Current Courses

Ethnologie der Katastrophen

Instructors: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Heike Drotbohm
Shortname: Katastrophen
Course No.: 07.798.710
Course Type: Seminar
Format: online

Recommended reading list

Introductory Reading
Fassin, Didier & Richard Rechtman 2007: The Empire of Trauma. An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton UP.
Hoffman, Susanna M. & Anthony Oliver-Smith (eds.) 2002: Catastrophe & Culture. The Anthropology of Disaster. Santa Fe: SAR.
Oliver-Smith, Anthony & Susanna M. Hoffman (eds.) 2020 [1999] The Angry Earth. Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. London, NY: Routledge.
Scott-Smith, Tom 2020: On an Empty Stomach. Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief. Ithaca & London: Cornell UP.

Contents

Disasters are both physical and social events that are perceived and interpreted differently by individuals and groups. In their unfolding, disasters disclose the linkages and the interpenetrations of natural forces, power structures and social arrangements, and cultural values and belief systems. This seminar uses disaster as a lens through which to study emerging social relations, ethical responsibilities and political responses. Based on ethnographies on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the Kobe earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, epidemics and pandemics such as Ebola and Corona, and other events, we ask what forms of social attachment and civic awareness emerge, what type of knowledge is made relevant and what social consequences political recognition, or its refusal, can have for those affected. Ultimately, these examples will also serve to problematize key terms such as vulnerability, victim and trauma, but also the distinction between crises and disasters or 'man-made' and 'natural' events.

Dates

Date (Day of the week) Time Location
11/05/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
11/12/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
11/19/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
11/26/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
12/03/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
12/10/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
12/17/2020 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
01/07/2021 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
01/14/2021 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
01/21/2021 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
01/28/2021 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
02/04/2021 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45
02/11/2021 (Thursday) 10:15 - 11:45