2020

GISCA No.28, 2020

Paper

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin

"Beyond plagiarism: where does scientific misconduct begin? Academic integrity, misrepresentations and the Cook/Forster Collection"

Cases of violation of academic integrity among high-ranking politicians and scientists in Germany have shocked the public when it became known that these had fabricated the results of their research or committed plagiarism in their dissertation. However, where does scientific misconduct begin? There seems to exist a grey area of breaches of good research practice. I will explore it and inquire particularly into the practice of misquoting, using quotes out of context and omitting data that do not fit the author’s argument. I will also examine the conditions and circumstances under which such practices seem to have increased over the past decades. The main example, which illustrates such practices, constitutes the research, publication and exhibition projects of the Göttingen Cook/Forster Collection and the way in which they became misrepresented.

GISCA No.27, 2020

Master thesis

Max Müller

"Transnationale Lebenslinien junger Việt kiều – In der Fremde zu Hause/In der Heimat zu Besuch?!"

Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin and Vietnam, this thesis traces the life trajectories of a group of German-born children of Vietnamese migrants back to their ancestral homeland. Those return visits are often highly ambivalent experiences, ranging from the hope of ethnic belonging to the returnee's perception of being perceived as cultural naïve strangers in Vietnam. Building on the concepts of transnationalism, return and diaspora tourism, it will be shown how the research participants, despite being born and socialised in Germany, intimately engaged with Vietnam through return visits since their early childhood in the 1990s, hence fostering in them the double notion of feeling at home in Germany as well as in Vietnam. However, the returnee’s experiences seem to be highly gendered. While many young women face curfews and strict controls by their families, a lot of young men engage with Vietnam through parties, drugs, and prostitution.

GISCA No.26, 2020

Edited Volume

Nadine Sieveking (Ed.)

"Dimensionen des Religiösen und Nicht-Religiösen. Empirische Forschungen im ERC-Projekt: ‚Private Pieties. Mundane Islam and New Forms of Muslim Religiosity: Impact on Contemporary Social and Political Dynamics"

This working paper reflects on the research processes initiated in the framework of the project „Private Pieties. Mundane Islam and New Forms of Muslim Religiosity: Impact on Contemporary Social and Political Dynamics“, as conceived and directed by Roman Loimeier. It presents preliminary results of these processes regarding the overall project as well as the individual projects, carried out so far in Iran (Katja Föllmer), Egypt (Lisa Franke), Lebanon (Johanna Kühn), Senegal (Nadine Sieveking), and Tunisia (Roman Loimeier). The introduction methodologically discusses aspects of our internal debates about central concepts and questions, in particular those concerning empirical access to “private pieties” or “individual religiosities”. The following chapters refer to country-specific research conditions, as well as to individual approaches and research interests of the team-members. Thereby, the respective focus of each empirical study as well as their emphasis on different forms of religiosity or nonreligiosity are elucidated.

GISCA No.25, 2020

Master thesis

Norbert Pötzsch

"‚It‘s me - But this is Tonga‘. Das Handlungsvermögen junger Tonganer*innen"

The Kingdom of Tonga is characterized by many traditional notions, many of which are reflected in hierarchical family and social orders or specific gender roles. Various diasporic and religious influences challenge these notions, and young Tongans who have their own ideas about their future or way of life face a conflict of interests with their parents or society at large. Based on existing literature on the concept of agency, this paper develops a novel, two-part approach to this topic. First, it examines the socio-cultural, religious, and economic environment of young Tongans. Next, it analyzes three case studies that illustrate constantly recurring problems in young people’s everyday lives. These cases show how young Tongans situationally adopt specific strategies, whereby both their own and other people's agency are constituted and deployed, to realise their own goals and visions for the future.