Julia Pauli
Biographic Data
| ID | 121970 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Julia Pauli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Julia |
| FAMILY NAME | Pauli |
| SIGNATURE | PAULI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universität Hamburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0533-5873 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 135 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Namibian Wedding Stories: Narrating Kinship and Social Class in Urban Namibia
Haunted by Houses: Built and Lived Absences in a Transnational Mexican Community
Globally, millions of migrants have sent money home to build a house. In early phases of migration, remittance houses are aspirational objects that materialize the continuous belonging of migrants to a community. In later stages, experiences of loss, estrangement, deportation, and death increasingly challenge these attachments. Drawing on my ethnographic research in a transnational community in rural Mexico since 1995, I explore how painful absen…
Anthropologists rarely walk alone
Article
Von Traumhaus zur Ruine in einer transnationalen mexikanischen Gemeinde
Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present and Future
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the …
The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence
The fact is that war comes in many guises and its effects continue to be felt long after peace is proclaimed. This challenges the anthropologists who write of war as participant observers. Participant observation inevitably deals with the here and now, with the highly specific. It is only over the long view that one can begin to see the commonalities that emerge from the different forms of conflict and can begin to generalize. [From the Introduct…
Never enough: Neoliberalizing Namibian middle-class marriages
Neoliberal ideologies have not only transformed the Namibian economy but also reconfigured some of the most intimate domains of everyday life. In the course of the last forty years, marriage in Namibia has changed from a widespread and affordable life transition to a costly celebration of middle-classness. To be married today is a sign of middle-class achievement, lifestyle and prosperity. The downside of these accomplishments is the middle class…
Return migration
Most migrations include returns. Yet until recently, return migration and experiences of returning have been largely overlooked. During the last decade, however, a comparative ethnography of return has begun to take shape. The contribution traces these developments and links them to recent changes in state policies and a rethinking of transnationalism. The notion of return is being scrutinized, including a critical assessment of various kinds of …
How to write? Experiences, challenges and possibilities of ethnographic writing
Ethnography, as text, is the main outcome of fieldwork. It is also the most important way in which anthropologists communicate and share their findings. As a consequence, despite substantial critique by postmodern anthropology on how ethnographic texts in the past have represented the reality and life-worlds of others, ethnographic writing remains at the centre of the anthropological enterprise. But how to write? The so-called Writing Culture deb…
No Magic! Teaching Ethnographic Writing
In this essay, I reflect on my experiences in teaching ethnographic writing to graduate anthropology students over the last decade. After years of experimenting with different course formats and ethnographic exercises, the anthropology department in Hamburg now offers two courses on ethnographic writing before fieldwork and one course after students have returned from the field. The first course, taken before students conduct their master’s field…
Rethinking the Ethnographer: Reflections on Fieldwork with and without Family in Mexico and Namibia
Migration and Social Class in Africa: Class-Making Projects in Translocal Social Fields
Increasing interest in the middle class in Africa and the Global South has prompted new discussions of social class since 2010; however, this literature does not adequately theorize migration, despite the role that global flows play in cultivating class aspirations. Migration complicates the concept of social class as a stable identity, in that migrants usually have multiple class statuses across their lifetime and in different social fields and …
Class-Switching: Migrants' Multiple Class Identities in Rural and Urban Namibia
To better understand migrants' adjustments to varying class structures at multiple places, the linguistic concept of code-switching is translated into the novel concept of class-switching. I suggest that class positions, like language repertoires, can be switched. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia, this article examines middle-class urbanites' class-switching. Since independence, a new black middle class has emerged in Namibia, one that …
Forming families
History through biography
Fransfontein fieldwork
Conclusion
Contemporary Fransfontein marriages
Postapartheid livelihoods
From decline to distinction
Content
Intimacy outside marriage
Reference list
The Decline of Marriage in Namibia: Kinship and Social Class in a Rural Community
In Southern Africa, marriage used to be widespread and common. However, over the past decades marriage rates have declined significantly. Julia Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite a…
Retiring Home? House Construction, Age Inscriptions, and the Building of Belonging among Mexican Migrants and their Families in Chicago and Rural Mexico
The vacant retirement house has become a central feature of many areas of the Global South. Over the years, migrants' savings are invested in the building of conspicuous houses for retirement in their areas of origin. But despite these substantial efforts, a number of migrants postpone their return or do not return at all. Their houses remain empty, their purposes shifting as their owners reach old age. This stretching of time does not only affec…
