Mario Schmidt
Mario Schmidt is currently a Senior Research Specialist for the CREME (Culture Research Methods and Ethics)-Team at the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics and an associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.
Address: Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Address: Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
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Papers by Mario Schmidt
They do not pretend to neatly verify their arguments in the same way that scholars are forced to do in high impact journals. The reader will not find boring literature reviews, long bibliographies and overly artificial politeness. A dialogue, we assume, is a direct and polemical fight with the dialogue partner as well as with the problem discussed. In fact, we believe that only in arguing with each other will the problem(s) eventually take shape and become visible. Taken as a whole, however, the contributions exemplify that a multi-perspectival approach to the question leads to – how should it not? – a multiplicity of entry points into the discussion.
The dialogue is split into two sections, which are separated by an intermezzo. The two sections, ‘Thought and Critique: Fun vs. Responsibility’ and ‘Society and Critique: Overcoming Anti-Foundationalism’, consist of three short pieces each that revolve around similar issues and cross-reference each other. In the middle, an ‘Intermezzo’ offers a very timely sketch of the ideology of finance with immediate relevance to the current euro-zone crisis and Greece’s position in it. It is placed in between the more theoretical parts as a reminder of the critical potential of empirically sensitive but theoretically inspired research.
By exploring the potential of uncertainty, especially in relation to the construction of belonging, we follow the assumption that "uncertainty is productive" (Cooper/Pratten 2015). Considering ways in which uncertainty shapes young people's ways of being in the world and belonging to places and people can enhance a more varied understanding of the category “belonging”. We are interested not only in how a feeling of belonging may counter or outdo uncertainty, but rather how belonging emerges or is formed as a result of uncertainty.
We are especially interested in contributions (English or German) that – by using ethnographically saturated data – discuss practices that form new or stabilize existing socio-cultural groups not despite uncertainty, but by recognizing and experimenting with it. This includes exploring how and why young people claim affiliation with particular groups, precisely in situations of uncertainty, and the purpose this serves in regard to remaking and transcending modes of belonging to a collective.
We particularly invite presenters that offer ethnographic insights which serve a comparative use that goes beyond a singular focus on one 'southern' region or 'south-south' comparison, but instead draw attention to the similarities between and productive forces of uncertainties that make young people belong across the world.