Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

PUBLIC TALK & BOOK REVIEW

Islam in Central Asia and The Caucasus since the Fall of the Soviet Union, Hurst & Company: London, 2018,

by Bayram Balci

Wednesday, 27 November, 2019, 4:00 - 6:00 pm (c.t.)

IAAW, Invalidenstraße 118, room 217

Host: Querschnittsbereich Islam in den Gesellschaften Asiens und Afrikas, IAAW

Blurb:

With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, a major turning point in all former Soviet republics, Central Asian and Caucasian countries began to reflect on their history and identities. As a consequence of their opening up to the global exchange of ideas, various strains of Islam and trends in Islamic thought have nourished the Islamic revival that had already started in the context of glasnost and perestroika—from Turkey, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and from the Indian subcontinent; the four regions with strong ties to Central Asian and Caucasian Islam in the years before Soviet occupation.

Bio: Bayram Balci is the Director of the Institut Francais d'Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul and a permant researcher at CERI Schience Po in Paris. In his new book, he seeks to analyse how these new Islamic influences have reached local societies and how they have interacted with pre-existing religious belief and practice. Combining exceptional erudition with rare first-hand research, Balci's book provides a sophisticated account of both the internal dynamics and external influences in the evolution of Islam in the region.

3 credit points, without grade

BA Area Studies Asia/Africa, electives and visiting students

Time: Thursdays 14-16 (from 24.10.19)

Room: Invalidenstraße 118, Room 209

In the first phase the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ with be examined with regard to fear and
compared with other concepts in order to develop a usable definition. In the second phase
the participants will be tasked with visually capturing objects in Berlin which invoke a
suspected Islamophobia. In the third phase these objects will be analysed in terms of the
construction and spread of fear, with the use of various scientific methods. The image and
the results of the analysis will be placed online alongside contextualising information such
as location and associated discourses with the aim of contributing to the discussion on
‘Islamophobia’ in public.

The participant number is limited to 10 students. To register please email fiona.katherine.smith [at] hu-berlin.de, stating your name and study discipline. Please note the class will be taught in German.

The launch of the new collected volume 'Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Translocality Beyong Central Asia and the Caucasus', eds. Manja Stephan-Emmrich and Philipp Schröder (2018), will take place on:

Thursday, 6th December, 2018, from 19:00 onwards at Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien (ZOiS), Mohrenstraße 60, 10117 Berlin.

The event will be in English and German.

For more information, please consult the venue's website.

The anthology, Manja Stephan-Emmrich and Philipp Schröder, eds., Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Translocality Beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018., is now available for download here.

Description:

"This collection brings together a variety of anthropological, historical and sociological case studies from Central Asia and the Caucasus to examine the concept of translocality. The chapters scrutinize the capacity of translocality to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link places, people and institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Russia, China and the United Arab Emirates.

Illuminating translocality as a productive concept for studying cross‐regional connectivities and networks, this volume is an important contribution to a lively field of academic discourse. Following new directions in Area Studies, the chapters aim to overcome ‘territorial containers’ such as the nation‐state or local community, and instead emphasize the significance of processes of translation and negotiation for understanding how meaningful localities emerge beyond conventional boundaries.

Structured by the four themes ‘crossing boundaries’, ‘travelling ideas’, ‘social and economic movements’ and ‘pious endeavours’, this volume proposes three conceptual approaches to translocality: firstly, to trace how it is embodied, narrated, virtualized or institutionalized within or in reference to physical or imagined localities; secondly, to understand locality as a relational concept rather than a geographically bounded unit; and thirdly, to consider cross‐border traders, travelling students, business people and refugees as examples of non-elite mobilities that provide alternative ways to think about what ‘global’ means today.

Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas will be of interest to students and scholars of the anthropology, history and sociology of Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as for those interested in new approaches to Area Studies.

The VolkswagenStiftung (Volkswagen Foundation) has generously contributed towards the publication of this volume."

Paper proposals are invited for the panel "Migration, tourism, business: Reconfiguring Muslim pilgrimage through the lens of women's new mobilitie" (P 100), convened by Manja Stephan-Emmrich, Marjo Buitelaar (University of Groningen), and Viola Thimm (University of Hamburg).

The abstract and other details can be found here.

Deadline: 9th April, 2018

For more information on the project 'Life of Muslims in German', please click here.

Dear colleagues, dear students, dear interested friends, 

The cross-section Islam in Asian and African societies and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg together with the Centre for East European and International Studies Berlin (ZOiS) happily invites you to the launch of our edited volume that concludes our research project "Translocal Goods: Education, Work, and Commodities between Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, China, and the Arab Emirates" (2013-2017, funded by VolkswagenStiftung). The launch takes place on Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 7pm at ZOiS in presence of the two editors and the two discussants Dr. Tsypylma Darieva (ZOiS Berlin) and PD Dr. Katrin Bromber (Leibniz-ZMO). Please be welcome and find more information below or here: 

https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/querschnitt/islam/profil/aktuell/book-launch-mobilities-boundaries-and-travelling-ideas

Book Launch (in English)

Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas. Rethinking Translocality Beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus, ed. by Manja Stephan-Emmrich and Philipp Schröder, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2018. 

'Translocality' has become an important concept in social sciences and humanities for depicting the social and cultural representations of a globalizing world 'from the ground'. But does the concept also have the capacity to describe, in new ways, the multiple mobilities, exchange practices and globalizing processes that link people, institutions, and goods in Central Asia and the Caucasus with others in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East? 
Mobilities, Boundaries and Travelling Ideas seeks to explore this question. Collecting anthropological, historical and sociological case studies, the edited volume aims to overcome 'territorial containers' such as the nation‐state or local community, which have long dominated research on mobility and migration in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Following new directions in area studies, the book instead emphasizes the significance of processes of translation and negotiation for understanding how meaningful localities emerge beyond conventional boundaries. 

At ZOiS, the editors and two experts will discuss the book's contribution to new epistemological and methodological perspectives in the transdisciplinary study of mobilities, migrations, and diasporas in and beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus, two regions sharing a long history of travel, migration, and connectedness. 

Moderation: Anne-Sophie Gast (ZOiS)
 

gez. Prof. Dr. Manja Stephan-Emmrich