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

Completed Research Projects

Bilateral Flows of Ayurveda (PPP with India)

Symbolic Inequality (PPP with India and Brasil)

Dynamics of Religion in Southeast Asia (dorisea; BMBF)

 

Promoting Social Sciences at the National University of Laos

image of Wat Sisaket sculpturesThe Faculty of Social Sciences at the National University of Laos is currently developing curricula and degree programs, creating textbooks and conducting research projects with German support. Cooperation started with a project advised by Grant Evans and funded by the Toyota Foundation in 2003. The project included seminars, training in research and translations. It expired in August 2004 and was followed by an academic partnership between Freiburg and Vientiane funded by the DAAD. Since 2009, DAAD funds cooperation between the National University of Laos and Humboldt University. Cooperation includes research on tourism and religion. Research on religion is additionally funded by BMBF within the framework of a German “Southeast Asian Studies Network” anchored at the University of Göttingen until 2014.

 




Kaleidoscopic Dialectic

The rise of the global South calls for a revision of the Eurocentric social sciences – empirically as well as theoretically. Research on the epistemological foundations of the social sciences reveals several presuppositions that are linked to the social universe, in which these sciences were developed. These presuppositions are called into question by the rise of the global South. The project of revising some of the presuppositions has led to the concept of a kaleidoscopic dialectic, which is currently developed into a book.




Speed Metal Fans

image of a crowd at metal music concertThe microcosm of speed metal fans presents a good example of the heterogeneity of social environments. To understand the world of speed metal fans, it is insufficient to draw on conventional conceptions of social structures or to use phenomenological reductions. A thorough analysis provides multifaceted social and epistemological dimensions of a subculture that has been global right from the start in the early 1980s. It also shows how alternative forms of life are created in global subcultures.