Events Archive

Workshop "Slave Labor, Strong Asymmetric Dependency and Social Mobility in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Cuba 1820-1900" The workshop will focus on three areas (based on Research Area D "Work and Spatiality" of the BCDSS): 1) The work of slaves, former slaves as well as other people in strong asymmetrical dependencies in the world's largest sugar factories in the Cienfuegos region (before and after formal abolition); 2) Memory/Heritage of Slavery in three dimensions: people (Tomás Terry), current representation in museums, life histories and family histories in one of the sugar factories near Cienfuegos and in the town itself; 3) Historiography of slavery in Latin America and (possible) social mobility during an era of the great anti-colonial revolutions in Spanish-America and the Caribbean (1790-1902). - in person event only - Find the program below. To register, please click on the link under "Registration/Ticket".

In light of recent conceptual discussions on intersectionality and (im)mobility in Forced Migration Studies, the micro-sociology and embodiment of violence in Peace and Conflict Studies as well as precarity and strong asymmetrical dependencies in Dependency and Slavery Studies, the workshop invites selected scholars from these interlinked fields to jointly reflect on the intersections between gender, violence and dependencies.

This roundtable convenes experts from ZEF/Global Heritage Lab, BICC and the BCDSS to discuss the historical and contemporary impacts of extractivism across a range of global contexts and natural resources. Central questions to be discussed will entail the violent colonial origins of resource extraction, current conflicts and consequences for local communities, and possible ways into the future. Framed in a larger context of environmental (in)justice, and attending to matters of ethics, sustainability and dependency, the discussants will bring to the table their respective disciplinary backgrounds, spanning governance and conflict studies, development politics, the environmental humanities and dependency studies.

...The Influence of Intersectional Identities, Gendered Challenges and ‘Tropes of Hardship’ on Ethnographic Research. Institutional training seldom prepares early-career researchers and students sufficiently for the challenges ethnographers may face during empirical research. Too little attention is paid to the significance of the researchers’ and the interlocutors’ intersectional identities and the impact they have on the research process. Therefore, in this talk I focus on the specific challenges of ethnographic research as a gendered and embodied practice. I address the dynamic power relations between ethnographers, interlocutors and gatekeepers during anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic interviews. I illustrate how gendered, racialized and nationalized bodies and identities influence fieldwork experience, relationships and the collection and interpretation of research data.

This workshop is organised in honour of two medieval historians – Alheydis Plassmann and Björn Weiler – who spent their careers championing comparative approaches to the political culture of high medieval Europe (c. 1000-1300). Compared to earlier centuries, historians tend to remain in their own national academic ‘sub-tribes’ for this part of the Middle Ages, a consequence of the sheer variety and amount of evidence that scholars have access to from the turn of the millennium, but also of a legacy of national historical narratives, inherited from the nineteenth century, concerned with the development of the nation state. The workshop will aim to honour the legacy of these two historians by bringing together established and early-career scholars to consider how we can further our understanding of the relationship between power and dependency in medieval politics beyond a national framework.

In his talk "Intersectionality and Asymmetrical Dependencies: Theoretical Explorations and Case Studies in Religion" in the Gender Group Colloquium at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), David B. Smith will explore new possibilities for deploying intersectionality theory in asymmetrical dependency research (ADr).