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Schweden. Ambiguitäten verhandeln. Tolerieren als soziale und kulturelle Praxis
Das Schweden-Stereotyp der Deutschen ist geprägt von Bullerbü, IKEA, Lucia-Brauch und Mitsommernacht. Die Realität eines Landes, in dem Christ*innen sich in einem mehrheitlich säkularen, von Gleichheitsvorstellungen geprägten Kontext zu behaupten suchen und in dem widersprüchliche Rechtsordnungen zur Leihmutterschaft zu neuen Verwandtschaftsgrammatiken führt, wird weitgehend ausgeblendet. Die hier versammelten Beiträge beleuchten diese gesellschaftlichen Diskurse aus europäisch-ethnologischer Perspektive. Mit Überblicksdarstellungen zur Erzählforschung und aktuellen Museumsdiskussionen vertieft der Band klassische Themen der skandinavischen Fachgeschichte. Der zweite Schwerpunkt dokumentiert die Diskussionen der online-Tagung „Ambiguitäten verhandeln. Tolerieren als soziale und kulturelle Praxis“ der Sektionen Europäische Ethnologie und Soziologie der Görres-Gesellschaft im Herbst 2021. Toleranz wurde dort in unterschiedlichen historischen, ökonomischen, religiösen, weltanschaulichen und wissenschaftlichen Kontexten als Tugend, als Haltung (Respekt), als gesellschaftlicher Maßstab, oder als Schwäche, nicht zuletzt als Machtmittel gewertet.
Abstract
Encounters with marginalised spiritualties and religions can assist in the creation of a post-2030 agenda that recognises the limitations of existing ideas of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘progress’, the necessity of which is evidenced by our worsening climate and ecological crisis.
The acknowledgement that religion plays an important role in the lives of the majority of the world’s population has led to increased partnerships between religious communities, humanitarian and development practitioners, and policy makers. At best, this has resulted in fruitful partnerships with those whose world views fit into predefined understandings of religion and development. At worst, it has led to the instrumentalisation of religious and spiritual leaders to implement western, individualistic, capitalist, anthropocentric ideas of development. Knowledge flows have remained unidirectional with the aforementioned partnerships yet to see the transformative potential of engaging with a greater diversity of religious and spiritual communities when imagining a post-2030 agenda.
This paper draws on ethnographic engagement and interviews with the Iglesia Filipina Independiente and Lumad Indigenous people in the Philippines to highlight how learned ignorance, encounters and horizontal relationships can expand individual and collective imagination – deconstructing imperial imaginations and prioritising people and planetary flourishing above profit. It highlights the potential way in which diverse subaltern, abyssal and decolonial movements can be engaged to support a burgeoning of ecologies of knowledge capable of challenging hegemonic understandings of ‘progress’ and ‘development’, essential to the post-2030 debate.
Griechenland. Fragile Ordnungen und die Politik der Kultur
Griechenlands jüngste Vergangenheit ist von tiefgreifenden Veränderungen in der Wirtschaft, der Gesellschaft und der politischen Kultur gekennzeichnet. Finanzkrise, Staatsverschuldung, hohe Arbeitslosigkeit und die schlechten wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen unter denen ein Großteil der griechischen Bevölkerung seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt lebt, nicht zuletzt die drastischen Probleme der Fluchtmigration drängen die einst dominante Wahrnehmung in Bildern von mediterranen „Küsten des Lichts“, der Folklore und des antiken Griechenlands und seiner Architektur zurück. Die Beiträge des Länderschwerpunktes zeigen einen Ausschnitt der aktuellen vielfältigen ethnologisch ethnografischen Forschung Griechenlands. Sie verdeutlichen die engen Verknüpfungen von gesellschaftspolitischer Situation, Forschungsfeldern, Frage- und Problemstellungen. Sie handeln von Grenzregimen und Zugehörigkeitssetzungen, Strategien von Solidarität, und nehmen die globalisierte Creative Economy, Dynamiken religiösen Wandels sowie Politiken des kulturellen Erbes in den Blick. Die am Beispiel Griechenlands erkennbare Fragilität gesellschaftlicher und sozialer Ordnungen und die damit verbundenen Krisenerscheinungen bzw. -wahrnehmungen werden unter dem Spezialthema „Fragile Ordnungen und die Politik der Kultur“ breiter diskutiert. Die Beiträge sind Ergebnisse einer gemeinsamen interdisziplinären Tagungssektion von Europäischer Ethnologie und Soziologie. Sie fokussieren Transformationsprozesse von Zeitkonzepten, der Lebensgestaltung über alltagspraktische Ordnungsstrategien, von Realitätsbewertungen mit dem Infragestellen des lebensweltlichen Commonsense und die Folgen.
