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How does being a parent in the field influence a researcher's positionality and the production of ethnographic knowledge? Based on regionally and thematically diverse cases, this collection explores methodological, theoretical, and ethical dimensions of accompanied fieldwork. The authors show how multiple familial relations and the presence of their children, partners, or other family members impact the immersion into the field and the construction of its boundaries. Female and male authors from various career stages exemplify different research conditions, financial constraints, and family-career challenges which are decisive for academic success.
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the southwest and northeast regions. Unraveling the complex prehistory, history, and contemporary political ecology of African pastoralism, results in insight into the ingenuity and flexibility of historical and contemporary herders.
This handbook provides a comprehensive account of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, exploring both their structures and features and their function and use in society. The first part of the volume provides background and general information relating to Ethiopian languages, including their demographic distribution and classification, language policy, scripts and writing, and language endangerment. Subsequent parts are dedicated to the four major language families in Ethiopia - Cushitic, Ethiosemitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic - and contain studies of individual languages, with an initial introductory overview chapter in each part. Both major and less-documented languages are included, ranging from Amharic and Oromo to Zay, Gawwada, and Yemsa. The final part explores languages that are outside of those four families, namely Ethiopian Sign Language, Ethiopian English, and Arabic. With its international team of senior researchers and junior scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages will appeal to anyone interested in the languages of the region and in African linguistics more broadly.
In this first anthropological study of Muslim and Hindu lives in urban Myanmar today, Judith Beyer develops the concept of “we-formation” to demonstrate that individuals are always more than members of wider groups. “We-formation” complements her rich political, legal, and historical analysis of “community,” a term used by Beyer’s interlocutors themselves, even as it reinforces ethno-religious stereotypes and their own minority status. The book also offers an interpretation of the dynamics of resistance to the attempted military coup of 2021.
Ethiopia is best understood as a country with multiple internal divides, but also endless interconnections which are constantly renegotiated. Contributing to the growing literature on the country's cultural diversity, this book offers special emphasis on the contemporary dynamics of intra- and intergroup boundary formation and alteration. It also adds to the more general literature on identity change, boundary transgression of individuals and groups, and cultural contact and change. With contributions from experienced Ethiopian and international scholars, the book offers perspectives on territorial, ethnic, class, caste, gender, and age related boundaries in different parts of the country. (Series: African Studies / Afrikanische Studien - Vol. 53) [Subject: Sociology, African Studies, Cultural Studies]
This collection of texts was created in connection with the conference "Documenting Southern Ethiopia: recognizing past legacies and forging the way forward", which took place in February 2017 in collaboration with the Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt at the Hawassa University
As ethnographic fieldwork blurs the boundaries between ›private‹ and ›professional‹ life, ethnographers always appear to be on duty, looking out for valuable encounters and waiting for the next moment of disclosure. Yet what lies in the gaps and pauses of fieldwork? The contributions in this volume dedicated to anthropologist Martin Sökefeld explore methodological and ethical dimensions of multi-sided ethnographic research. Based on diverse cases ranging from hobbies over kinship ties to political activism, the contributors show how personal relationships, passions and commitments drive ethnographers in and beyond research, shaping the knowledge they create together with others.
Kollaboratives Forschen quer zu hegemonialen Wissensordnungen gilt als wichtiger Baustein dekolonialer Wissenspraxis. Gemeinsame Schreibprozesse von Wissenschaftler*innen und ihren nicht-wissenschaftlichen Forschungspartner*innen sind allerdings selten und eine methodologische und forschungspraktische Reflexion fehlt. Die Beiträger*innen widmen sich diesen Lücken, indem sie erfolgreiche, aber auch gescheiterte Projekte kollaborativer Textproduktion zwischen Universität und Feld vorstellen und auf ihr Potenzial als transformative und dekoloniale Wissenspraxis befragen. So entsteht eine praktische Orientierungshilfe, die gleichzeitig die interdisziplinäre Diskussion anregt.
Auf den Sklavenschiffen, die im 19. Jh. zwischen Afrika und Brasilien verkehrten, waren Köche für die Versorgung der Verschleppten und der Mannschaften zuständig. In den Häfen versorgten Verkäuferinnen sowohl die Versklavten als auch Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter mit Nahrungsmitteln. Melina Teubner rückt in dieser kollektiven Biografie die Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen von Menschen in den Mittelpunkt, die sonst wenig im Fokus der Geschichtsschreibung stehen, ohne die die Logistik des Sklavenhandels jedoch nicht hätte organisiert werden können. Sie leistet damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Geschichte der »zweiten Sklaverei«, d.h. der Phase nach dem offiziellen Verbot des Sklavenhandels (1815/17 bzw. 1831 in Brasilien), sowie zu einer neueren Welt- und Globalgeschichte der Materialität von Schifffahrt, Ernährung und Arbeit.
In many Ethiopian societies, occupational groups, descendants of hunters or slaves are differentiated from the societies they are part of or live next to. Until today, their ambiguous and often marginalized position is culturally justified and deeply entrenched in local belief or value systems. Recent research has shown how these social categories have been reshaped and renegotiated under the influence of various factors. In which contexts and to what extent integration has taken place, whether it is sustainable or whether social differentiation has persisted or even increased is the main focus of the nine case-studies in this book all of which emphasize the perspective of the status groups themselves.