Multilingual Encounters beyond (Research) Collaboration

This paper reflects on anthropology's public role in the aftermath of Germany's so-called "refugee crisis" of 2015. Media and political discussions clearly showed that the dominant (German) culture/Kultur discourse had been primarily based on nineteenth-century evolutionist ideas, structural racism, and growing right-wing populism rather than on established anthropological insights into cultural identity, gender, religion, transnational realities, and political economy. Methodological anthropological tools (i.e., self-reflexivity, ethical considerations, positionality) were nearly non-existent in sociopolitical programs or strategies. We argue for an epistemological shift by referring to current challenges and limitations regarding collaborative research. We propose Encounter/Begegnung as an epistemological standpoint for public anthropology by going beyond research, enabling diverse engagement, knowledge production, and representation. Based on cumulative insights spanning six years of the interdisciplinary, multilingual (Arabic, Farsi, German, English) "Encounter/Begegnung" media project, we argue for shifting the focus from collaboration to encounters as a necessary impetus for public anthropology in post-2015 Germany

Aesthetics · Applied anthropology · German · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Populism · Public discourse · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociocultural anthropology · Sociology · Anthropology · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy