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Olaf Zenker

Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty Member

University of Fribourg, Sozialanthropologie, Faculty Member

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Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

University College London

Peter Rohrbacher

Austrian Academy of Sciences

Michaela Schaeuble

University of Bern

Christoph Lange

University of Cologne

Martin Zillinger

University of Cologne

Universität zu Köln

University of Bern

Michael Schnegg

University of Hamburg

Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln

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Papers by Olaf Zenker

Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’: Towards a New Anthropology of Justice in the Anthropocene: Anthropological (Re)Turns

by Anna-Lena Wolf and Olaf Zenker

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2024

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’ is animated ... more This introduction to the special issue on ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’ is animated by the central intuition that the new anthropology of justice should be brought into closer conversation with current debates about the Anthropocene. Unpacking this assumption, we first discuss the potentials and limitations of recent anthropological engagements with justice, and develop an analytical definition of this key concept for both ethnographic and political use. We then turn to debates about the Anthropo-cene and propose disassembling the name-giving global subject of this new epoch – humanity – through a multidimensional justice lens. The third part highlights the mutual benefits of both debates, notably by jointly becoming attuned to the multidimensionality of conflicting concerns for justice and keeping in focus the different roles that various beings, human and non-human, potentially play here. In part four, we discuss the five contributions to this special issue, demonstrating the work of the proposed analytical concept in advancing our understanding of justice in the Anthropocene. Finally, we recapitulate the extended argument put forward in this text for an anthropological turn – or rather: a return leading to a new anthropology (not only) of justice in the Anthropocene, rediscovering and reclaiming the human as an indispensable category of analysis and action, promising useful political returns.

Collaborations and Contestations in Publicly Engaged Anthropologies: An Exposition

Collaborations and contestations have always been present in collaborative research, and many cas... more Collaborations and contestations have always been present in collaborative research, and many case studies illustrate related conundrums. Yet, we argue that the concrete challenges emerging within dynamics of collaborations and contestations deserve much more focused attention, especially in contexts of publicly engaged anthropological work. This essay introduces a special issue of seven highly diverse contributions that are all animated by, and oriented towards, this common concern. Against the backdrop of situating this problematique within broader developments in increasingly diverse anthropologies of recent decades, we discuss the different contributions in light of their specific insights regarding collaborations and contestations. Based on these fine-grained case studies, we draw four transversal conclusions that we see as relevant also for publicly engaged anthropologies beyond the individual contributions that are assembled here.

New laws against an old state: land restitution as a transition to justice in post-apartheid South Africa?

De-judicialisation, outsourced review and all too flexible bureaucracies in South African land restitution

The transitional justice of land restitution in post- apartheid South Africa

New laws against the old state: the juridification and judicialisation of politics in the South African land restitution

Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins: Flag, nation and symbolism in Europe and America

Response to Joep Leerssen

I am grateful to Joep Leerssen for his insightful comments and additional historical contextualis... more I am grateful to Joep Leerssen for his insightful comments and additional historical contextualisation. As a matter of fact, I agree with many of his observations and do not necessarily see them as contradicting my argumentation. However, Leerssen's reply does identify a number of points that are apparently in need of further clarification if only to establish where we do actually differ. To begin with, the reason to follow Rogers Brubaker and others in arguing for the necessity of replacing the civic-ethnic divide with several analytical dimensions consists in the observation that this master dichotomy is analytically and normatively ambiguous and unduly conflates various facets of the complex phenomenon of nationalism that are better analysed separately. The ideal-typical nature of this dichotomy is not really the problem here; hence, I do not conceive my ideal-typical usage of autochthony and activism, including my distinction between individualised and collectivised autochthony, as such as a problem: empirical cases often combine elements of individualised and collectivised autochthony -for instance, consider legislation on Irish citizenship (especially after 2004)and can be profitably described by such ideal-types. Second, Leerssen rightly points out that the discourse of nationalism typically conflates 'ethnos' and 'demos' (i.e. notions of sharing an ancestral and/or cultural 'ethnic' past as well as sharing a present socio-economic demos of common territoriality) and that nationalism can thus be defined as 'the geopolitical application of cultural [and/or descent-related] self-awareness.' In fact, I start from that very assumption myself and then attempt to specify the ways in which the causal relationship between these two sides of the nationalist coin can be further conceptualised: Is the nation ideal-typically seen as rooted in notions of shared descent and/or shared culture (i.e. not only in the purely biological sense of descent, as Leerssen purports my argument to be), which then get(s) geopolitically applied? Or is the nation conceived of as a geopolitically circumscribed community that over time ends up with a common culture and/or common descent? For many people, this question is truly academic precisely because both ideal-typical causal logics seem to lead to the same result. However, in cases of 'classificatory anomaly' these issues do matter. From the perspective of many Irish Catholics in West Belfast, local Protestants in Northern Ireland constitute such a classificatory anomaly, in sharing with Catholics their place of birth -namely, 'the one and only Ireland' -while differing from what is locally conceived as distinctive Irish culture. The fact that many Irish Catholics ultimately insist on the Irishness of Nations and Nationalism 15 (4), 2009, 720-722.

