der Versuch, anhand dieser Objekte den Umgang mit sakralen Gegenständen sowie die Entwicklungen des Buddhismus und der religiösen Kunst in der Mongolei bis zur Gegenwart nachzuzeichnen.

Habilitationsprojekt: Johann Heiss
Projektlaufzeit: 01.01.2005 -  11.08.2009

Im Mittelpunkt  dieser  Habilitationsschrift  steht  die  Frage  nach  der  Rolle  der  im  südarabischen  Raum  in  zahlreichen  Regionen  wichtigen  Genealogie.  Genealogie  wird  dabei  als  in  Teilen  bewusstes  Konstrukt  verstanden,  durch  das  Abgrenzungen  zwischen  Gruppen  herstellbar  werden.  Einsichten  in  diese  Thematik  werden  nicht  nur  aus  der  rezenten  wissenschaftlichen  Literatur,  sondern  auch  aus  mittelalterlichen  jemenitischen  Texten  gewonnen.  Aus  letzteren  ließ  sich  die  sorgfältige  Konstruktion  dieser  tribalen  Genealogien  überraschend  gut  ablesen.  Aus  diesen  Untersuchungen  ergab  sich  als  nächste  Fragestellung  die  nach  der  Rolle  des  Gedächtnisses  bzw.  der  Erinnerung  in  Verbindung  mit  den  südarabischen  Genealogien  und  weiters  die  Zeitvorstellungen,  wie  sie  in  diesen  genealogischen  Konstrukten  zum  Ausdruck  kommen.

Mobility, Territoriality, Ideology and Belonging among Ishumar (Tuareg)

Project leader: Ines Kohl & Akidima Effad
Duration: 01.07.2008 - 31.07.2009
Financing: FWF (Projekt P20790-G14)
Website: www.kohlspross.org/2.htm

The aim of the project was an analysis of the recent transnational Tuareg society - called Ishumar - and their strategies of mobilitiy, belonging and territoriality in the central Sahara. I wanted to clarify the question: What is the future of (ex-) nomads? Are they becoming settled citizens or disrooted borderliners? Can we label these modern nomads as cosmopolitans, or are they just to call vagabonds by their ruptured life whicht characterized through transnational mobility?

The analyses of the last 15 years of the development of the Ishumar-movement (teshumara) clarified, that Ishumar are both: Cosmopolitans and vagabonds. Moreover a certain part of the Ishumar society has to be understood as an intellectual elite, characterized by transnational movements, arrangements and negotiations with national states, and multifarious contacts to neighbours and Europeans. This new elite has nothing in common with the traditional political, economic and religious “excellence” and is no longer ascribed to the traditional Tamasheq-term “anefren, the one who is chosen”, but to the term “anafrag, the one who is able or capable”. In recent times, the leaders of the rebellion, the guitarists and the few NGO activists embody the new elite. Only their multiple forms of mobility granted them their cosmopolitic way of life and their capability of knowing of human rights and fight for them in the recent insurgency on uranium and justice in Northern Niger.
The Ishumar-movement incorporates all kinds of moving: It can be described as partly in cycles, partly situational, sometimes seasonal, sometimes permanently, but always irregularly. So I would suggest calling the Ishumar with James Cliffords term (1992) a “travelling culture”. The Ishumar embody a multiple travelling culture with multiple citizenships, multiple places of residence, and multiple strategies of moving. For the Ishumar moving is the rule. But their multiple movements are only possible due to very sophisticated strategies: Desert knowledge and know-how, the use of kinship affiliation and the benefit of multiple citizenships. Those strategies allow the Ishumar to pursuit their transnational movements, which are part of their culture and the only way of escaping their prison of political marginalization released by French colonialism, corrupt African regimes and still widely supported by European politics.

Published results:

Kohl, Ines (2010): Modern Nomads, Vagabonds, or Cosmopolitans? Metaphoric Reflections on Contemporary Tuareg Society, in: Journal of Anthropological Research, University of New Mexico

Kohl, Ines (2010): Saharan „Borderline“-Strategies: Tuareg Transnational Mobility. In: Grätz, Tilo, Mobility, transnationalism and contemporary African societies, Cambridge Scholars Publishin

Kohl, Ines (2010): Qaddafi ♥ Tuareg: Libyens Tuareg zwischen Stillstand und Aufbruch? In: Ruprechtsberger, Erwin & Edlinger, Fritz (Ed.): 40 Jahre Volksherrschaft in Libyen: Rückblick – Gegenwart – Vorschau, Promedia: Wien

