The “new Arctic” is attracting global attention for a variety of reasons, including geopolitics, militarisation, resource extraction, wilderness tourism, and calls for environmental protection in the face of rapid climate change. Many of these activities necessitate the construction or upgrading of transport infrastructures in this relatively remote, inaccessible and scarcely-populated part of the world. While these large-scale infrastructures are mostly sponsored by outside interests, they can have profound impacts on local residents.

We propose to focus on how residents of the Arctic, both indigenous and non-indigenous, engage with these infrastructures, and to examine the intended and unintended consequences these projects have on their lives. 

Our challenge is to understand whether existing and planned transport infrastructures will support permanent human habitation and sustainable communities in the Arctic, or whether they will strengthen a trend of substituting permanent residents with “temporaries” like shift workers, tourists and military personnel. In addressing this challenge, we adopt a relational affordance perspective, which will document the material and non-material entanglements of local residents and transport infrastructures in three distinct arctic regions (Russian Arctic, North American Arctic, European Arctic). 

Our approach combines ethnographic fieldwork with mapping exercises and archival research. Our project team of anthropologists and geographers will use quantitative population data to upscale to the regional level, and regional patterns will be contrasted and compared to reach conclusions on the panarctic level. 

We will use interactive scenarios to collect input and to develop decision options. Our overarching research question – What is the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining arctic communities? – is of urgent relevance on both theoretical and practical levels, and by addressing it we will contribute locally informed results to critical conversations about arctic futures.

Agricultural investments in Africa are under substantial pressure from an international movement of critics that has raised concerns about the negative impact of large-scale land acquisition and commercial agriculture in the Global South. Investors often have to respond to these concerns, to the extent that they may feel pressured to (partly) change their practices. Yet how investors and corporations (i.e. economic enterprises) interact with their critics, such as NGOs, rural populations, social movements, journalists, and (activist) scholars, receives relatively little theoretical or empirical attention in anthropology and to a large extent also in the other social sciences.

Notwithstanding that economic enterprises face more (international) pressure to minimise the negative impact of their practices than seems to be acknowledged, the outcomes of the interactions between them and their critics are highly ambiguous. To better explain this ambiguity the proposed project will focus on a large foreign investment in Zambia. The investment offers a perfect case study for a closer investigation of how economic enterprises balance economic and moral concerns, and whether, why, and how their practices change (or not) as a result of pressure they face.

To better explain the limits and potentials of the interactions between economic enterprises and their critics the project combines two main objectives: The first objective is to obtain an empirical understanding of how the foreign investor balances economic and moral/ethical concerns, in particular in reflection upon the pressure it faces from critics, both directly targeting the investor and within the global arena more generally. The investment offers a welcome case study for analysing how processes and outcomes result from interactions between different scales, i.e. the realities on the ground; logics at the funds headquarters, the role of other relevant actors abroad, such as NGOs, politicians, and development agencies; and global interactions between corporate actors and critics more generally. As such, the project aims to offer an integrated analysis incorporating both what happens on the ground and the global dimensions of a countermovement of critics. The second objective is to build a theoretical argument based upon insights gained through the lens of the empirical case study. Anthropologists have devoted substantial attention to concerns about (global) market society, yet how economic enterprises react to criticism has so far received relatively little attention in (economic) anthropology, notwithstanding the analytical tools Polanyi’s (2001) double movement offers and the attention his ideas continue to receive. Apart from contributing to theory development in (economic) anthropology, the intention is to also speak to debates in other disciplines, such as economics, development studies and geography.

Werden die Verbindungen von Wiener Völkerkundlerinnen und Völkerkundlern zu deutschen fachspezifischen Instituten und Museen von der Zwischenkriegszeit bis in die unmittelbaren Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg einer genaueren Betrachtung unterzogen, so fallen die vergleichsweise intensiven und kontinuierlichen Kontakte zu Kolleginnen und Kollegen in Frankfurt auf.

