RAI RESEARCH SEMINAR 

A VIRTUAL SEMINAR BY THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Thursday 6 October 2022 at 4.00 - 6.00pm (BST)  

This event will be held online on Zoom, to register go here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_De_nW369R8WvAufZYG3JCg 

 
In constant turmoil between branding and practice - German Ethnologie post 1945

Prof Dieter Haller (Ruhr Universität Bochum)

Völkerkunde, Ethnologie, Sozial- or Kulturanthropologie - the question of naming the subject has been a dominant constant in the history of West German ethnology since the end of the Second World War. There have been conflicting requirements and claims from politics and neighbourhood disciplines as well as from social trends whereby the Ethnologen tried to re-establish themselves again and again. In contrast to the grand colonial nations which did not place the mere right to exist at the center of the discipline, no comparable framework conditions provided for the very existence of the discipline in the Federal Republic, which committed herself to renew intellectually, socially and politically.

Who are we? What are we doing? Dealing with these questions touches on epistemological as well as theoretical and methodological aspects. They also meant that ethnology in Germany became a largely reactive discipline, quickly absorbing American, British and French impulses, but rarely leaving own footprints in other national anthropologies (not to talk of an impact on global debates). In my talk, I would like to trace the changing self-understanding of the subject with the help of indications of disjunctions in German Ethnologie whilst trying to work out some of their shared characteristics.

Prof Haller wrote a book on the history of German Ethnologie titled 'Die Suche nach dem Fremden: Geschichte der Ethnologie in der Bundesrepublik 1945-1990', which is available through the publisher Campus Verlag here.

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