Kohl, Ines (2009): Beautiful Modern Nomads. Bordercrossing Tuareg between Niger, Algeria and Libya , Reimer: Berlin

Kohl, Ines (2009): Nel cerchio dello ksad: In cerca di un futura a Ghat, in: Nigrizia, september 2009, p 51-53, Verona

Kohl, Ines (2008): Email vom Ende der Welt, GEO 10/2008, p 18

Projektleitung: Andre Gingrich
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin: Gudrun Kroner
Projektlaufzeit: 01.04.2004 - 30.06.2009
Kostenneutrale Projektverlängerung bis 30.07.2009
Finanzierung: Fritz Thyssen-Stiftung, Köln, A.Z. 10.04.1.134

In diesem Projekt wurden Identitätskonstruktionen und Überlebensstrategien somalischer Flüchtlingsfrauen in Ägypten und palästinensischer Flüchtlingsfrauen in Gaza und Jordanien untersucht. In den meisten heutigen Flüchtlingsstudien wird das Augenmerk in erster Linie auf Flüchtlinge gelegt, die nach Europa oder in andere „westliche“ Staaten kommen; dies birgt die Gefahr von Einseitigkeit. Studien über Flüchtlinge in den sogenannten „Entwicklungsländern“ gibt es erst seit etwa zwei Jahrzehnten, und zwar hauptsächlich in Zusammenhang mit Flüchtlingscamps. In dieser Arbeit sollten daher als Gegengewicht die Lebenswelten von Flüchtlingen innerhalb der islamischen Welt und auch teilweise in urbanem Kontext untersucht werden.
Von April 2004 – Februar 2007 (mit einer Unterbrechung von Oktober 2005 – Juni 2006) wurden im Rahmen des Projektes Restudies in Ägypten und Gaza (die Ersterhebungen wurden von 2000- 2004 in Ägypten und Gaza durchgeführt), sowie eine Ersterhebung in Jordanien durchgeführt. Methodologisch wurde mit dem biographischem Ansatz gearbeitet: Es wurden Lebensgeschichten vor allem von Flüchtlingsfrauen, aber auch (um Einseitigkeit zu vermeiden) von einigen Männern und Mitgliedern der jeweiligen Aufnahmegesellschaft aufgezeichnet.

Die Ergebnisse der beiden Restudies zeigten deutlich den – besonders in einer Fluchtsituation – dynamischen Charakter von Identitätsbildungen und Überlebensstrategien. Die Restudies wurden jeweils ein bis zwei Jahre nach den Ersterhebungen in den Flüchtlingspopulationen durchgeführt und zeigen die Anpassung der Flüchtlinge auf Veränderungen der politischen Situation, der Flüchtlingspolitik und den Lebensumständen. Neue Allianzen (Gruppenidentitäten wie zum Beispiel Mitgliedschaft in politischen Parteien) wurden gebildet, alte Allianzen (Verwandtschaftssysteme, Zugehörigkeiten zu einer bestimmten Gruppe mit derselben Sozialisierung) verstärkten sich teilweise, ebenso kam es zu Veränderungen der Geschlechtsverhältnisse.

In Kooperation mit der Kommission für Kulturwissenschaften und Theatergeschichte

Projektleitung: Andre Gingrich
Koordination: Johann Heiss, Johannes Feichtinger
Sachbearbeiterinnen: Silvia Dallinger und Johanna Witzeling
Projektlaufzeit: 01.06.2007 - 30.06.2009
Finanzierung: Jubiläumsfonds der Stadt Wien (Drittmittel), ÖAW
Webseite: www.oeaw.ac.at/kkt/projekte/kdw/kdw_t.html

Das Forschungsprojekt der Türckische Säbel ist vor der Thür... Zur Neubewertung von Türkenbildern in Wien beschäftigt sich mit Denkmälern und Artefakten aus der und über die Türkenzeit, die im öffentlichen Raum zugänglich sind. Dabei geht es nicht um eine Deutung der Denkmäler im Sinn einer Stereotypisierung oder negativen Abgrenzung, wie das ursprünglich oft intendiert war, auch nicht im Sinn des Gegenteils davon, einer idealisierenden Aneignung, sondern im Sinn einer Nutzbarmachung für einen reflexiven Umgang mit diesem spezifischen „kulturellen Erbe“. Das bedeutet, den jeweiligen historischen Entstehungskontext zu erforschen, ebenso die Motive, die zu einem Verschwinden oder zur Abschaffung eines Denkmals führten wie auch insbesondere die zeitlichen Schichten, in denen einzelne Monumente eine Umdeutung oder eine Aufladung mit geänderter Bedeutung erfuhren. Es werden demnach mehrere Schichten der historischen Entwicklung und der damit verbundenen Deutung der Monumente bis in die Gegenwart hinein frei zu legen und einer reflexiven Betrachtung zugänglich zu machen sein. Als Resultat sollen mit Identitätskonstruktionen verbundene Vorgänge der Abgrenzung freigelegt werden, womit die Denkmäler und Artefakte aus und über die Türkenzeit in Wien zu Symbolen für Vorgänge in unserem eigenen Denken umgedeutet werden. Die Ergebnisse der im Projekt durchgeführten Forschung sollen an Hand eines interaktiven themenbezogenen Stadtplans von Wien im Internet zugänglich gemacht werden.

Projektleitung: Sabine Strasser
Mitarbeiterinnen: Elisabeth Holzleithner, Christa Markom, Ines Rössl
Projektlaufzeit: 01.09.2006 - 31.07.2008
Finanzierung: bm:bwk >node<
Webseite: www.univie.ac.at/NODE-CMC/
Eine Kooperation von:

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie, Universität Wien
Institut für Rechtsphilosophie, Religionsrecht, Kultur der Universität Wien
Anne Phillips - Gender Institute und Government Department, London School of Economics, London
Ayse Caglar - Department for Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University, Budapest
Gamze Ongan - Peregrina, Bildungs-, Beratungs- und Therapiezentrum für Immigrantinnen, Wien

Onlinepublikation von Forschungsergebnissen:

www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=g793187041~db=all

Projektleitung: Andre Gingrich
Projektkoordination und Durchführung: Ines Kohl
Projektlaufzeit: 01.10.2005 - 31.12.2007
Finanzierung: OMV
Webseite: www.kohlspross.org/7.htm

„amashgul yanf iman – eine schöne Person nutzt der Seele“

Rund um das Tuareg-Sprichwort „Eine schöne Person nutzt der Seele“ drehte sich ein von der OMV gesponsertes und in Kooperation mit der Forschungsstelle Sozialanthropologie der ÖAW durchgeführtes sozialanthropologisches Projekt zum Thema Schönheit und Ästhetik bei Tuareg. Im Mittelpunkt des Projektes standen Tuareg in der zentralen Sahara und ihre Vorstellungen von Schönheit und Ästhetik als ein Indikator von sozialem Wandel.

In Ines Kohls Untersuchungen werden unterschiedliche Aspekte von Schönheit und Ästhetik angesprochen, die alle einem Tenor folgen: Vorstellungen von Schönheit und Ästhetik verändern sich im Laufe der Zeit, unterliegen den gängigen Norm- und Wertvorstellungen einer Gesellschaft, werden durch äußere soziale und wirtschaftliche Faktoren modifiziert, reflektieren letztendlich soziale Ideale und unterliegen einer sozialen und kulturellen Positionierung. Vorstellungen von Schönheit sind ein integraler Teil des sozialen Lebens und reflektieren damit Geschlechterbeziehungen, verdeutlichen Machtpositionen, geben Aufschluss über soziale Normen und Werte und können so zu einem zentralen Instrument sozialer und kultureller Abgrenzung werden, womit die Zugehörigkeit zu einer ganz bestimmten Gruppe ausgedrückt wird.

Die ProtagonistInnen des Projektes sind GrenzgängerInnen, also „Borderliner“, die sich zwischen Niger, Algerien und Libyen bewegen und durch ihre Grenzbewegungen nicht nur territoriale, sondern auch soziale und gesellschaftliche Grenzen und Schranken überschreiten. Politische Entwicklungen, wirtschaftliche Umbruchsprozesse und soziokulturelle Transformationen haben zur Bildung der Ishumar, einer Gruppe von „neuen modernen Tuareg-Nomaden“ geführt. Das Charakteristikum der Ishumar ist, dass ihre Lebensweise jenseits traditioneller Systeme angesiedelt ist. Sie brechen traditionelle Normen und Werte auf, nehmen sich spezielle Elemente heraus, verändern sie und stellen sie in einen neuen Kontext. Ihre Ideen, Vorstellungen und Ideale von Schönheit und Ästhetik, Wert und Moral können als Indikator sozio-kultureller Veränderungen in der Sahara betrachtet werden.