Als Erklärung hierfür bietet sich an, dass sowohl Wien als auch Frankfurt gewissermaßen Hochburgen der kulturhistorischen Schule innerhalb der Völkerkunde darstellten, wenngleich diese auf unterschiedlichen und auch wechselnden, z.B. religiösen oder rassistischen Grundannahmen basierten. Andernorts wandten sich viele Gelehrte der Völkerkunde funktionalistischen, psychologisch-orientierten oder weiteren tendenziell gegenwartsbezogenen Ansätzen zu. Gegenstand der kulturhistorischen Richtung war hingegen meist das historisch ausgerichtete Aufdecken sogenannter Kulturkreise oder Kulturareale mit ihren jeweiligen Ausstrahlungs-Zentren. Dies war eine der bedeutendsten völkerkundlichen Ansätze in Österreich und Deutschland jener Zeit und beeinflusste andere Disziplinen, – wie z.B. Volkskunde, Archäologie, Vor- und Frühgeschichte sowie Kunstgeschichte.

Ziel des Projektes ist es aufzudecken, welche konkrete Bedeutung der kulturhistorische Ansatz mit den häufig differierenden Grundannahmen für die einzelnen Kontakte zwischen den verschiedenen Wiener und Frankfurter Völkerkundlerinnen und Völkerkundlern während der rund drei Jahrzehnte hatte, und wie sich die einzelnen Beziehungen gestalteten, als in Österreich und Deutschland unterschiedliche politische Systeme herrschten, im Fach über die Bedeutung der sogenannten Rassenkunde diskutiert wurde, die meisten Fachgelehrten sich für die Wiederaneignung der ehemals deutschen Kolonien einsetzten und welche Rolle die jeweilige politische Positionierung spielte, um nur einige Aspekte zu nennen. Konkret im Hinblick auf den Nationalsozialismus soll geprüft werden, welche Bedeutung die jeweilige Haltung zum Regime sowohl für den Forschungsansatz als auch für die einzelnen Kontakte zwischen den Gelehrten hatte und inwiefern der gemeinsame kulturhistorische Ansatz gegebenenfalls politische und ideologische Differenzen überbrücken konnte.

Anhand von Interviews, Archivmaterial, Primär- und Sekundärliteratur wird diesen und weiteren Fragen nachgegangen. Dabei werden die einzelnen Personen und ihre Arbeit im Kontext ihrer Netzwerke und unter dem jeweiligen Einfluss sozialer, politischer, nationaler und internationaler sowie regionaler Gegebenheiten betrachtet.

Allgemein soll die Studie einen Beitrag hinsichtlich der Frage leisten, wie eng persönliche Kontakte, wissenschaftliches Arbeiten und politische Positionierungen miteinander verbunden waren und welche Bedeutung diesen Beziehungen in Zeiten von Krisen und totalitären Regimen zukommen konnte.

This project seeks to investigate new forms of civic engagement pursued by far-right movements and to understand their increasing appeal among “ordinary,” socially established citizens. Instead of studying extreme right political parties or subcultures, the predominant topics in current scholarship, I will look closely at day-to-day activism, using hitherto neglected anthropological methodologies that offer unique insights into the motivations for involvement and the relations between ideas, beliefs and practices. Focusing on far-right groups acting within and between several European countries, the project will investigate the processes of translation between locally grounded and transnational far-right practices and ideologies and the tensions produced as they try to orient themselves around both transnational and local concerns.

Combining participant observation with life stories interviews and a study in the history of ideas, the project aims to explore moral claims and lived experiences of present-day far-right activists. In so doing, it calls into question well-established categorizations (West/East, moral/immoral), emphasizes the importance of emic understandings and motivations of far-right actors, and investigates the different facets of far-right organizations, which, contrary to the common label “hate groups,” increasingly put forward “humanitarian” claims and “positive” visions (of community, society, the future). It aims to bring greater clarity to political discussions within Europe by problematizing a simplistic right-left binary that obscures the nuances of different and overlapping political positions. In addition to making a critical methodological and theoretical contribution to the study of a resurgent European far right, this project will also engage with a set of more enduring issues—the shifting understanding of social solidarity and reciprocity, different means of civic engagement, and the place of morality in politics.

Since the Arab Spring in 2010 and the subsequent crises and wars, many people from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have sought refuge in Austria, with a peak in 2015. By accepting around 89,000 asylum seekers in 2015, Austria became the fourth most important host country in the European Union. Prevailing political discourses and media representations depicting the refugee both as a problem and as a suffering subject accompanied their reception, thereby reducing and restricting them to the roles of “the other” and of “care recipients”. The various care relations refugees foster, including their role as active “care providers,” have generally been left out of focus.

