Transfer of norms, appropriation of norms and camouflage of normative orders

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Karl-Heinz Kohl

In the course of the work on this sub-project, there were two thematic focuses. The project leader’s investigations concentrated on the question of what role anthropology played in the reconstruction of traditional orders in the course of the mutual cultural transfer, while the sub-project team member, Katja Rieck, investigated the transformation of Indian economic counter-discourses in the early 20th century in connection with the emergence of the independence movement. The two topics are closely related insofar as in both cases a specific form of “re-appropriation” of traditions is involved: Images of one’s own culture are turned into something positive and used to legitimize both anti-colonial resistance movements and post-colonial orders.

The project leader investigated this question using the example of indigenous movements in the former British settler colonies. He focused his research on the transnational cooperation between non-state indigenous organizations that has been observed since the late 1980s, which led to the formulation of new legal norms at a global level, the implementation of which in turn required the acceptance of positions that had emerged in the course of recent discussions on post-colonialism and subalternity. After a debate that dragged on for almost two decades, these new legal norms were finally ratified with the “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” adopted by the United Nations in September 2007. However, the implementation of the principles of the Declaration in national legislation has so far been slow and has met with a great deal of resistance. Numerous new fields of research are opening up here. These are currently being investigated in the second phase of the cluster using selected examples.

The starting point of the project team’s research project was the observation that economic discourses function worldwide as one, if not the central justification narrative of modern societies. This in turn is countered, particularly in post-colonial societies, by economic counter-discourses that attack the normative self-image of Western modernity and the practices associated with it. The social conditions for the development of such a counter-model were examined using the example of India, where liberation from colonial rule was to be achieved through the realization of a socio-political social order based on the principles of Hindu or Islamic economics. The main questions were: Why did India’s educated elite formulate their criticism of the British colonial government, and of the West in general, in economic terms? How did post-colonial ideas of state and society emerge that were also critical of the norms of a post-Enlightenment Western “modernity”? What role did Indian (re)visions of indigenous “tradition(s)” play in this? Why were these postcolonial counter-discourses increasingly anchored in religion – both in Hinduism and Islam? While the Hindu-influenced economic counter-design lost its political relevance with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Islamic alternative developed by Abu A’la Maududi gained popularity far beyond India in the following decades. Since the fall of communism, it has emerged as one of the most important normative counter-proposals to capitalism, although it has only been hesitantly implemented in practice.

The project leader has published the results of his research in the form of articles. These include: Kohl, Karl-Heinz (2009): “Die Ethnologie und die Rekonstruktion traditioneller Ordnungen”, in: Fried, Johannes/Stolleis, Michael (ed.), Cultures of knowledge. On the creation and transfer of knowledge , Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 159-180 and Kohl, Karl-Heinz (2010): “The End of Anthropology – an Endless Debate”, in: Paideuma 56, 87-98; Kohl, Karl-Heinz/Carstensen, Christian/Jauernig, Susanne/Kammler, Henry (eds.) (2011): Transfer and Reappropriation of Knowledge, Altenstadt: ZKF Publishers. The employee’s sub-project came to an end in May 2011. Her results have been incorporated into her dissertation and can be found in the essays: Rieck, Katja (2014): ‘Religionsästhetik, Imagination und die Politisierung des Fortschritts in Indien, 1870-1920’, in: Lucia Traut/ Annette Wilke (eds.): Religion – Imagination – Ästhetik. Imagination and sensory worlds in religion and culture. Critical Studies in Religion/Religionswissenschaft (CSSRW), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht and Rieck, Katja (2015): ‘The Colonial Order of Things and its AlterNatives: Contesting Power/Knowledge in Late Colonial India’, in Sophia Ebert/Johannes Glaeser (eds.): Ökonomische Utopien, Berlin: Neofelis Verlag, 125-150.