Department ‘Integration and Conflict’
Research Period: 1999-2019
Projects | Research Areas | Publications
Research Areas - Regional Foci | Outreach & Media
Research Programme
Social actors, both groups and individuals, are integrated into social systems. This integration can happen by identification with others or by stressing differences with them and developing complementary relations. Also violent conflicts can be regarded as such social systems. Opponents may emulate each other’s strategies and symbols, or they may respond to each other with new, unanticipated strategies which may disregard rules of conduct and with which the other party cannot cope. In both cases one can speak of systemic integration.
Key concepts for the department's approach to integration and conflict are therefore the construction of identity and difference. These construction processes can be observed in different domains: kinship, friendship, language and history – commonly amalgamated to various forms of ‘ethnicity’ – and adherence to various complexes of rituals and beliefs, including corporate ‘religions’ in the modern sense. How decisions between alternative identifications are taken is modelled at the individual and supra-individual levels.
The department aims at worldwide comparisons. Further details to be read on the the subsite on research areas.
Fields of practical application comprise, among others, conflict mediation and development policy advice.
A selection of outreach activies and media coverage over the course of the last two decaeds provided by researchers of the Deparment 'Integration and Conflict' be accessed here.
Furthermore, some research resulted in producing ethnographic films. These productions can be reached here.
Online Publications
Fulbe Pastoralists in Eastern Sudan and Western Ethiopia: a documentation
(Günther Schlee)
Ethiopian Diary 2001 - 2002 / Tagebuch Äthiopien 2001-2002
(Günther Schlee)
Radio Programme / Multimedia
Deutschlandradio Kultur, 29.10.2014 (8.30 min)
Ebola-Epidemie "Man lässt keine Kranken allein". Anita Schroven im Gespräch mit Dieter Kassel.
ORF Radio "Dimensionen - Die Welt der Wissenschaft" (mo- fr, 19.05 - 19.30), (Austrian Radio), Hörfunkprogramm Ö1 (German), 25 mins (MP3-Download, 14.7 MB)
September 20th 2004 "Konferenz der Europäischen Sozialanthropologie vom 8.-12. September 2004 in Wien, von Ina Ivanceanu (MP3-Download, 17.0 MB)