Cultural and Social Anthropology at the LAI examines the socio-cultural dynamics in Latin America and how they are translocally embedded in historical and contemporary relationships. It focuses on how people act, think and communicate in a globalizing world. As a way of leaving behind Eurocentric perspectives, teaching and research deal with the relationships between local, national and global communities as well as ideas, cultures, practices and institutions. The main subjects are migration, religious globalization, social movements, public and urban spaces, constructions of identity and difference based on categories of power such as race/raza, gender and ethnicity as well as processes of transatlantic and transpacific interaction. Such categories are negotiated via social and media practices, for example, discourses, images, performances or digital means of communication.

The main areas of study are (in German):

• Visuelle Anthropologie und Medienethnologie
• Migrationsethnologie
• Geschlechterforschung
• Emotionsforschung
• Politische Anthropologie
• Religionsethnologie
• Sportethnologie
• Soziolinguistik und Linguistik am Beispiel indigener Sprachen

Cultural and Social Anthropology employs a multi-method strategy that combines current research on transculturality, transnationalism and globalization with archaeological, ethnohistorical, ethnological and sociolinguistic approaches. Thus the discipline is able to grasp the plurality of histories, diverse ways of producing knowledge and the everyday practices of people. The methodological toolkit focuses on ethnographic research based on participatory observation and qualitative interviews. This includes applying methods of analyzing images, films and media in general as well as the critical assessment of historical sources.

The area of Cultural and Social Anthropology forms part of diverse interdisciplinary research groups at the Institute for Latin American Studies such as:

• International Research Training Group “Between Spaces. Movements, Actors and Representations of Globalization”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

• desiguALdades.net- Competence Network “Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America”, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Cultural and Social Anthropology at the LAI collaborates with:

• Bachelor programme Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin where research and teaching is regionally focused on Africa and Asia
• the Institute for Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin with its regional specialization on Africa
• the Center for Area Studies (CAS) at the Freie Universität Berlin
• Ethnological Museum Berlin (Ethnologisches Museum Berlin)
• Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut

LAI’s Cultural and Social Anthropology is a member of the German Society of Anthropology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial - und Kulturanthropologie -DGSKA-) and participates as one oft he spokespersons of the regional group “Afroamerica”. It also cooperates with the Society of Ethnography (Gesellschaft für Ethnographie).

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ingrid Kummels

Sprechstundentermine finden Sie hier.

Sekretariat: Marcela Osses

Rüdesheimer Str. 54-56 - Raum 221
14197 Berlin

Tel.: 49 (0)30 838-59749
Fax: 49 (0)30 838-459749

E-Mail: osses@zedat.fu-berlin.de