RHN 51/2016 | Call
Organiser: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Volkskunde
20-23 September 2017, Marburg, Germany
Deadline for submissions: 1 September 2016
The 41st Deutsche Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (dgv) Congress
"Wirtschaften.
Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven"
"Wirtschaften" is a key topic of cultural anthropology. The German concept of Wirtschaften is broader than possible direct translations, e.g. "to keep house", "to economize" or "to make a living."
The German Dictionary from the Brothers Grimm defines "Wirtschaften" as an activity that, as a rule, provides and maintains order and whose goal is to satisfy material and immaterial needs bymeans of existing resources or created ones ["von haus aus eine ordnungstiftende und ordnungerhaltende thätigkeit" bezeichnet wird, die das Ziel hat, mit den vorhandenen oder zu schaffenden Mitteln materielle und immaterielle Bedürfnisse zu befriedigen]. The "caring administration of property" [fürsorglichen besitzverwaltung] stands in contrast to the "cheerful good life" [fröhliches wohlleben].
From today's perspective, the concept of "Wirtschaften" encompasses more than that defined by the Brothers Grimm. In addition to the practices of making a living, economic activities [wirtschaftlichen Handelns] also include managing and budgeting for the household, organizing and calculating, bargaining and trading, giving, sharing, wishing and the search of a better life. They range from socially organized cultural practices and secondary economies to private familial realizations. Economic activities [Wirtschaften] are always determined by the existing resources, the conditions formed by social rules, and the necessity to consider alternatives.
Economic activities constitute the creation of wealth on one side and the exploitation of humans and nature on the other. It is embedded in power structures facilitating exclusion and inclusion. It is prone to crisis and can fail. However, it can also help safeguard the social system, promote innovations and satisfy basic needs. It displays a "Janus face" phenomenon of functional and dysfunctional elements.
The 41st Deutschen Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (dgv) Congress aims to look at this complex topic in detail from a cultural anthropological perspective. The details to be examined include the experiences individuals gain in specified social structures and economic conditions, the strategies and methods they develop in the process, and the forms of community action and group solidarity they constitute. The variety of possible topics can be divided into three main groups:
1. Practices, Technologies and Materialities
Domestic forms of economic activity and managing include, for example, negotiated or traditional responsibil-ities and divisions of labor, methods of economizing in times of shortage, providentstockpiling of supplies, and the handling of finances. In addition to the areas of consumption, the mechanization and standardization of private households and economies of the body [Körperökonomie], the secondary and ethic economies play a significant role in this group: cultural and creative industries, practices of subsistence and self-sufficiency. Furthermore, the dynamic technological context of the economy needs to be considered, such as the increasing use of algorithms for economic logics and strategies in a globally networked trade of goods with specific modes of added value, local production and exploitation.
2. Discourses, Meanings and Concepts
Economic practices are constantly subjected to specific discourses in which their guiding logic and meaning can gradually develop. On the level of the alternative economy that is currently widely debated, a discourse on sustainability, for example, can be identified that gives prominence to aspects of raising awareness to save precious resources and social sustainability. Here a criticism towards consumption is expressed that questions economic forms, such as the discourses on adequate basic incomes, environmental standards and global equity. In addition to attributing value as innovation or technological development, Utopian structures and nostalgic, romanticized projections of traditional economic activity can be observed.
3. Knowledge, Representation and Exchange
Specific knowledge about economic forms is made publicly accessible by being introduced into and modified by advertisement, marketing, and market and innovation research. Also the representation of economic actions in museums that are either concretely based on local and historic conditions or that have developed transnationally play a role in the articulation and the transfer of economic knowledge, as well as the popular cultural field that creates the aesthetics and sensuality of Wirtschaften.
The dgv congresses have always considered themselves as forums in which various research approaches are reflected on theoretically and methodically, with an empirical profoundness and political engagement, and which welcomes unconventional perspectives. Accordingly, this congress aims to be a site for the discussion and debate of the historical as well as the contemporary, the urban and the rural, the individual and the communal, the hegemonic/sovereign and the emancipatory, the normative and the irrational, as well as the moral, the typical, and the alternative.
For more information see: http://www.d-g-v.org/