Vorstellung der RG
Die RG AFrika hat derzeit 30 Mitglieder,
die Mitgliedschaft wird ohne Formalitäten durch Eintragung auf die Mailing-List der RG hergestellt.
Anfragen an: tilograetz@yahoo.de
Sprecher: Tilo Grätz
Stellvertreter: Gregor Dobler
Die RG Afrika organisiert Workshops und Fachtagungen.
nächster Workshop:
DGV-Tagung 2011 Wien
Workshop Mediators and brokers in Africa
Gregor Dobler, Tilo Grätz 15.9.2011, 19-21 Uhr
The Workshop focusses on a particular category of actors which are conceptualised as social and cultural mediators, as agents of mediation between social, cultural or religious actors, regimes or realms of meaning. In the anthropology opf african socieity, these mediators have been also often termed brokers, middlemen, speaker, negotiator or simply agents. Initially predominantly used in political (i.e. M. Gluckman) an economic anthropology, e.g. with regard to trading relations (A. Cohen),
this category of actors has been meanwhile entered anthropological studies on much broader domains of public life, popular culture and media. With regard e.g. to the anthropological study of new arenas constituted by development projects, the concept of development brokers, mediating between donor organisations and local communities, has proven to be very relevant (T. Bierschenk, D. Mosse), as well as the notion of ethnic brokers in plural settings (C. Lentz, W. Van Binsbergen, K. Schilder, D. Welsh)) or conflict areas; communal brokers as political agents for aspiring politicians i.e. in election campaigns (D. Koter), or the idea of cultural brokers as it was applied to actors such as artists (B. Omojola), journalists or filmmakers (O. Thalén).
Finally, social mediators and counsellors in private (conjugal) conflicts or community disputes constitute an important new professional field in various African countries.
Without neglecting significant semantic differences between the mentioned terms, we are trying to look on their common conceptual basis, and discuss the usefulness and limits of such model categories. We will examine whether these concepts are always appropriate to deal with variable domains and conditions of individual agency, whether we may also address instances of non-human agency (including mediating technologies) and the ways in which local actors appropriate these notions.
The contributions will either examine these concepts from a theoretical point of view, or explore them in the light of empirical case studies.
Finally we will discuss to which extent the concepts of mediators/mediation; brokerage/ brokers etc. may be relevant to new areas of study (arts, technology, and education) and various other contemporary social and cultural processes
Schedule
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Gregor Dobler, Tilo Grätz
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Introduction |
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Sarah Fichtner University of Mainz
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Norm Entrepreneurs: Old Wine in New Bottles? |
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Martina I. Steiner University of Vienna
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Mediators or Producers of Conflicts?
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Hüsken, Thomas University of Bayreuth
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Political Culture and Local Leaders in the Cyrenaica of Libya |
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Trieselmann, Werner FU Berlin |
Cinematic
Access to Crosscultural Empowerment of Small Entrepreneurship in
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Carsten Wergin
University Halle -Wittenberg |
Discussion
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