A house of one's own: Gender, migration, and residence in rural Mexico
Gender dynamics in Mexican migrant communities have been conceptualized mainly in terms of transformations in conjugal relations. Other meaningful relations, especially conflict-laden female in-law relations, have not been discussed widely in the context of transnational communities. I show how this wider perspective on gender relations is essential for unraveling the social processes behind the boom in house construction that many rural regions …
Marriage as an end or the end of marriage? Change and continuity in Southern African marriages
While it has become common knowledge that in many parts of Africa - including Botswana - weddings and marital arrangements in general have increasingly become subject to consumerist desires of style and glamour, much less is known about how such expectations of public display intersect with changing ideas concerning the intimate. Weddings have not only become costlier than before, and much more crucial in the marking of class, status and prestige…
The Decline of Marriage in Namibia: Kinship and Social Class in a Rural Community
In Southern Africa, marriage used to be widespread and common. However, over the past decades marriage rates have declined significantly. Julia Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite a…
Retiring Home? House Construction, Age Inscriptions, and the Building of Belonging among Mexican Migrants and their Families in Chicago and Rural Mexico
The vacant retirement house has become a central feature of many areas of the Global South. Over the years, migrants' savings are invested in the building of conspicuous houses for retirement in their areas of origin. But despite these substantial efforts, a number of migrants postpone their return or do not return at all. Their houses remain empty, their purposes shifting as their owners reach old age. This stretching of time does not only affec…
Migration and Social Class in Africa: Class-Making Projects in Translocal Social Fields
Increasing interest in the middle class in Africa and the Global South has prompted new discussions of social class since 2010; however, this literature does not adequately theorize migration, despite the role that global flows play in cultivating class aspirations. Migration complicates the concept of social class as a stable identity, in that migrants usually have multiple class statuses across their lifetime and in different social fields and …
The struggle for marriage: Elite and non-elite weddings in rural Namibia
Namibian weddings have become lavish and expensive rituals. Recent studies have discussed how these marriage transformations are linked to late capitalism and the spread of modernisation ideologies. Much of this research concludes that marriage has become a middle class institution, rather detached from the lives of the unmarried, poor majority of Namibians. However, this overly dichotomous construction of the current situation fails to include n…
Class-Switching: Migrants' Multiple Class Identities in Rural and Urban Namibia
To better understand migrants' adjustments to varying class structures at multiple places, the linguistic concept of code-switching is translated into the novel concept of class-switching. I suggest that class positions, like language repertoires, can be switched. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia, this article examines middle-class urbanites' class-switching. Since independence, a new black middle class has emerged in Namibia, one that …
Creating Illegitimacy: Negotiating Relations and Reproduction within Christian Contexts in Northwest Namibia
The stigmatization of children born out of wedlock is not yet common in the rural community of Fransfontein, Northwest Namibia. Comparable to other regions of southern Africa, the birth of a child is very much valued and welcomed regardless of the parent's marital status, and out-of-wedlock births are very widespread. However, these perceptions are gradually changing. During Sunday mass in the local Protestant church the term /ai-/gôas(b), 'sin c…
Never enough: Neoliberalizing Namibian middle-class marriages
Neoliberal ideologies have not only transformed the Namibian economy but also reconfigured some of the most intimate domains of everyday life. In the course of the last forty years, marriage in Namibia has changed from a widespread and affordable life transition to a costly celebration of middle-classness. To be married today is a sign of middle-class achievement, lifestyle and prosperity. The downside of these accomplishments is the middle class…
Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present and Future
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the …
Axinn William G., and Lisa D. Pearce: Mixed Method Data Collection Strategies
Anthropos , Seite 575 - 576
A house of one's own: Gender, migration, and residence in rural Mexico
Gender dynamics in Mexican migrant communities have been conceptualized mainly in terms of transformations in conjugal relations. Other meaningful relations, especially conflict-laden female in-law relations, have not been discussed widely in the context of transnational communities. I show how this wider perspective on gender relations is essential for unraveling the social processes behind the boom in house construction that many rural regions …
Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics by Richard T. Rodríguez
Creating Illegitimacy: Negotiating Relations and Reproduction within Christian Contexts in Northwest Namibia
