Blog Series

So far, eight blogs have been released, each of which are supervised by different editorial boards.

1)
The first – Cultural Relativism and Enlightenment – was published in December 2016 as a reaction to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, in which social and cultural anthropology was accused of justifying inhuman practices and of having a lack of distance from its subject matter. The contributions are mainly in German.

Editorial Board: Christoph Antweiler (Bonn), Ehler Voss (Bremen/Siegen), Martin Zillinger (Köln)

2)
The first blog was superseded in October 2017 by a second blog, which is still running today. Under the title “How to move on with Humboldt’s legacy? Rethinking ethnographic collections“ – Wie weiter mit Humboldts Erbe? Ethnographische Sammlungen neu denken” it deals with the opposite accusation of colonialism and, on the occasion of current discussions about the concept and design of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, also asks about innovative and contemporary approaches to ethnographic collections. To illustrate the need for expanding the discussion, which requires a broader cooperative exchange between the global North and the global South, we have changed the name of the blog to DCNtR in 2020. A detailed explanation of the name change can be found here. The blog is bilingual in German and English.

Editorial Board: Anna Brus (Universität Siegen), Larissa Förster (Berlin), Gabriel Schimmeroth (Hamburg), Michi Knecht (Bremen) & Martin Zillinger (Köln)
Former board members: Verena Rodatus (Berlin) 2017-2019 & Ehler Voss (Bremen/Siegen) 2017-2021

3)
The third blog was prompted by the controversy surrounding the recent renaming of the “German Ethnological Society / Deutsche Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde (DGV) ” to “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (DGSKA) (the English title of this association had since long been „German Anthropological Association“). Under the title What’s in a name, the blog asked what this renaming stands for, i.e. what it conveys about the history, present and future of this discipline in German speaking countries. The contributions are mainly in German. The blog ran from April to August 2018.

Editorial Board: Christoph Antweiler (Bonn), Michi Knecht (Bremen), Ehler Voss (Bremen/Siegen), Martin Zillinger (Köln)

4)
A fourth blog ran from October 2018 to February 2019 concerning the question Why Anthropology? Current Student Views. The editorial work was done by a group of anthropology students at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, who designed the blog as part of a seminar offered by Ehler Voss on the topic of “Publishing in Online Media” and were responsible for supervising it. The contributions are mainly in German.

Editorial Board: Clarissa Bach, Alexandra Ditscher, Charlotte Kaiser, Christopher Klapperich, Judith König & Matthias Merbitz-Zahradnik (all anthropology students at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz)

5)
In September 2019 a new blog with the title The end of negotiations!? started. The blog aims to critically discuss current processes in which the potentially unlimited dynamics of social negotiations are brought to an end by acts of closure or opened to new negotiations after a temporary closure. The blog prepares for the conference of the same name of the German Society for Cultural and Social Anthropology, which will take place in Constance at the end of September.

Editorial Board: Thomas Kirsch (Konstanz), Michi Knecht (Bremen), Ehler Voss (Bremen/Siegen)

6)
In May 2020, Curare was launched in cooperation with the blog “Medical Anthropology” of the AG Medical Anthropology. Zeitschrift für Medizinethnologie and the Cologne Global South Studies Center (GSSC) the blog Witnessing Corona, whose contributions attempt to accompany the corona pandemic from a social science and (medical) anthropological perspective. The contributions range from theory or ethnography-based articles to more personal reflections.

Editorial Board: Hansjörg Dilger (Freie Universität Berlin), Clemens Eisenmann (University of Siegen), Martina Gockel-Frank (GSSC), Clemens Greiner (GSSC), Claudia Lang (Leipzig University), Dominik Mattes (Freie Universität Berlin), Christine Rath (GSSC), Anna Schreiber (GSSC), Annette Steffny (GSSC), Nasima Selim (Freie Universität Berlin), Mirko Uhlig (University of Mainz), Ehler Voss (University of Bremen)

7)
In October 2020, the editorial team of the journal Curare hast started publishing the Corona diaries they had collected in the months before. In March, the editorial team called for the writing of (auto-)ethnographic diaries in the strict sense of the term, which would chronicle the events in their own environment and thereby generate ethnographic material that makes it possible to reconstruct collectively in retrospect what is not comprehensible at the moment of crisis.

Editorial Board: Clemens Eisenmann (University of Siegen), Janina Kehr (University of Bern), Helmar Kurz (University of Münster), Mirko Uhlig (University of Mainz), Ehler Voss (University of Bremen & Siegen)

8)
The blog Fieldwork meets crisis is based on an autumn school of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology (DGSKA) in Octpber 2020 and takes its starting point in the current pandemic moment and discusses its methodological and epistemological implications for the discipline.

Editorial Team: Andrea Behrends (University of Bayreuth), Mirko Göpfert (Goethe-University, Frankfurt a.M.), Thomas Kirsch (University of Konstanz), Minh Nguyen (University of Bielefeld), Anna Lisa Ramella (University of Cologne), Magnus Treiber (Ludwig-Maxiliams-Universität, Munich), Thomas Stodulka (Freie Universität, Berlin), Asta Vonderau (Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg), Martin Zillinger (University of Cologne)