The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa

The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa, 2018

Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America

Diversität" in der deutschen Migrationsverwaltung: zur Domestizierung von Pluralität

Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Der Text dieser Publik... more Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Der Text dieser Publikation wird unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) veröffentlicht. Den vollständigen Lizenztext finden Sie unter: /licenses /by-nc d/4.0 /legalcode.de Verwertung, die den Rahmen der CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Lizenz überschreitet ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlags unzulässig. Das gilt insbesondere für die Bearbeitung und Übersetzungen des Werkes. Die in diesem Werk enthaltenen Bilder und sonstiges Drittmaterial unterliegen ebenfalls der genannten Creative Commons Lizenz, sofern sich aus der Quellenangabe/Abbildungslegende nichts anderes ergibt. Sofern das betreffende Material nicht unter der genannten Creative Commons Lizenz steht und die betreffende Handlung nicht nach gesetzlichen Vorschriften erlaubt ist, ist für die oben aufgeführten Weiterverwendungen des Materials die Einwilligung des jeweiligen Rechteinhabers einzuholen.

South African Homelands as Frontiers: Apartheid’s Loose Ends in the Postcolonial Era – An Introduction

South African Homelands as Frontiers

Home, lands and homelands in post-apartheid South Africa (Workshop 030)

Flag, nation and symbolism in Europe and America, edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins

Republicanism, dissenters and the politics of meta-trauma in the Northern Irish conflict. Forschungskolloquium, Department of Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg/Südafrika, 14. Oktober 2010

Kommentar: (Diskussionsbeitrag zu Meyer's und Schareika's "Neoklassische Feldforschung)

Zeitschrift Fur Ethnologie, 2009

Crisis of the State. War and Social Upheaval, edited by Bruce Kapferer and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen

De facto exclusion through discursive inclusion: autochthony in discourses on Irishness and politics in Catholic West Belfast

Paideuma, 2006

Discourses on autochthony, ie on a proclaimed&#x27;original&#x27;link between a territory... more

Irish identity and the Irish language in Catholic West Belfast

The Irish language and Irish identity in Catholic West Belfast: practical experiences and representations among Gaeilgeoirí

Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’: Towards a New Anthropology of Justice in the Anthropocene: Anthropological (Re)Turns

by Anna-Lena Wolf and Olaf Zenker

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2024

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’ is animated ... more This introduction to the special issue on ‘Justice in the Anthropocene’ is animated by the central intuition that the new anthropology of justice should be brought into closer conversation with current debates about the Anthropocene. Unpacking this assumption, we first discuss the potentials and limitations of recent anthropological engagements with justice, and develop an analytical definition of this key concept for both ethnographic and political use. We then turn to debates about the Anthropo-cene and propose disassembling the name-giving global subject of this new epoch – humanity – through a multidimensional justice lens. The third part highlights the mutual benefits of both debates, notably by jointly becoming attuned to the multidimensionality of conflicting concerns for justice and keeping in focus the different roles that various beings, human and non-human, potentially play here. In part four, we discuss the five contributions to this special issue, demonstrating the work of the proposed analytical concept in advancing our understanding of justice in the Anthropocene. Finally, we recapitulate the extended argument put forward in this text for an anthropological turn – or rather: a return leading to a new anthropology (not only) of justice in the Anthropocene, rediscovering and reclaiming the human as an indispensable category of analysis and action, promising useful political returns.

Collaborations and Contestations in Publicly Engaged Anthropologies: An Exposition

Collaborations and contestations have always been present in collaborative research, and many cas... more Collaborations and contestations have always been present in collaborative research, and many case studies illustrate related conundrums. Yet, we argue that the concrete challenges emerging within dynamics of collaborations and contestations deserve much more focused attention, especially in contexts of publicly engaged anthropological work. This essay introduces a special issue of seven highly diverse contributions that are all animated by, and oriented towards, this common concern. Against the backdrop of situating this problematique within broader developments in increasingly diverse anthropologies of recent decades, we discuss the different contributions in light of their specific insights regarding collaborations and contestations. Based on these fine-grained case studies, we draw four transversal conclusions that we see as relevant also for publicly engaged anthropologies beyond the individual contributions that are assembled here.

