"What does it mean to decolonise academia in Africa? Is this important project limited to the humanities? Is it a project for the future? Are there forerunners at African universities today? The contributors to this volume show different trajectories for anthropology as a discipline and for decoloni
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sing academia across the continent and beyond. They offer a variety of perspectives, especially regarding collaboration between African and German scholars in the areas of research, teaching and institutional development: While some are hopeful and take inspiration from earlier experiences of disciplinary and methodological developments in academic decolonisation and international collaborations, others remain critical and call for more radical attempts at decolonisation." (Publisher description)
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"Contemporary anthropology is done in a world where social and digital media are playing an increasingly significant role, where anthropological and arts practices are often intertwined in museum and public intervention contexts, and where anthropologists are encouraged to engage with mass media. Be
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cause anthropologists are often expected and inspired to ensure their work engages with public issues, these opportunities to disseminate work in new ways and to new publics simultaneously create challenges as anthropologists move their practice into unfamiliar collaborative domains and expose their research to new forms of scrutiny. In this volume, contributors question whether a fresh public anthropology is emerging through these new practices." (Publisher description)
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"The Digital Himalaya Project is a collection, storage and dissemination portal for scholarly content and research findings about the Himalayan region. The project website connects a worldwide user community to a vast corpus of digital resources from or about India, Nepal, Bhutan and the Tibetan pla
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teau for free and easy download - without payment, subscription or password. While Digital Himalaya began as a strategy for collecting and protecting the products of colonial-era ethnographic collections on the Himalayas - for posterity and for access by source communities - the project has now become a collaborative digital publishing environment, bringing a new collection online every month, with close to half a million web visitors since its establishment in 2000. Almost all of our digitization and scanning is now conducted in Nepal, dramatically reducing operating costs and increasing productivity. Our funding no longer comes from research councils in the United Kingdom and the United States, but through web referrals and from individual or institutional donations around the world. The project is now supported by people and organizations that recognize the work and want to contribute to it. In short, what began as an academic research project a decade ago is now a vast online portal for hosting and disseminating knowledge about the HiMalayas to a demanding, fast-growing and truly global user base." (Abstract)
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"Una de las editoriales más exitosas de Ecuador es "Ediciones Abya-Yala" (expresión cuna para referirse a América como "tierra en plena madurez"), una empresa especializada en etnología y antropología americanas. Hace veinte años, un misionero salesiano puso en marcha la iniciativa con una rev
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ista sobre la población indígena amazónica de los shuar; entretanto, el programa editorial incluye varias series sobre historia y cultura indígena latinoamericana, educación bilingüe o tradiciones religiosas. La singular experiencia de Abya-Yala no puede servir de receta para dirigir una editorial; sin embargo, varios aspectos - por ejemplo, su preocupación por publicar todos los títulos en colaboración con otras entidades - dan valiosos impulsos a quienes se dedican a la edición de libros." (Resumen)
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"Carpenter begreift Medien als erweiterten Spiegel, als veräußerte Träume unseres Selbst, die uns, sobald wir mit ihnen in Berührung kommen, gefangen nehmen. Seine Zuneigung zu den Naturvölkern ermöglicht ihm Beobachtungen, die zeigen, wie sehr diese Medien in einen Bann schlagen." (Süddeutsc
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he Zeitung, 1994)
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"Ethnocommunication because of its holistic approach does not stick to one communication medium only but tries to see the interrelation between the different communication media, traditional as well as modern. Many development communication projects are designed for one medium only, like e.g. Radio
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or Television and the same holds for respective research projects. They do not sufficiently consider the need for a multimedia as well as a culturally bound approach. It is part of human nature not only to see but also to use other senses, i . e. to hear, to see, to smell and at the same time taste. Any isolation of one medium or one sense will immediately limit not only the success of such a medium but also promote a onesided development, finally not serving total human development. The multimedia approach or rather the interlink between the different means of communication – traditional and modern – in a culture also must be extended beyond the means themselves. The communications means are embedded in the culture, her social and value structure and therefore have to be seen in their use and effect within the framework of a given culture and society. Fernando Poyatos in his very revealing book on new perspectives on non-verbal communication has underlined the need not only for linguistic fluency but also a cultural fluency in intercultural communication. It is this cultural fluency as well which is part of the Ethnocommunications approach. The service of Ethnocommunication for development lies especially in this taking seriously the cultural data and situations, to relate them with the communication means and structures of the given culture and analyze and design communication processes which will be embedded and thus becoming a genuine part of the society and culture they are to serve. Development in this sense is not in the first instance concerned with technical developments but rather is first and foremost a step towards conscientization and liberation of the people in the sense of Paulo Freire and his followers. Thus Ethnocommunication should be a contribution to the liberation and redemption of man." (Page 17)
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