Workshop 3

Anthropological Relevance of Popular Culture

Convenors:

Jochen Bonz, University of Bremen

jochen.bonz@uni-bremen.de

 

Rajko Muršič, University of Ljubljana

rajko.mursic@guest.arnes.si

 

Discussants:

Jasmina Milojević, University of Belgrade

jazzym@sezampro.yu

 

Various forms of emerging and vanishing lifestyles and fashions

could be considered as a natural experiment for anthropological

investigation. We have to understand popular culture as a field

where the globalised culture is becoming visible and analysable.

Colourful diversity of contemporary world is not only stretched

between the global flows and local invariables, or between

translocal traffic and localised rootedness, but unprecedently

fluid, fleeting and frivolous. However, not only considering its role

in socialisation to the modern society, popular culture in many

occasions provides virtual experience for people who would never

form any kind of society or a group in its strict sense. Or the

common “mediated” experience can, on the other hand, lead to

formation of different modern we-groups or “tribes” (Maffesoli).

We shall discuss the role of popular culture, especially popular

music, dance, fashion, film, and the like, in formation of virtual

and real communities, “tribes” and scenes. Especially important

may become discussion of the different kinds of understanding

and misunderstanding or new understanding of such basic

concepts as “the cult”. Can we understand the phenomena as

fandom without redefinition of such concepts? Or can we discuss

“techno tribes” without redefinition of the concept of “the ritual”?

And can we discuss virtual communities on/with the Internet

without redefinition of the term “communication”?

 

The Popular Culture: Praxis and Empathic Community

Wojciech J. Burszta, Warsaw School of Social Psychology

wojciech.burszta@swps.edu.pl

 

Flyerspaces/Technoscene. An Ethnographic Approach to an

Urban Formation

Anja Schwanhäußer, Humboldt University, Berlin

as@culture-of-cities.de

 

Identity of Youth Cultures in Post-Modern Society: The Skater-

Scene

Michael Parzer, University of Vienna

michaelparzer@hotmail.com

 

Rite and Intertext - Looking for Interpretation on the Basis of

Experience from Party-Culture

Terézia Nagy, University of Szeged

eteca@freemail.hu

 

Music Events as Narrative Genre: Virtual and Real

Communities

Miroslava Lukić Krstanović, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

mimaluk@eunet.yu

 

Singing Politics of Croatian Transition

Ines Prica, Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb

ines@ief.hr

 

The Westernisation of Russian Youth Culture

Clementine Fujimura, United States Naval Academy

cfujimur@usna.edu

 

“Foreign Dancers“: The Dance Club as a Field for the Construction

of Collective Identity Among African Labour Migrants in Israel

Uri Dorchin, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

dorchin@bgumail.bgu.ac.il