The REFUGEeICT project addresses the urgent need to study the life worlds of recently arrived asylum seekers and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq in Vienna by investigating the responsibilities and care relations they maintain in this specific urban context and in view of wider national and supra-national refugee policies. In particular this study explores the Internet in connection with the mobile phone and how these new communication technologies are adopted to maintain care relations across distances but also to meet care responsibilities in the new country of residence.

The two central questions of this study are: How can we understand the manifold care relations refugees are involved in? And what are the specific meanings of as well as practices and strategies involving new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as “media of care”? The study will explore refugees’ interpersonal (kin) care relations as well as refugees’ interactions with the state and non-governmental institutions that provide social services and how these realms influence each other. Moreover, it will give detailed insights into the specific role new ICTs play in these care relations.

Die meisten menschlichen Aktivitäten in der Arktis finden entlang den Küsten mit Permafrostböden statt. Diese Küsten sind zu einem der dynamischsten Ökosystemen der Erde geworden. Durch das Auftauen des Permafrosts sind diese Küsten einem raschen Wandel ausgesetzt. Die Veränderungen bedrohen die reiche Biodiversität, üben Druck auf die Gesellschaft aus und tragen zur Verletztbarkeit des globalen Klimasystems bei. NUNATARYUK ist ein Horizon2020-Projekt, das darauf abzielt, die Auswirkungen des Auftauens von Küsten- und Unterwasser-Permafrost auf das globale Klima zu ermitteln und zielgerichtete und mitgestaltete Anpassungs- und Mitigationsstrategien für die arktische Küstenpopulation zu entwickeln. Das Projekt bringt ForscherInnen verschiedener Disziplinen zusammen und die Universität ist eine von 26 im Projekt involvierten Partnerinstitutionen. ForscherInnen des Instituts für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie sind an den Arbeitspaketen 9: Adaptation and Mitigation (Anpassung und Minderung) [nunataryuk.org/science/work-packages/wp9-adaptation-and-mitigation] und 7: Natural Resources, Economy and Coastal Community Planning (Naturressourcen, Wirtschaft und Gemeindeplanung) [https://www.nunataryuk.org/science/work-packages/wp7-natural-resources-economy-and-coastal-community-planning] beteiligt. Arbeitspaket 9 untersucht Anpassungs- und Minderungsstrategien in Bezug auf die Auswirkungen des Klimawandel und des auftauenden Permafrosts und zielt in einem zweiten Schritt darauf ab, das in anderen Arbeitspaketen zusammengetragene Wissen zu integrieren, um die Entwicklung von Anpassungs- und Minderungsstrategien zu unterstützen. WP 7 zielt darauf ab, neue Datensätze über den sozioökonomischen Status arktischrn Küstenzonen zu erstellen, einschließlich neuer Möglichkeiten im Zusammenhang mit dem Klimawandel, und um einen Rahmen für Ressourcenmanagement im Kontext von tauendem Permafrost zu entwickeln. Feldforschung wird in Kanada, Svalbard, Grönland und Russland durchgeführt.

The Arctic and Subarctic have gained a surprising amount of attention in recent years. What used to be the ‘remote’ backwaters of global economic and political currents has morphed into a new frontier of geopolitics, resource extraction, and developmental designs. New transportation infrastructure often plays a critical role in the transformation of ‘remoteness’. The effects of new transportation infrastructures – accessibility, the shrinking of social and physical distance, the increased speed of connection – are not uncontested. On the one hand, those for whom ‘remoteness’ has been an asset, are often among the opponents of such developments. New transportation infrastructures are often not built to make the lives of local residents easier but to move cargo from point A to point B. Thus, there are ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of such infrastructural developments.

Forschung in der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie findet meist im engen persönlichen Kontakt mit den Beforschten statt. Die eigene Person und die eigene Biografie sind immer Teil dieses Prozesses. Ethnographische Forschung stellt hohe Ansprüche an methodische Kenntnisse, aber auch an Reziprozität, Reflexivität und Ethik. Aus diesen Gründen bringen die Archivierung und Nachnutzung von ethnographischen Daten große Herausforderungen pragmatischer, ethischer und rechtlicher Art mit sich – Herausforderungen, denen sich das Pilotprojekt stellt, um eine an die Eigenarten ethnographischer Forschung angepassten Archivierungsstrategie zu entwickeln.