New laws against an old state: land restitution as a transition to justice in post-apartheid South Africa?

De-judicialisation, outsourced review and all too flexible bureaucracies in South African land restitution

The transitional justice of land restitution in post- apartheid South Africa

New laws against the old state: the juridification and judicialisation of politics in the South African land restitution

Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins: Flag, nation and symbolism in Europe and America

Response to Joep Leerssen

I am grateful to Joep Leerssen for his insightful comments and additional historical contextualis... more I am grateful to Joep Leerssen for his insightful comments and additional historical contextualisation. As a matter of fact, I agree with many of his observations and do not necessarily see them as contradicting my argumentation. However, Leerssen's reply does identify a number of points that are apparently in need of further clarification if only to establish where we do actually differ. To begin with, the reason to follow Rogers Brubaker and others in arguing for the necessity of replacing the civic-ethnic divide with several analytical dimensions consists in the observation that this master dichotomy is analytically and normatively ambiguous and unduly conflates various facets of the complex phenomenon of nationalism that are better analysed separately. The ideal-typical nature of this dichotomy is not really the problem here; hence, I do not conceive my ideal-typical usage of autochthony and activism, including my distinction between individualised and collectivised autochthony, as such as a problem: empirical cases often combine elements of individualised and collectivised autochthony -for instance, consider legislation on Irish citizenship (especially after 2004)and can be profitably described by such ideal-types. Second, Leerssen rightly points out that the discourse of nationalism typically conflates 'ethnos' and 'demos' (i.e. notions of sharing an ancestral and/or cultural 'ethnic' past as well as sharing a present socio-economic demos of common territoriality) and that nationalism can thus be defined as 'the geopolitical application of cultural [and/or descent-related] self-awareness.' In fact, I start from that very assumption myself and then attempt to specify the ways in which the causal relationship between these two sides of the nationalist coin can be further conceptualised: Is the nation ideal-typically seen as rooted in notions of shared descent and/or shared culture (i.e. not only in the purely biological sense of descent, as Leerssen purports my argument to be), which then get(s) geopolitically applied? Or is the nation conceived of as a geopolitically circumscribed community that over time ends up with a common culture and/or common descent? For many people, this question is truly academic precisely because both ideal-typical causal logics seem to lead to the same result. However, in cases of 'classificatory anomaly' these issues do matter. From the perspective of many Irish Catholics in West Belfast, local Protestants in Northern Ireland constitute such a classificatory anomaly, in sharing with Catholics their place of birth -namely, 'the one and only Ireland' -while differing from what is locally conceived as distinctive Irish culture. The fact that many Irish Catholics ultimately insist on the Irishness of Nations and Nationalism 15 (4), 2009, 720-722.

The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa

The State and the Paradox of Customary Law in Africa, 2018

Flag, Nation and Symbolism in Europe and America

Diversität" in der deutschen Migrationsverwaltung: zur Domestizierung von Pluralität

Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Der Text dieser Publik... more Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Der Text dieser Publikation wird unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) veröffentlicht. Den vollständigen Lizenztext finden Sie unter: /licenses /by-nc d/4.0 /legalcode.de Verwertung, die den Rahmen der CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Lizenz überschreitet ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlags unzulässig. Das gilt insbesondere für die Bearbeitung und Übersetzungen des Werkes. Die in diesem Werk enthaltenen Bilder und sonstiges Drittmaterial unterliegen ebenfalls der genannten Creative Commons Lizenz, sofern sich aus der Quellenangabe/Abbildungslegende nichts anderes ergibt. Sofern das betreffende Material nicht unter der genannten Creative Commons Lizenz steht und die betreffende Handlung nicht nach gesetzlichen Vorschriften erlaubt ist, ist für die oben aufgeführten Weiterverwendungen des Materials die Einwilligung des jeweiligen Rechteinhabers einzuholen.

