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| Semester | Frühjahrsemester 2022 |
| Angebotsmuster | einmalig |
| Dozierende | Till Förster (till.foerster@unibas.ch, BeurteilerIn) |
| Inhalt | How do we live together? How can we live together? These two questions were and still are key to the social sciences. They were also at the centre of academic anthropology since its very beginnings in the late 19th century. The first question aims at analysing and describing social life while the second looks at the potential of the human condi-tion and its prospects. In the history of anthropology, the first question had been more promi-nent than the second. Anthropologists working along these lines looked at rules and regulations that order social life and how they eventually made society possible. Because such rules were easier to conceive, modern anthropology developed a wide set of concepts, which aimed at mak-ing the complexities of social life intelligible to Europeans and others in the Global North. Descent vs. filiation, reciprocal exchange vs. prescriptive altruism, and many other dichotomies testify to the analytical power of such concepts. Today, this classical heritage of modern anthropology is continuously rethought and reconceived. Relations become more and more subject to articula-tions that the actors deliberately performed to overcome the limits of what was once conceived as social structure. Overcoming the epistemological limitations of Western thinking is what characterises anthropology since about two to three decades (Strathern 2020). The second question and strand of thinking is by far less prominent in anthropology. It sur-faced repeatedly but rarely had been the subject of thorough theorising. And even where it held a key role as, for instance, in Victor Turner’s work on The Ritual Process (1969) and his concept of ‘communitas’, it was largely defined and understood as a counterimage to the structure of the ordinary social order. Very rare are the attempts to take gregariousness and conviviality as inde-pendent and autonomous elements of social life that generate other forms of sociality than the expectations informed by rules and norms – although gregariousness already played a key role in Aristotle’s political anthropology more than 2000 years before anthropology became an academ-ic discipline. Although the immediate, spontaneous character of gregariousness and the sociality that it fosters puzzled anthropologists since Durkheim, it was not theorised and much more rare-ly studied than rule-driven ways of living together. Sometimes, it was located in the biology of women, men and their ‘gregarious behaviour’ – and thus did not seem to need further explana-tions. At other times, it was boldly attributed to ‘cultural training’, which again cut further anal-yses short. This seminar traces the hidden history of gregariousness and conviviality in anthropology. It looks at how anthropologists tried to make sense of the unordered and the unstructured, the spontaneous and the immediate and the relations that it creates and shapes. Contributions based on fieldwork are welcome and should introduce the class to the respective social settings and respective findings. |
| Literatur | Bellamy, Raymond, 1953: The question of innate gregariousness or sociability, in: Quarterly Journal of the Florida Academy of Science 16(4): 223–232. Strathern, Marilyn, 2020: Relations: An anthropological account. Durham: Duke University Press. Turner, Victor, 1969: The Ritual Process. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. |
| Bemerkungen | ➾ venue depending on current Corona regulations: Seminar Room at the Chair of Anthropology, Münsterplatz 19, 2nd floor or online via Zoom (if necessary, the zoom link will be published by April 1st). |
| Teilnahmebedingungen | The number of participants is limited to 25 people. The places are assigned according to date of enrollment and subject of study. Priority will be given to the subjects listed under "modules". |
| Unterrichtssprache | Englisch |
| Einsatz digitaler Medien | kein spezifischer Einsatz |
| Intervall | Wochentag | Zeit | Raum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block | Siehe Einzeltermine | ||
| Bemerkungen | Block Seminar Friday, April 29 and 30, May 13 and 14 |
| Datum | Zeit | Raum |
|---|---|---|
| Freitag 29.04.2022 | 08.30-18.00 Uhr | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Samstag 30.04.2022 | 08.30-18.00 Uhr | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Freitag 13.05.2022 | 08.30-18.00 Uhr | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Samstag 14.05.2022 | 08.30-18.00 Uhr | Ethnologie, grosser Seminarraum |
| Module |
Modul: Fields: Governance and Politics (Master Studiengang: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master Studiengang: African Studies) Modul: Fields: Public Health and Social Life (Master Studiengang: African Studies) Modul: Interdisciplinary and Applied African Studies (Master Studiengang: African Studies) Modul: Research Skills in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Master Studienfach: Anthropology) Modul: Soziologische Theorie MA (Master Studienfach: Soziologie) |
| Leistungsüberprüfung | Lehrveranst.-begleitend |
| An-/Abmeldung zur Leistungsüberprüfung | Anmelden: Belegen; Abmelden: nicht erforderlich |
| Wiederholungsprüfung | keine Wiederholungsprüfung |
| Skala | Pass / Fail |
| Wiederholtes Belegen | nicht wiederholbar |
| Zuständige Fakultät | Philosophisch-Historische Fakultät, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Anbietende Organisationseinheit | Fachbereich Ethnologie |