Doris Byer

Doris Byer (* 1942 in Vienna ) is a historian , cultural anthropologist and author of academic works, novels and essays . The topics of her journalistic work revolve around problems of the recent history of science , changes in post-colonial societies, migration movements, transculturality and racism . She lived and worked in Vienna, Jamaica , the Solomon Islands , Morocco , Mali and France .

career

In 1966 she graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna with a diploma in printmaking, but after many years of professional experience in the field of visual communication, she began studying history , philosophy and ethnology in Vienna at the age of forty . She graduated on the subject of social biology and Austromarxism and in 1986 earned her doctorate at the Institute for Economic and Social History in Vienna with her dissertation: Strategists of Life - Racial Hygiene and Welfare Care . After an inter-faculty habilitation in 1996, she became a lecturer in historical anthropology at the Institute for History at the University of Vienna . In addition to her teaching activities in the context of long-term research projects, a position as a curator at the Museum für Völkerkunde Wien (October 1993 to November 1994), and the realization of an educational aid project on the southeastern Solomon Islands , she also managed her father's estate between 1980 and 2001, of the ethnologist and explorer Hugo A. Bernatzik (1897–1953). Her work follows the tradition of deconstruction and post-colonial cultural studies , although her texts increasingly transcend academic and literary categories.

Works (selection)

• Nation and evolution. Aspects of a political anthropology in Austromarxism . In: H. Ehalt (Hrsg.): Between nature and culture - to the critique of biological approaches. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 1985.
• Strange women. Photographs by the ethnographer Hugo A. Bernatzik 1925-1938. Brandstätter publishing house, Vienna 1986.
• Racial hygiene and welfare. On the emergence of a social democratic power disposition until 1934. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987.
• Sexuality makes welfare. Contemporary memories of the “Red Vienna”. In: Contemporary History. 14th year, issue 11/12, 1987.
• From class to body. For the development of modern social technologies as a result of the First World War. In: Yearbook for Contemporary History. Vienna-Salzburg 1989.
• The return of the "stolen shadow". After half a century, ethnographic photos return to their place of origin. In: T. Theye (Ed.): The robbed shadow, photography as an ethnographic document. Bucher, Munich 1989.
• Not in the box. From the adventure of a television documentary. Novel. Deutike Verlag, Vienna 1993.
• On the problem of clear classification. Discourse-analytical perspectives on research on ethnology and National Socialism . In: T. Hauschild (Ed.): Lust for life and fear of foreigners. Ethnology in the Third Reich. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
• Art, compensation and morality. About understanding works of art on Solomon's Owa Raha Island. In: Archives for Ethnology. Volume 49, Vienna 1995.
• The Big Island - South Pacific Life Stories. On the change in a matrilineal society since 1914. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1996, ISBN 3-205-98441-2 .
• Encounter offside. EE Evans-Pritchard and HA Bernatzik in Sudan 1927. In: Peideuma. Volume 42, Frankfurt am Main 1996.
• The first murder trial. A "civilizing" event on the southeastern Solomon Islands at the time of the British intervention in 1915. In: Historical Anthropology. Volume 5/1, 1997.
• The Hugo A. Bernatzik case. A life between ethnology and the public. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 1999.
• Evolutionist Anthropologies. On the ambivalence of a century-old paradigm of progress. In: M. Ash (Ed.): Science, politics and the public. WUF, Vienna 2001.
• Freedom and hybridity. Transcultural life plans of postcolonial immigrants in Essaouira. In: Postcolonial cultural stories, Viennese magazine on the history of modern times. Volume 2/1, 2002.
• Essaouira, finally. Novel. Droschl, Graz 2004.
• On the anthropology of travel and the history of development theory. In: Baumhackl, Habinger, Kolland, Luger (eds.): Tourism in the “Third World” - To discuss a development perspective. Promedia, Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-85371-256-6 .
• as editor with Christian Reder: Drawing as universal language. Works from Melanesia and South East Asia / Graphics from Melanesia and South East Asia 1932-1937. Hugo A. Bernatzik Collection / Collection. Springer, Vienna / New York, NY 2011, ISBN 978-3-7091-0799-7 .
• Mali. A search for clues. With photos by Abdoulaye Sima. Droschl, Graz 2014, ISBN 978-3-85420-956-0 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Doris Byer in the catalog of the German National Library