South African Homelands as Frontiers: Apartheid’s Loose Ends in the Postcolonial Era – An Introduction

South African Homelands as Frontiers

Home, lands and homelands in post-apartheid South Africa (Workshop 030)

Flag, nation and symbolism in Europe and America, edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins

Republicanism, dissenters and the politics of meta-trauma in the Northern Irish conflict. Forschungskolloquium, Department of Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg/Südafrika, 14. Oktober 2010

Kommentar: (Diskussionsbeitrag zu Meyer's und Schareika's "Neoklassische Feldforschung)

Zeitschrift Fur Ethnologie, 2009

Crisis of the State. War and Social Upheaval, edited by Bruce Kapferer and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen

De facto exclusion through discursive inclusion: autochthony in discourses on Irishness and politics in Catholic West Belfast

Paideuma, 2006

Discourses on autochthony, ie on a proclaimed&#x27;original&#x27;link between a territory... more

Irish identity and the Irish language in Catholic West Belfast

The Irish language and Irish identity in Catholic West Belfast: practical experiences and representations among Gaeilgeoirí

Digital Infrastructuring as Institutional Affect(ing) in German Migration Management

Zenker, Sureau & Götzelmann (2023): Digital infrastructuring as institutional affect(ing) in German migration management. In: Churcher, Calkins, Böttger & Slaby (eds.): Affect, power, and institutions. New York (Routledge): 105-124 , 2023

This chapter is a critical ethnographic reflection on how institutional affect is channelled and ... more This chapter is a critical ethnographic reflection on how institutional affect is channelled and transformed through processes of digitalisation in German migration management. It specifically relates to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge [BAMF]). BAMF is a federal agency under the Ministry of the Interior and is commissioned to process asylum applications. Once the federal asylum process ends, the responsibility for persons who remain in Germany-either with recognised refugee status, subsidiary protection status, or mere toleration (Duldung)-shifts to municipal immigration offices (Ausländerbehörden). In 2005, BAMF acquired a second pillar of responsibilities: the coordination and management of integration policies. This includes managing and accounting for language and integration courses. In this chapter, we deal with two digital infrastructures pertaining to both responsibilities of this state bureaucracy. The first refers to the "MILo" (Migrations-InfoLogistik; Migration Info Logistics) country-of-origin database which is regularly updated by BAMF employees and used by BAMF decision-makers, and others, in asylum determinations. The second refers to the "BerD" software (Berufsbezogene Deutschsprachförderung; German for Professional Purposes), which is essential for the internal management of language courses offered by external language schools. As crucial institutions of globalised modernity, the seemingly rational, expertisebased indifference of state bureaucracies is often discussed. However, analysing bureaucracies primarily as rule-oriented, impersonal, and self-contained organisations occludes three essential characteristics at the heart of our analysis. The first concerns bureaucratic sentiments as forms of affectively and emotionally grounded normative regimes of meaning and decision-making. As we elaborate on below, these relatively stable discursive regimes offer conceptualisations, evaluations, and normative expectations, if not prescriptions, of how bureaucracies should work. They are affectively charged and emotionally grounded and

»Diversität« in der deutschen Migrationsverwaltung: Zur Domestizierung von Pluralität

Umkämpfte Vielfalt: Affektive Dynamiken institutioneller Diversifizierung. Frankfurt (Campus Verlag): 66-94, 2021

Dieser Beitrag verortet gegenwärtige diversity policies sowie gelebte Erfahrungen der Institution... more Dieser Beitrag verortet gegenwärtige diversity policies sowie gelebte Erfahrungen der Institutionalisierung von Vielfalt in der deutschen Verwaltung im Kontext größerer Debatten um die Pluralisierung der Gesellschaft auf der einen Seite sowie die Transformation des öffentlichen Dienstes auf der anderen Seite. Staatliches Handeln wirkt durch die ihm zugrunde liegenden Prozesse der Datenerhebung sowie der rechtlichen, administrativen und sozialstatistischen Klassifizierung und Kategorienbildung an der Produktion gesellschaftlicher »Diversität« mit. Indem die soziale Realität entlang solcher Kategorien handhabbar gemacht wird, werden zugleich auch zukünftige Formen der Interaktion präfiguriert und Anreize geschaffen, sich vorhandener Kategorisierungen von »Diversität« zu bedienen. Besonders deutlich wird dies in der Migrations-und Integrationsverwaltung, in der eine enorme rechtliche, ökonomische, soziale und kulturelle Pluralität prozessiert, in institutionalisierte »Diversität« transformiert und damit domestiziert wird: Um ein kritisches Bewusstsein dafür offenzuhalten, dass die scheinbar neutrale, bloß abbildende »Diversität« immer eine je spezifische und damit kontingente Domestizierung von Pluralität darstellt, setzen wir diesen Begriff durchgängig in Anführungszeichen. Eine Betrachtung im Zeitverlauf, die die Wirkmächtigkeit vergangener Kategorisierungen zu gegenwärtigen digitalen Datenverarbeitungs-und Klassifizierungspraktiken in Bezug setzt, macht diese vielfältigen, teils gegenläufigen, häufig nicht reibungslosen und stets affektiv grundierten Transformations-und Domestizierungsprozesse sichtbar. 1

