Institute for Social Anthropology
| Institute for Social Anthropology | |
|---|---|
| founding | November 22, 1961 as an ethnological commission |
| Sponsorship | Austrian Academy of Sciences |
| place | Vienna, Austria |
| management | Andre Gingrich |
| Employee | Currently 29 |
| Website | www.oeaw.ac.at/isa |
The Institute for Social Anthropology ( ISA ) is a research facility of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna.
tasks and goals
The Institute for Social Anthropology is a research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences that specializes in Asia. Its long-term supporting program is geared towards the subject of “Consensus and Conflict in Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean”. Particular attention is paid to transnational developments in Asia, regional integration and cooperation, changes in traditional family and kinship relationships, as well as internal and regional migration within Asia.
The medium-term research program of the Institute for Social Anthropology from 2012 to 2017 is "Engaging with Crisis, Mobility, and Transformation in Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean". It includes a clear focus on systemic and biographical crises in the present and history of Asia, on the connections between crises and migration, and on the role of major social, economic or political changes. Special attention is paid to the way different societies in Asia deal with crises, mobility and major changes.
Ulf Hannerz and Regina Bendix (deputy) chair the scientific advisory board of the institute (2014 to 2016).
History and structure
At the Academy, the "Ethnological Commission" was the predecessor of the Institute for Social Anthropology. It came into being on November 22nd, 1961 when the "Commission for the Study of Primitive Cultures and Languages" was renamed. The original restriction of ethnological research to simply structured societies (hunters and gatherers, nomads and soil farmers) could no longer do justice to the development at that time. Between 1955 and 1965, Robert Heine-Geldern established a first Southeast Asian focus at the Austrian Academy of Sciences as a corresponding member and a real member .
The next stage in the expansion since 1945 marks the unification of the "Ethnological Commission" with the "Arab Commission" under Walter Dostal on January 1, 1993 and the resulting renaming to the "Commission for Social Anthropology" (KfSA) (1995). This resulted in two areas of work: 1) the field of social anthropology and 2) the Arabic philology and cultural history of the Middle East. In the period between 1980 and 2000, Walter Dostal substantially expanded the previously established Southeast Asia focus with Southwest Arabia and Tibet to include two further regional focus areas (through publications, third-party projects and employees).
Since 1995, this social-anthropological research approach has implied an interdisciplinary program through the implementation of empirical-ethnographic studies in connection with philological-historical analyzes and intercultural comparative studies of sociocultural phenomena. With the award of the Wittgenstein Prize to Andre Gingrich , the Commission for Social Anthropology (KfSA) made a new start in terms of finance and personnel from 2000.
On January 1, 2007, the Commission for Social Anthropology was converted into a research center. The Social Anthropology Research Center was upgraded to the Institute for Social Anthropology on January 1, 2010.
Regional research focus
The regional focuses include: 1) the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, 2) primarily Buddhist Central Asia and the Tibetan-speaking Himalayas, and 3) Southeast Asia and the island world in the Indian Ocean.
Projects on the Middle East deal, among other things, with social transformations and conflicts in the past and present of Southwest Arabia, as well as with memories of crimes against humanity in Kurdish societies. In Central Asia, Tibet and the Himalayan region, research is carried out on imperial and early Buddhist Tibet, Tibetan medicine and nomadic artefacts, among other things. Current projects in the Southeast Asia region and the Indian Ocean archipelago include research on health-related mobility and tourism in the Republic of Maldives, on cognitive concepts of the Maniq-Semang in southern Thailand, and on social media and Islamic practices in Indonesia.
Methodologically, the Institute for Social Anthropology is based on balanced, gender-specific, empirical field research in local languages as well as on systematic intercultural comparison, and on this basis on the analysis and interpretation of sociocultural processes of the present and history (including the relevant history of science).
Events
Since 2002 the Institute for Social Anthropology has been organizing the international Eric Wolf Lectures in cooperation with the University Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology and the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) . Every autumn a prominent representative of the subject is invited to give a publicly accessible lecture. The Eric Wolf Lectures have been published in Current Anthropology , one of the most renowned journals in the anthropological disciplines, since 2004 .
The Institute for Social Anthropology organizes international guest lectures (ISA International Guest Lectures) around eight times a year. They are aimed at researchers in all relevant subjects and present well-known guest lecturers, mostly in English. The results are preferably published in the working papers on social anthropology issued by the institute.
The international “Anthropological Atelier” is carried out roughly every one and a half years by employees of the Institute for Social Anthropology together with those of another European institute in order to discuss and deepen the first results from ongoing research in a workshop. The results are published as a book or as a main topic in a leading specialist journal.
The ISA Research Forum serves primarily as an internal forum for employees of this or befriended research institutions to present initial or final results from ongoing project work.
At irregular intervals, the Institute for Social Anthropology, as co-organizer or sole organizer, organizes meetings and conferences at home and abroad on theoretical-methodological debates, thematic focuses and regional research fields. In 2004 the Institute for Social Anthropology acted as co-organizer of the 8th EASA Biennial Conference , as well as the DGV conference in 2011 and in 2015 the 8th EuroSEAS conference and the 11th hunter-gatherer conference (CHaGS).
Publications
Since 1996 the Institute for Social Anthropology has published the book series Publications on Social Anthropology .
The series of ÖAW working papers on social anthropology has been published several times a year since 2008. The working papers are available online on the open access homepage .
Another publication of the Institute for Social Anthropology is the Eduard Glaser Collection , which, like the book series Publications on Social Anthropology, is available from the publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences .
Web links
- Institute for Social Anthropology. Retrieved October 13, 2015 .
- Austrian Academy of Sciences. Retrieved October 13, 2015 .
- OEAW working papers on social anthropology. Retrieved October 13, 2015 .
- Publications on social anthropology. Retrieved October 28, 2015 .
- Eduard Glaser Collection. Retrieved October 28, 2015 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Commission for Social Anthropology .
- ↑ Eric Wolf Lectures. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 25, 2015 ; accessed on October 13, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b OEAW working papers on social anthropology. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 12, 2016 ; accessed on October 13, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ISSN 1998-507X , online since May 2008.
- ^ Publications on social anthropology .
- ^ Eduard Glaser Collection
