Seminar Place and Space in Social Anthropology

The notion that places are socially constructed and that the relationships people establish with places are constitutive of them is commonplace in social anthropology. Because most places are shared by a variety of national, ethnic, and other collective actors, all of which establish different relationships with a place, a place must necessarily be understood as multiple and plural. A particular place is almost always ‘at least several kinds of things’ (Casey 1993). Rarely does ‘a people’ or ‘a culture’ inhabit ‘a place.’ Each of these concepts – ‘people,’ ‘culture,’ and ‘place’ – is instead unbound, multivocal, and processual (Blu 1996). In the process of place-making, individual life experiences guide individuals to invest places with specific meanings. At the same time, ethnic and national collectives establish specific relationships with places; it is through this assignment of meaning that a place comes to be viewed as a ‘homeland,’ ‘fatherland,’ ‘native place,’ ‘inside,’ ‘abroad,’ periphery,’ ‘center’, and so forth. Places are made with the help of specific spatial markers like temples and schools, which may become central loci of local communities. Beyond these tangible spatial markers, people constitute places through their daily activities: shopping, leisure, or family visits. While such relationships undoubtedly constitute places, place always remains a temporal event. In the course, we will discuss various spatial relationships and processes, and critically reflect on conceptual debates in the field of spatial studies in social anthropology and human geography. The course will be offered in English as a block-seminar. The various conceptual positions will be discussed in the course with the help of case studies from China and Central Asia. Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften B.A.: Hausarbeit, 6 ECTS, benotet M.A. Profilveranstaltung: Hausarbeit oder Übungsaufgaben oder Thesenpapier, 6 ECTS, unbenotet LMU München SoSe 2016 Dozent