Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology (B.A.) (two subjects)

Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology (CAEE) is a discipline that combines cultural and social science approaches and deals with everyday forms of life in European societies. It asks how these forms of life and their institutional conditions have developed, how they change and how they are connected to symbolic orders, conflicts, politics and (future) developments. A guiding question is how people deal with transformation processes such as globalisation, digitalisation and migration and how they help to shape them - in the present, but also in a historical perspective. The Göttingen Institute is one of the largest cultural anthropology university institutes in the German-speaking world, both in its teaching and in its research.

The CAEE studies cultural forms and practices, but also institutions, groups, milieus or scenes as dynamic phenomena that are constantly re-emerging. Unlike many other subjects, CAEE practices research "at eye level" with its research partners - through methods such as participant observation, qualitative interviews and (micro-)historical archive studies. The focus is on a broad concept of culture, less on so-called high culture. The subject particularly reflects the effects that arise from the social proximity and/or distance between researchers and their research fields. The everyday life that surrounds us, which is studied in CAEE, is always locally located, but is also shaped by transnational or global processes. The "European" in the discipline's name includes an interest in various European regions - and in processes of Europeanisation. The discipline is related to history, sociology, literature and media studies, cultural musicology, religious studies, gender studies and ethnology. CAEE is not, however, a comparative regional geography of Europe.

The Göttingen Institute is one of the largest cultural anthropology university institutes in the German-speaking world in terms of its teaching and research. In addition to the range of introductory courses (cultural theories, methods of field research, cultural-historical research, introduction to CAEE), the courses focus primarily on the following areas:

• Forms and rituals of everyday life
• Communicating and narrating
• Pop culture/popular culture
• Migration and border regime research
• Racism and postcolonial perspectives
• Cultures of social inequality
• Gender Studies
• Ethnographic film and visual culture
• Digital Cultures
• Material culture and technology
• Forms of politics and the political
• Europeanisation
• City and regional studies
• Museology and museum practice
• Value creation from culture and cultural property

A degree from CAEE qualifies graduates to work in a wide range of professional fields. It does not train students for a specific profession. The subject-specific mix of empirical methods (i.e. own research in the field) and theory trains students to categorise everyday processes culturally and politically, as well as to reflect critically on their own position. The insight into diverse subject areas during the degree programme also lays a broad foundation for later professional fields. Internships at home and abroad are an integral part of the BA programme and offer the opportunity to gain initial professional experience along personal interests. CAEE graduates work in:

• Economics
• Museums, print and online media
• Documentary film
• Universities and research institutes
• Non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
• Foundations
• Press and public relations
• Publishers
• Cultural management, policy, work, administration
• Market research and advertising
• Film, theatre and literature business...

For BA students, the Göttingen Institute regularly offers courses from the teaching focus Visual Anthropology, the so-called Curriculum Visual Anthropology (CVA), for example seminars on the history of audio-visual media in ethnocultural studies and on image and film analysis. Exercises are also taught on the practical application of ethnographic media work, especially film. This offer is supplemented by further courses on the diverse discourses of visual anthropology, media anthropology, visual studies etc. Many of these courses are open to all students of the university through crediting as a key competence. In addition, students from other universities can participate in the summer school on the practice of ethnographic film, which usually takes place every two years.