Mind the gaps: renegotiating South African legal pluralism within the post-apartheid state

Normative spaces and legal dynamics in Africa. London (Routledge), 2020

6 Why the individual must be defended – seemingly against all anthropological odds

Language and Identity

Language and identity constitutes a transdisciplinary research area dealing with how identities a... more Language and identity constitutes a transdisciplinary research area dealing with how identities are indexed, expressed, and constructed through variable language uses. Contemporary research demonstrates the complex nature of linguistic practices and emphasizes the dynamic and constructed nature of identities in their multiple dimensions (which may be related to nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and disability, and so on). Identities are expressed and constructed through language usage; this may include “indexicality,” when certain linguistic forms systematically co‐occurring with particular identities transform into indices of the latter. At the same time, languages can also become the objects of ideological constructions of identity, depicting linguistic forms as identity markers allegedly expressing, if not constituting, the very nature of the identity at issue (a process described as “iconization”). In practice, both indexicality and iconization often come together and reinforce each other, frequently creating the appearance of a seemingly “natural” connection between language and identity.

Sentiment (Affective Societies: Key Concepts)

by Jonas Bens and Olaf Zenker

Affective Societies: Key Concepts, 2019

When affective and emotional dynamics relate to the establishment of relatively stable evaluative... more When affective and emotional dynamics relate to the establishment of relatively stable evaluative regimes of meaning, which govern, structure and regulate how people make sense of the world and how the world appears in people’s sense-making, one can apply the term sentiment. Investigating sentiments is therefore central for coming to terms with political, legal, religious, and moral orders and the myriad of practices that bring them about, challenge them, transform them and aim to stabilize and reproduce them. The concept of sentiment provides an important tool to analyse the normative dimension of affective societies.

Gerechtigkeitsgefühle: Eine Einführung

by Jonas Bens and Olaf Zenker

Was ist gerecht? Wer diese Frage stellt, ahnt schon, dass die Antwort darauf nicht leichtfallen w... more Was ist gerecht? Wer diese Frage stellt, ahnt schon, dass die Antwort darauf nicht leichtfallen wird. Denn Menschen beantworten diese Frage zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten, in unterschiedlichen Kontexten, in unterschiedlichen Gefühlslagen, vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher Sachverhalte, eben höchst unterschiedlich. Warum das so ist, und unter welchen Bedingungen Menschen G-rechtigkeitsbewertungen vornehmen, ist eine wichtige Frage für die empirische Rechtsforschung. Hierzu möchte der vorliegende Band mit einer spezifischen Perspektive beitragen: mit dem Blick auf Gerechtigkeitsgefühle. Wir gehen davon aus, dass Affekte und Emotionen für die Gerechtigkeitsbewertungen von Menschen eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Gerechtigkeitsbewertungen sehen wir in der Nähe des Problems der Legitimität, also der Frage, wann und unter welchen Umständen Menschen rechtliche oder quasi-rechtliche Ordnungen als legitim, d.h. als gerechtfertigt und unterstützenswert wahrnehmen. Gerechtigkeitsgefühle verstehen wir daher als die affektiven und emotionalen Bewertungen der Legitimität normativer Ordnungen. Dieser Band versammelt zwei einordnende und sieben ethnographische Beiträge, die Gerechtigkeitsgefühle, ihre Ursachen und Wirkungen, in verschiedenen kulturellen und rechtlichen Kontexten beschreiben und analysieren. In die-sem einleitenden Beitrag gehen wir zunächst auf die Forschungstraditionen zu Affekten, Emotionen und Recht ein, die dieser Band aufgreift und zusammen-führt. Anschließend stellen wir unseren Arbeitsbegriff von Gerechtigkeitsgefühlen vor, auf den die anschließenden Beiträge in ihren Fallstudien Bezug nehmen. Schließlich geben wir einen einführenden Überblick über die versammelten ethnographischen Studien.

Extended call for proposals: "The politics of (post)-truth. Knowledge-Making in Fragmented Worlds of Mis/Trust", Mainz University, July 2024

by Heike Drotbohm and Olaf Zenker

Based on our double session at the DGSKA conference in Munich this July, we are now sending the e... more Based on our double session at the DGSKA conference in Munich this July, we are now sending the extended Call for Papers for next year’s international workshop in Mainz (10-12 July 2024) that we organise on the same topic as the next big event of our DGSKA Working Group “Politik- und Rechtsanthropologie – Political and Legal Anthropology"

Beyond Expropriation Without Compensation: Law, Land Reform and Redistributive Justice in South Africa

by Cherryl Walker and Olaf Zenker