Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACTEcosystem services (ESS) are a burdened concept. They are supposed to function as a protective mechanism to make nature economically visible, while simultaneously contributing to economic development. At the core of the concept is the ideal of concisely valued and well‐accounted‐for goods traded in markets by rational and moral actors. This virtual idea is being challenged by real local processes of short‐term commodification and market‐based incentives for profit making in 'messy', unequal and illegitimate ESS markets. This article presents a local case‐study perspective focusing on the thatch grass ESS in the Kavango Regions of Namibia, where harvesters have become involved in an emerging capitalist value chain. It shows how, against the background of a post‐colonial political‐institutional setting that leaves plenty of leeway for exploitation, the real‐life conflation of market incentives and cash desires transforms local subsistence, causes a revaluation of ESS, and poses a real challenge to the virtual ESS conservation approach. Instead of viewing ESS as countable items involved in beneficial market interactions, we need to come to a more precise understanding of the consequences, local vulnerabilities and externalities of ESS marketizations.

This article offers an overview over the thriving field of (con)current art and anthropology collaborations in the domains of words as well as works. Introducing the exemplary contributions of artists, art historians, curators and anthropologists to this special edition I argue that in an ever transforming, politically contested and ecologically threatened world the two disciplines have the potential to zoom in on patterns, processes and layers of a textured and translucent reality that is far from being sufficiently understood or represented.

This dialogue focuses the work of Vienna based sociologist, culture- and media-scientist, author and filmmaker Christina Lammer on artistic research projects around the subjects of body- and selfperception, vulnerability, and empathography.

Mijal Gandelsman-Trier und Michael Pröpper im Gespräch mit J. Otto Habeck

Several artists have been occupied with the subject of decolonization in Namibia lately. By means of dialogue between five contemporary Namibian visual artists and one anthropologist, in this article we thematize exemplary perspectives on and interventions into postcolonial realities. Dialogues about selected artpieces and additional subjects like healing of past wounds, the Afrofuture and arts potential to reveal social complexities expose visibly how artists intervene very differently into undoing colonialism. It illustrates artistic suggestions for a future that opens up a cultural space on earth for Black peoples belonging, a post-racial world which is not subverted, devalued and discriminated aginst, and a space for the celebration of the uniqueness and innovation of Black or/and African culture. We thus highlight arts capacity to expose complex nuances, associate ruptures, challenge the viewer, and offer some sort of reorientation. The exposed and discussed artpieces are able to open up new views which are truthful about a postcolonial moment in time.

This article offers an overview of the research undertaken in Namibia in 2019 by a group of emerging academics studying at Hamburg Germany to shape the core of this volume. We aim to tackle the challenging question of the speaker position within a field of discourse around post-colonialism from which our group can legitimately speak, and sketch the necessities for and challenges facing a decolonization of language, action and research. It is impossible with a small - though sensitive and ambitious - group of upcoming anthropologists to do more than scratch the surface of a problem that is so big and multidimensional. So, in this volume we present partial glimpses of our encounter with post-colonial realities in Namibia, and do not claim to be able to paint more than a rough picture. Here we have chosen to present our projects within a broader description of the current Namibian condition including aspects of history, sociality, politics, economics and ecology, religion, gender, identity and art. Such a contextualized depiction, we hope, will offer the reader a more comprehensive picture with which to understand our contributions.