Dear Lydia Maria,
It might be helpful to discuss with students the quite complex history
of anthropology in Austria/Vienna. Thus, students get an idea about the
development of social and cultural anthropology (former Völkerkunde,
https://ksa.univie.ac.at/en/department/history/) as a social science and
of (physical) anthropology (former Humanbiologie,
https://www.anthropology.at/history/) as a natural science as two
distinct fields in Austrian anthropology.
To translate European Ethnology (former Volkskunde,
https://euroethnologie.univie.ac.at/institut/) as cultural anthropology
make things even more complicated because this field of studies has been
positioned in yet another faculty/school of the University of Vienna
(Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät).
As for social and cultural anthropology: there are quite a few
researchers in Vienna and worldwide who are working on the intersections
of society/culture and technology, may this be biological or digital
technologies, contributing highly valued research by drawing on
anthropological methodology
(https://ksa.univie.ac.at/en/department/people/). Moreover, I would not
consider anthropology in Austria as "marginal" as, for instance, the
Viennese Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology is one of the
largest and most productive anthropology departments in Europe.
All the best,
Philipp
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:06:04 +0200
From: Lydia Maria Arantes<[log in to unmask]>
Subject: anthropology vs. tech studies, "soft" vs. "hard", the researcher's body vs. numbers
Dear List Members,
In the class I am currently teaching we look at the intersection of sensory
and social / gender(ed) hierarchies. Last week we discussed classical
sensory anthropological / ethnographical literature, carving out the
importance for the researcher to use all of their own senses in order to
get a glimpse into the role of the senses in everyday life. One student had
strong doubts about the validity of taking the researcher’s body so
seriously when gathering scientific data. Her boyfriend is in technology
studies and as it is already difficult for her to make him understand the
(value of) the discipline of anthropology it is even more difficult to
justify this sensory-bodily approach. Another student who is in a similar
personal situation, confirmed the uneasiness this causes.
I totally get their (self-)doubts. A discipline as marginalised as cultural
anthropology (former Volkskunde in Austria), employing ‘soft’ research
methods and then going further by taking the researcher’s body into account
seems just too much. Where is the science?, the question somehow arises for
these undergrad students.
In a world, where numbers rule the production of evidence, also knowledge
cultures as different as the “hard” sciences and, say, anthropology seem to
compete with each other and define value of disciplines, respectively. My
question is: What do I tell these insecure students? How do we “sell” our
value to people with technological / “hard” science background? How do we
make it plausible to them what and how we do it?
--
Philipp Budka
http://www.philbu.net
http://twitter.com/philbu
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