Die Ergebnisse des Projektes machen eines deutlich: Die Ishumar-Bewegung zeigt einen Bruch in der Gesellschaft an. Eine Gesellschaft, deren Nomadismus durch klimatische Umstände erschwert bis unmöglich gemacht wird, eine Gesellschaft, die durch Grenzziehungen ihrer Autonomie entrissen wurde, eine Gesellschaft, die politisch und ökonomisch an den Rand gedrängt wird, eine Gesellschaft die aufgrund der fehlenden Schulbildung keinen Platz in der globalisierten Welt besitzt und von ihr ausgeschlossen wird.

Publikationen:

Kohl, Ines (2009): Beautiful Modern Nomads: Bordercrossing-Tuareg between Niger, Algeria and Libya, Reimer: Berlin

Kohl, Ines (2007): Going "Off road": With Toyota, Chech and E-Guitar through a Saharian Borderland, in: Klute Georg & Hans Hahn (Ed.), Cultures of Migration. African Perspectives, Berlin, p. 89-106

Kohl Ines (2006): Von Tuareg, Toyotas und Wüsten Geschichten: Sahara-Tourismus in Libyen, in; Integra, Zeitschrift für Integrativen Tourismus und Entwicklung, 2/06, p. 14-17

Kohl, Ines (2006): Toyota, Chèch und E-Gitarre: Über Schönheit, Ästhetik und sozialen Wandel von Tuareg-Migranten in Libyen, Erster Forschungsbericht des von der OMV Business Unit Libya gesponserten Projetes "Schönheit nutzt dem Sein: Vorstellungen von Ästhetik und deren Wert bei Tuareg in Libyen", Working Papers der Komission für Sozialanthropologie der ÖAW, Band 15

Projektleitung: o.Prof. Dr. Ernst Steinkellner, w.M.
Sachbearbeiter: Dr. Christian Jahoda
Projektlaufzeit: 13.04.2005 - 31.12.2007
Finanzierung: OeNB Jubiläumsfonds (rojekt Nr.10944)

In diesem Projekt wurden die strukturellen und historischen Zusammenhänge zwischen politischem Raum, sozio-ökonomischer Organisation und religiöser Geographie bei Tibetisch sprechenden Gemeinschaften in vier benachbarten Gebieten im unteren Spiti- und oberen Sutlej-Tal Westtibets zwischen dem 17. und 20. Jh. untersucht. In der sozialanthropologischen Tibetforschung wurden Themen wie heilige Landschaft, Wallfahrtsorte oder der Kult lokaler Gottheiten mit wenigen Ausnahmen nur in ihrer religiösen Dimension untersucht bzw. umgekehrt politische und ökonomische Fragestellungen ohne Referenz auf die lokalen oder weiteren religiösen Aspekte der räumlich strukturierten Ordnung erforscht. Erkenntnissen Eric Wolfs und Andre Gingrichs zur Bedeutung der überregionalen und transnationalen Kontexte lokaler Kulturen folgend, war in diesem Projekt die Untersuchung der religiösen Dimensionen von Territorialität eng mit der Erforschung des weiteren politischen Rahmens sowie der sozialen und ökonomischen Organisation (Handel) auf lokaler und regionaler Ebene verknüpft.

Kurzfassung Endbericht (inkl. Veröffentlichungen) [PDF]

Relevante Veröffentlichungen

Jahoda, Christian (2007) Socio-economic organisation of village communities and monasteries in Spiti, H.P., India: the case of a religious administrative unit (chos gzhis). In: A. Heller and G. Orofino (eds.) Discoveries in Western Tibet and the Western Himalayas. Essays on History, Literature, Archeology and Art (Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the IATS, 2003). Leiden: Brill, 215–240.

Jahoda, Christian (2007) Archival exploration of Western Tibet or what has remained of Francke’s and Shuttleworth’s Antiquities of Indian Tibet, Vol. IV? In: B. Kellner, H. Krasser, H. Lasic, T. Much, H. Tauscher (eds.), Pramānakīrtih. Papers dedicated to Ernst Steinkellner on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Part 1. (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 70.1), Vienna: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 361–394.

Jahoda, Christian (in Druck [2008]) Political space and socio-economic organisation in the lower Spiti Valley (19th to 20th century). Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies.

