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This volume is an outcome of the FWF project P14853 "Ethnographie - Gender-Perspektive - Antikerezeption". The research project intended to connect ancient ethnography, gender studies and the running methodological debate. For this purpose the collaborators to the project organised two workshops. The volume contains the revised papers held at the first workshop Frauenbild und Geschlechterrollen bei antiken Autoren der römischen Kaiserzeit at the University of Innsbruck, 5.-8. 3. 2003. According to the goal of this workshop the papers connect the theoretical debates of postmodernism und feminism with the daily work of historians or philologists. Each paper touches , in some way or other, the premise underlying the mentioned project that an author's profile can be uncovered by comparing his text with other texts synchronically and diachronically. Most of the papers deal with the Roman imperial period. As a whole they cover the time span from the 5th century BCE to the 6th century CE. But they are not arranged chronologically but systematically. First comes a methodological introduction (C. Ulf and K. Schnegg) connected with a description of the papers. The first section then contains five articles pointing at the 'basis and kind of text and its lecture' (Grundlagen und Formen der Texte und der Textlektüre). The authors deal with Augustine, archaeological remains, and modern movies as well. Seven articles focusing on the topic 'historical realities within texts' (Historische Realität(en) im Text) build up the second section. They deal with the attic democray, Augustean propaganda, and authors from Cornelius Nepus to Synesios of Cyrene. In the last section 'text levels and pictures of sexes' (Textebenen und Bilder der Geschlechter) the reader finds articles concerning some aspects of ancient ethnography and the gender perspective of authors from Tacitus to Ennodius. The volume offers, in a broad chronological spectrum, varied perspectives on and ways of dealing with texts by separating consciously the search for historical realities form the interpretation of texts.

ancient ethnography --- gender studies

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"The German missionary Carl Strehlow (1871-1922) had a deep ethnographic interest in Aboriginal Australian cosmology and social life which he documented in his 7 volume work Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien that remains unpublished in English. In 1913, Marcel Mauss called his collection of sacred songs and myths, an Australian Rig Veda. This immensely rich corpus, based on a lifetime on the central Australian frontier, is barely known in the English-speaking world and is the last great body of early Australian ethnography that has not yet been built into the world of Australian anthropology and its intellectual history. The German psychological and hermeneutic traditions of anthropology that developed outside of a British-Australian intellectual world were alternatives to 19th century British scientism. The intellectual roots of early German anthropology reached back to Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), the founder of German historical particularism, who rejected the concept of race as well as the French dogma of the uniform development of civilisation. Instead he recognised unique sets of values transmitted through history and maintained that cultures had to be viewed in terms of their own development and purpose. Thus, humanity was made up of a great diversity of ways of life, language being one of its main manifestations. It is this tradition that led to a concept of cultures in the plural."

australian ethnography --- carl strehlow

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Watching television plays an important role in our daily lives. Especially serial narratives like the popular German police procedural Tatort (FRG, since 1970) bear great potential to catch and keep their viewer’s interest. Analysing the integration of the long running TV series Tatort into its viewers’ weekly routines, this study investigates movements in the realm of what is called ‘social positioning’. In online fora, in discussions or while watching the latest episode, television audiences share their impressions. They compare inspectors and crime sites and express their views upon socio-political debates. At the same time watching series for many is a deeply social activity. The series helps its viewers to get together with friends, partners or the family on a regular basis, others enjoy sharing their viewing experience in social networks. Together they laugh or discuss the issues that are brought up by the police investigation. The practice of watching Tatort thereby provides a wide range of possibilities to act upon one’s perspective on how the social world is structured. The ethnographic approach towards practices of social positioning is based upon participant observations in viewing situations over three years, 43 semi-structured narrative interviews, as well as an online ethnography concentrating on Facebook and the fan page Tatort-Fundus. This approach allows for two kinds of findings: Current perspectives on ‚the cultural other‘ as a figure that is bound to situational practices of positioning are enlightened by comparisons to fictional criminals and investigators as well as representations of social, professional and ethnic groups in Tatort. On a more theoretical level, the ethnographic insights on biographies, viewing situations, and practices in between the episodes call for corrections of the still persistent model of taste as a reliable indicator of people’s standing in society. Instead, the study points out the importance of situational and serial acts of positioning. Watching Tatort is a cultural practice with much variation. Still, how its viewers deal with Tatort as a narrative as well as a cultural practice is linked to a set of discursive fields. Describing the practice of watching Tatort as bound to activity/passivity, pleasure/critique, tension/relaxation, real/unreal, entertainment/information, and femininity/masculinity as well as to German/not-German reveals that all of these oppositions are continuously under negotiation. And Tatort viewers are usually positioned in-between.

cultural studies --- media --- ethnography

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The discovery of oil in Uganda in 2006 ushered in an oil-age era with new prospects of unforeseen riches. However, after an initial exploration boom developments stalled. Unlike other countries with major oil discoveries, Uganda has been slow in developing its oil. In fact, over ten years after the first discoveries, there is still no oil. During the time of the research for this book between 2012 and 2015, Uganda’s oil had not yet fully materialised but was becoming. The overarching characteristic of this research project was waiting for the big changes to come: a waiting characterised by indeterminacy. There is a timeline but every year it gets expanded and in 2018 having oil still seems to belong to an uncertain future. This book looks at the waiting period as a time of not-yet-ness and describes the practices of future- and resource-making in Uganda. How did Ugandans handle the new resource wealth and how did they imagine their future with oil to be? This ethnography is concerned with Uganda’s oil and the way Ugandans anticipated different futures with it: promising futures of wealth and development and disturbing futures of destruction and suffering. The book works out how uncertainty was an underlying feature of these anticipations and how risks and risk discourses shaped the imaginations of possible futures. Much of the talk around the oil involved the dichotomy of blessing or curse and it was not clear, which one the oil would be. Rather than adding another assessment of what the future with oil will be like, this book describes the predictions and prophesies as an essential part of how resources are being made. This ethnography shows how various actors in Uganda, from the state, the oil industry, the civil society, and the extractive communities, have tried to negotiate their position in the oil arena. Annika Witte argues in this book that by establishing their risks and using them as power resources actors can influence the becoming of oil as a resource and their own place in a petro-future. The book offers one of the first ethnographic accounts of Uganda’s oil and the negotiations that took place in an oil state to be.

Uganda --- oil --- ethnography

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The Thai—Yunnan Project is proud to present this English-language version of Professor Yos Santasombat’s fascinating ethnography of the Tai in Daikong, southwestern China. It represents a significant contribution to the ethnographic record of the Tai peoples. The village of Lak Chang is located close to the edge of the Tai world and is increasingly embraced by Chinese influence. Professor Yos skilfully weaves ethnographic and historical writing to chart the course of Lak Chang’s incorporation into the modern Chinese state. This has been a painful history but what emerges in this account is a sense of Tai cultural identity that is vigorous and adaptive. “The Tai ethnic category is thus a complex and dynamic construct which takes place within the context of changing power relations and socio-economic conditions where the past is reconstructed to give meaning to the present and hope for the future.” In his account of the labours, rituals and beliefs of the Tai villagers of Daikong, Professor Yos brings contemporary ethnic identity to their life. Among the patchwork paddyfields and haphazard laneways of Lak Chang we come to a greater understanding of how global and regional processes of modernisation are managed and selectively incorporated by one local community.

yunnan province --- tai --- ethnography --- china