During the last years we witnessed in rapid succession the international financial crisis, the ISIS-war, the arrival of new hazards for tourists, the sudden collapse of states, the formation and subversion of new borders, and the re-emergence of national and imperial politics (e.g. populists in the EU, Russian geo-politics, and the isolation of whole areas as „weak states“).
After two decades of euphoria about globalization have ended, new perspectives for ethnographic research and regional/local perspectives begin to emerge in social theory. The devastating deconstruction of the Mediterranean as a cultural/social area, for instance, has been rethought, as well as many other regional categories of anthropological epistemology (Horden-Purcell, Harris, Hann, and van Schendel).
The re-emergence of the local and the regional, cultural reserves, and deeply rooted resentments could become central themes, indicative for the new ‘frictions’ (Tsing) and ‘fractures’ (Nordstrom) of the globalization process that were not anticipated by mainstream social theory of the early 2000s. Implied in this process of rethinking deconstrucion is always a process of re-framing the general theories of development of civilizations and economies.
We plan to read and discuss texts from new cultural area studies (e.g. Todd, Acemoglu and Robinson, and authors of the German-American space-debates, Döring and Thielmann, Schlögel/Kottmann), as well as participants’ (or other authors’) field studies.
The colloquium is also open for the presentation and discussion of participants’ work in progress. It is open for all students, MA-candidates, PhD-candidates, MPI-members, and other colleagues who are interested in discussing the return of space in cultural theory.
Literaturempfehlung: Acemoglu, Daron u. James Robinson: Why Nations Fail. The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, London 2013 / Döring, Jörg u. Tristan Thielmann (eds.): Spatial Turn. Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften, Bielefeld 2008 / Hann, Chris: Towards a Maximally Inclusive Concept of Eurasia, MPI for Social Anthropology Working Papers, No 157, 2014 / Harris, William (ed.): Rethinking the Mediterranean, New York 2006 / Horden, Peregrine u. Nicholas Purcell: The Corrupting Sea. A Study of Mediterranean History, London 2000 / Kottmann, Sina Lucia: Review Essay: Karl Schlögel Reads Time in Space: Tracing Old Paths Towards New Horizons (http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/487) / Nordstrom, Carolyn: Global Fractures, Social Analysis 52,2, pp.71-86, 2008 / Schlögel, Karl: Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik, München 2003 / Todd, Emmanuel: After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, New York, 2003 / Tsing, Anna L.: Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, 2004 / van Schendel, Willem. Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance: Jumping Scale in Southeast Asia, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20, pp. 647-668, 2002