Projektleitung: o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andre Gingrich, w.M.
Stellvertretende Leitung: Dr. Johann Heiss und Mag. Dr. Johanna Riegler

Wissenschaftliche MitarbeiterInnen:
Mag. Dr. Susanne Binder
Mag. Jasmine Böhm
Mag. Dr. Barbara Danczul
Dr. Ulrike Davis-Sulikowski
Mag. Dr. Gebhard Fartacek
Mag. Dr. Barbara Grubner
Mag. Dr. Ernst Halbmayer
Mag. Stephan Kloos
Mag. Eva-Maria Knoll
Mag. Dr. Ines Kohl
Mag. Fernand Kreff
Mag. Gudrun Kroner
Mag. Kirsten Melcher
Joan O'Donnell, M.A.
Mag. Stephan Rutkowski
Mag. Hilde Schäffler
Mag. Andrea Strasser
Mag. Elke Studer
Mag. Dr. Jelena Tošic
Mag. Dr. Günther Windhager

SachbearbeiterInnen:
Mag. Veronika Brandt
Miriam Anne Frank
Dr. Sylvia Haas
Mag. Eva-Maria Knoll
Julene Knox
Annika Lems
Mag. Sabine Maierhofer
Maximilian Sulpicius Stadler
Mag. Johann Stockinger
Norbert Striedinger
Christian Wawrinec

Projektlaufzeit: 01.01.2001 - 31.03.2007
Webseite: www.oeaw.ac.at/wittgenstein2000/

Projektleitung: o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andre Gingrich, w.M.
Projektkoordination: Dr. Susanne Binder und Dr. Gebhard Fartacek

Wissenschaftliche MitarbeiterInnen:
MMag. Zeynep Baraz
DDr. Madalina Diaconu
Mag. Wolfgang Fellner

Projektlaufzeit: 01.08.2004 - 31.03.2007
Finanzierung: ÖNB-Jubiläumsfonds (Projekt 10948)

 

Frei nach dem Motto „sie beforschen uns“ wurden eine türkische Soziologin (Zeynep Baraz) und eine rumänische Kunstphilosophin (Madalina Diaconu) dazu eingeladen, die Beliebtheit und den Erfolg des Musikantenstadls in Österreich aus einer vergleichenden kulturwissenschaftlichen Perspektive zu erforschen. Die Grundidee des „fremden Blicks“ entstand im Rahmen des Wittgensteinforschungsschwerpunkts „Lokale Identitäten und überlokale Einflüsse“ an der Kommission für Sozialanthropologie, die inhaltliche und administrative Koordination oblag Susanne Binder und Gebhard Fartacek. Mit im Projektteam war der Wiener Wirtschaftswissenschafter Wolfgang J. Fellner, der sich mit den medienwirtschaftlichen Dimensionen der volkstümlichen Musik und dem Massenmedium Fernsehen befasste.

Die Untersuchungsergebnisse zeigten, dass die sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Ungewissheiten der Moderne den Musikantenstadl letztlich so erfolgreich machen. Bestimmte gesellschaftliche Wertvorstellungen, die in der gegenwärtigen Alltagswelt als gefährdet gelten, werden laut den Ergebnissen des Forschungsprojekts im Musikantenstadl hochgehalten: Treue, Sicherheit und Stabilität, Hilfsbereitschaft, Gemütlichkeit und Geborgenheit, Familie und harmonisches Privatleben bei einer klassischen Rollenverteilung von Mann und Frau, Heimatverbundenheit, Gehorsamkeit und nicht zuletzt Pflichterfüllung.
Diese gesellschaftlichen Normen und Werte gelten genau in jenen Bevölkerungsgruppen als besonders wichtig, die Zielgruppe des Musikantenstadls sind. So gesehen finden die Fans in ihrer „Stadl-Familie“ (Zitat Karl Moik) genau das, was ihnen wichtig ist und aufgrund gegenwärtiger Globalisierungseinflüsse als gefährdet angesehen wird. Die Motivation sich den Stadl anzusehen oder an den Life-Veranstaltungen teilzunehmen ist jedoch nicht ausschließlich mit einem „Zurückziehen in die heile Welt“ erklärbar. Sozialanthropologisch betrachtet ist der Musikantenstadl auch eine Form des Umgangs mit Problemen. Sich von Zeit zu Zeit die „Aus-Zeit“ zu gönnen und den ritualisierten Ablauf des Musikantenstadls zu genießen, kann als Strategie der Problemlösung und Stressbewältigung in der modernen Welt interpretiert werden: „Schunkeln macht vieles leichter verdaubar!“

 