The stigmatization of children born out of wedlock is not yet common in the rural community of Fransfontein, Northwest Namibia. Comparable to other regions of southern Africa, the birth of a child is very much valued and welcomed regardless of the parent's marital status, and out-of-wedlock births are very widespread. However, these perceptions are gradually changing. During Sunday mass in the local Protestant church the term /ai-/gôas(b), 'sin c…
Gebauter Lebenssinn. Häuser in transnationalen mexikanischen Familien
Weltweit ist zu beobachten, dass Migrant/-innen in ihren Herkunftsregionen kostspielige und aufwendige Häuser bauen. Da es in vielen Herkunftsregionen aber nur wenige Arbeitsmöglichkeiten gibt, leben Migrant/-innen oft kaum oder nur für kurze Zeit in ihren neuen Häusern. Vorherige Studien haben gezeigt, welche Ambivalenzen dieses globale Phänomen für lokale und transnationale Gemeinschaften mit sich bringt. Die Auswirkungen des neuen, migrationsb…
Marriage as an end or the end of marriage? Change and continuity in Southern African marriages
While it has become common knowledge that in many parts of Africa - including Botswana - weddings and marital arrangements in general have increasingly become subject to consumerist desires of style and glamour, much less is known about how such expectations of public display intersect with changing ideas concerning the intimate. Weddings have not only become costlier than before, and much more crucial in the marking of class, status and prestige…
Ethnologie: Einführung in die Erforschung kultureller Vielfalt
Researching cultural diversity is a central subject of social anthropology. 25 authors from institutes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland offer an insight into the subject, its contents and theoretical perspectives. The articles cover a variety of topics: the history of the discipline as well as basic theories and methods, subareas such as business or kinship anthropology, crosscutting issues such as anthropology of media, but also up-to-date sp…
The struggle for marriage: Elite and non-elite weddings in rural Namibia
Namibian weddings have become lavish and expensive rituals. Recent studies have discussed how these marriage transformations are linked to late capitalism and the spread of modernisation ideologies. Much of this research concludes that marriage has become a middle class institution, rather detached from the lives of the unmarried, poor majority of Namibians. However, this overly dichotomous construction of the current situation fails to include n…
Retiring Home? House Construction, Age Inscriptions, and the Building of Belonging among Mexican Migrants and their Families in Chicago and Rural Mexico
The vacant retirement house has become a central feature of many areas of the Global South. Over the years, migrants' savings are invested in the building of conspicuous houses for retirement in their areas of origin. But despite these substantial efforts, a number of migrants postpone their return or do not return at all. Their houses remain empty, their purposes shifting as their owners reach old age. This stretching of time does not only affec…
Forming families
History through biography
Fransfontein fieldwork
Conclusion
Contemporary Fransfontein marriages
Postapartheid livelihoods
From decline to distinction
Content
Intimacy outside marriage
Reference list
The Decline of Marriage in Namibia: Kinship and Social Class in a Rural Community
In Southern Africa, marriage used to be widespread and common. However, over the past decades marriage rates have declined significantly. Julia Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite a…
Rethinking the Ethnographer: Reflections on Fieldwork with and without Family in Mexico and Namibia
Migration and Social Class in Africa: Class-Making Projects in Translocal Social Fields
Increasing interest in the middle class in Africa and the Global South has prompted new discussions of social class since 2010; however, this literature does not adequately theorize migration, despite the role that global flows play in cultivating class aspirations. Migration complicates the concept of social class as a stable identity, in that migrants usually have multiple class statuses across their lifetime and in different social fields and …
Class-Switching: Migrants' Multiple Class Identities in Rural and Urban Namibia
To better understand migrants' adjustments to varying class structures at multiple places, the linguistic concept of code-switching is translated into the novel concept of class-switching. I suggest that class positions, like language repertoires, can be switched. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia, this article examines middle-class urbanites' class-switching. Since independence, a new black middle class has emerged in Namibia, one that …
Return migration
Most migrations include returns. Yet until recently, return migration and experiences of returning have been largely overlooked. During the last decade, however, a comparative ethnography of return has begun to take shape. The contribution traces these developments and links them to recent changes in state policies and a rethinking of transnationalism. The notion of return is being scrutinized, including a critical assessment of various kinds of …
How to write? Experiences, challenges and possibilities of ethnographic writing
Ethnography, as text, is the main outcome of fieldwork. It is also the most important way in which anthropologists communicate and share their findings. As a consequence, despite substantial critique by postmodern anthropology on how ethnographic texts in the past have represented the reality and life-worlds of others, ethnographic writing remains at the centre of the anthropological enterprise. But how to write? The so-called Writing Culture deb…
Sociology (16 works) · Political science (10 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · History (7 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (7 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (7 works) · Anthropology (6 works) · Art (6 works)