(Extra)ordinary Temporalizations: Heroic Endurance, Retro-Futurism, and Failing Forward in the Greek Economic Crisis
Temporality is a key concept of social and cultural science for understanding subjectivity and normative orders in contemporary society. Various literary articles on economic crises reveal the combination of temporal structuration and productive regimes. The article argues that temporality as a concept needs to be challenged by questioning how concepts like “crisis” implicitly or explicitly temporalize, often masking how interlocutors structure and approach time as an object of knowledge in certain configurations of social reproduction. The article analyses three modalities of temporalizations in the Greek economic crisis: heroic endurance, a way to make it into the near future by surviving the present; retro-futurism, an attempt to return to a pre-past in which progressive futures still seemed possible; and failing forward, prefigurative action in the present to effect another kind of future. All three derive from the author's fieldwork in Volos, Greece. All three modalities analyse political orientations and when, how, and who is addressed to deal with (extra) ordinary times. Finally, the article proposes understanding temporalization as a localized practice of creating order, specifically during capitalist crises.
Since 1918, when officially established, the Museum of Modern Greek Culture (MMGC), the central national ethnographic museum of Greece, has been several times re-named and has adapted its collecting and exhibit policies, reflecting historical and social changes. The fast-evolving 21st century marks a turning point to the centennial presence of the Museum: a significant renewal is set up, comprising new premises, and above all new museological conceptions, stretching the importance to the social function of the exhibited artefacts and attempting to integrate interdisciplinarity in its interpretational methodology. One of the prominent stakes for the MMGC is to bridge the notions of cultural heritage – both tangible and intangible – and living culture, with the largest vivid and multiple community implication. As museum-based ethnologist, I aim to enlighten the MMGC cultural institution, guiding through its past and exploring the labyrinth of the future.
The Island as Border Region and Sphere of Possibility: Crete in the Political Imagination of the Mediterranean
Revisiting my fieldwork on and beyond Crete, I argue that islands in the Mediterranean (but not only there) are political laboratories dedicated to the boundary work of borders and identities. Conflicting perceptions of belonging as well as intersecting maritime, transnational and transcontinental mobilities and relations intervene in diverse hegemonic narratives of national and European unity. The article argues that “thinking with islands” is a helpful perspective in order to productively decentralize and “migrantize” static geopolitical geographies.
The Politics of Fragile Knowledge Structures: Donald Trump and the Problem of Reality
Taking the controversy over the weather and audience size during Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president as a starting point, the article firstly examines how Trump’s rhetorical and communicative practices affect what sociologists call “lifeworld” or “common sense” and why this, secondly, poses a threat to a liberal understanding of democracy. In consideration of this, I present and discuss the respective concepts of common sense formulated by Alfred Schütz, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Harold Garfinkel as well as Jürgen Habermas. According to Habermas, the dangers presented by Trump’s rhetoric to a liberal understanding of democracy become apparent, but it remains open as to why it works so well, nevertheless. To answer this question, I combine aspects of the above-mentioned approaches with more recent social diagnoses of the structural change of modernity.
The Refiguration of Modernity
By using the term refiguration, we aim to make a distinct contribution to explaining the fragility of contemporary social orders. Further to observing mere fragility, refiguration denotes a process of restructuring, which results from the tension between two or more figurations. Refiguration implies a certain fragility (which is the subject of this yearbook), because it describes the tension between different figurations. However, refiguration goes beyond this tension and describes the change arising from the tension. Following an introductory classification of the concept, the concept of figuration will therefore be outlined in more detail. Reference will initially be made to Elias, who developed the concept. We will also cite its more recent applications as “communicative figurations” though, which allow the dramatic changes in the wake of present-day digitalization to be identified. This certainly contributes to an increase in tension that already existed earlier. In western societies, this tension can be observed in the most varied polarizations, such as those between modern and late modern or postmodern societies. They can be most clearly seen in the spatial principles of territorial (for example, national) boundaries and the translocal (for instance, global) removal of boundaries, so that refiguration increasingly replaces what was considered to be the inexorable process of globalisation.