Projektleitung: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Walter Dostal, w.M.
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin: Mag. Adelheid Pichler
Projektlaufzeit: 01.10.2002 - 31.03.2006
Finanzierung: FWF (Projekt P15148)
Webseite: www.fwf.ac.at/de/finals/final.asp

Eine Sozialanthropologische Studie Inter- und Intraethnischer Beziehungen und Grenzen

Project leader: Univ.-Doz. Dr. Helmut Lukas
Collaborators: Dr. Johann Heiss (Werkvertrag) und Mag. Martin Slama
Duration: 01.03.2003 - 01.09.2006
Financing: FWF (Projekt P15996-G06)

Eine Untersuchung der sicherheitspolitischen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit der EU in zwei Krisenregionen
Gemeinsames Projekt mit dem OIIP (Österreichisches Institut für Internationale Politik).

Projektleitung: Univ.-Doz. Dr. Helmut Lukas
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter: MMag. Stefan Khittel und Mag. Jan Pospisil
Projektlaufzeit: 01.08.2004 - 31.01.2006
Finanzierung: ÖNB-Jubiläumsfonds (Projekt 10908)

EU-Projekt: Structural and Complementary Measures (SCM)
Grantholder: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Forschungsstelle Sozialanthropologie
Project partners: Universität Birzeit, Palästina; Universität Aix-en-Provence bzw. IREMAM (Institut de Recherche et d'Etudes Méditerranéennes sur le Monde Arabe)
Coordination: Dr. Gudrun Kroner
Duration: 01.07.2004 - 30.11.2005

The proposal test course will encompass social science methodologies common tho several disciplines in thier quantitative and qualitative dimenstions. The target group thus are qualified Palestinian Master Graduates from the social sciences. About 30 - 35 participants will be admitted on the basis of competitive applications, after it has been ascertained that this certificate is acknowledged in the Palestinian academic landscape. The course material will be compiled and presented in a reader that could subsequently be used at Birzeit and other Palestinian universities. Accompaning the test course, two surveys of existing teaching capacities in social science methodologies will be carried out among Palestinian universities in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Each survey will be carried out jointly by an experienced researcher from Europe together with a local expert. the outcome of these two surveys will help to adjust and elaborate the results of the test course towards a comprehensive course proposal in the social sciences with specific consideration of local condition in Palestine. Through the experience of the present pilot project, and based upon the continous interaction between local and foreign scholars as well as students and practioners, a draft curriculum will be proposed as a model course in methodology for adoption by Birzeit and other Palestinian universities.

Project leader: Dr. Hildegard Diemberger (Cambridge)
Duration: 01.07.2001 - 01.07.2004
Financing: FWF (Projekt P15020)

Project leader: o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andre Gingrich, w.M.
Colaborators:
Dr. Claudia Kickinger
ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kraus
Mag. Dr. Gebhard Fartacek
Mag. Gudrun Kroner
Duration: 01.01.2001 - 31.12.2003
Financing: FWF (Project P14598-SPR)
Website: www.univie.ac.at/ksa/html/inh/fors/proj_files/literacy/index.html

Project leader: o.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Andre Gingrich, w.M. - taken over by: Dr. Hildegard Diemberger (Cambridge)
Collaborators:
Dr. Guntram Hazod
Dr. Charles Ramble
Dr. Gabriele Tautscher
Dr. Christian Schicklgruber
Mag. Christian Jahoda
Mag. Kirsten Melcher
Mag. Eika Vorndran
Duration: 01.04.1998 - 01.05.2001
Financing: FWF (Project P12874-SPR)

Social Organization and Interethnic System of the Maniq-Semang (South Thailand)

Project leader: Univ.-Doz. Dr. Helmut Lukas
Collaborators: Pacchira Chindaritha (Thailand)
Durationt: 01.04.1998 - 01.03.2001 (ab 1.12.2000 an der Kommission für Sozialanthropologie angesiedelt)
Financing: FWF (Project P 12142-SOZ)

Project leader: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Walter Dostal, w.M.
In Ergänzung dazu gemeinsam mit der Österreichischen Orient-Gesellschaft Hammer-Purgstall:

Der interethnische und intrareligiöse Dialog unter Muslimen. Eine Untersuchung im Rahmen des Projektes "Handbuch: Muslime in Wien. Ein Leitfaden zur Konfliktprävention."

Project leader Univ.-Prof. Dr. Walter Dostal, w.M.
Coordination: Dr. Siegfried Haas

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Walter Dostal, w.M.
Duration: - 31-01.2001