Books by Tauber Elisabeth
With a fresh view on contemporary Alpine anthropology, this volume provides a comprehensive exami... more With a fresh view on contemporary Alpine anthropology, this volume provides a comprehensive examination of ethnographic research in the Alpine region and addresses socio-cultural transformations driven by climate change, tourism and a variety of economic and environmental pressures. By bringing together diverse perspectives from a range of contributors who reflect on their fieldwork experiences and the evolving dynamics of Alpine communities, it aims to fill a significant gap in the anthropology of the Alps.
Drawing on a rich collection of ethnographic studies, this book reveals the intersection of local practices with global forces such as industrial agriculture, tourism and height technology. The three thematic sections examine enduring cultural practices, changing landscapes as well as transforming relationships between people and the land. Viewing the Alps as a microcosm of global change, this volume offers new anthropological insights into the Alpine region and beyond.
New Horizons for the Alps is both a critical reflection on the state of Alpine anthropology and an invitation to future research that recognises the complexity of human-environment interactions.
Young, M. (n. d.). Oberbozen: At home in the Dolomites [Draft chapter of forthcoming second volum... more Young, M. (n. d.). Oberbozen: At home in the Dolomites [Draft chapter of forthcoming second volume of biography on Malinowski]. Brought up in the R.C. faith and owing to early illness, in Tatry Mountains age fr. 4-10. From child[hood] Polish, French & and their dialects. A double life, at least … Mixed with the mountaineers, speaking their gwara (dialect) looking after sheep & cows, running away for days, learnt fairy tales, legends of good old days of banditry. (Malinowski, as cited in Young, 2004, p. 14). In a second example that Young (2004, p. 15-16) presents, in the context of the introduction to a textbook on anthropology he was commissioned to write in the 1930s, Malinowski recalls this early experience in the Polish mountains in greater detail. In this case, however, he connects this childhood memory to the sort of experience of diversity that ignites sociocultural anthropological reflection. To cite an excerpt from the text of the introduction reported by Young: By the time I was eight I had lived in two fully distinct cultural worlds, speaking two languages, eating two different kinds of food, using two sets of table manners, observing two sets of reticencies and delicacies, enjoying two sets of amusements. I also learned two sets of religious views, beliefs and practices, and was exposed to two sets of morality and sexual mores (see Sex and Repression [sic]). Young observes that Malinowski produces such representations of his early years as a justification for his calling as an anthropologist. We see a similar pattern in yet another autobiographical text by Malinowski written in the third person: After graduating his health gave way and the next three years he spent on the shores of the Mediterranean, visiting North Africa, Asia Minor, and the Canary Islands. With the practical gift for languages of his countrymen, he spoke from childhood, in addition to Polish and its various peasant dialects, German, French and Russian. During these three years he acquired Spanish and Italian & was thus everywhere in his travels able to study the peoples among whom he lived. He had, moreover, like his distinguished countryman, Joseph Conrad, whose ac-Personally, I believe that this "hint", which is not even too "thin", helps to provide insights and stimulate reflections on the relationship between anthropology and history, or on the history of Alpine anthropology, which are not entirely vain and useless. (Viazzo, personal communication, 2022
This work-excluding the cover and the quotations-is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribuit... more This work-excluding the cover and the quotations-is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribuition-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing, 2021
Introduction to gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing. This book provides new insights into an... more Introduction to gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing. This book provides new insights into an intense and long-standing debate on women, gender, and masculinity with an explicit focus on ethnographic writing. The six contributors to this book investigate and discuss the multiple connections between ethnographic writing and gender in both the history of anthropology and contemporary anthropology, underlining problems, potentialities, stereotypes, experiments, continuities, changes, and challenges. Building on a prologue by two Malinowski grandchildren and an exploration of the role that Bronislaw Malinowski’s first wife, Elsie Masson, played in his literary presentation, the anthropologists collected here problematize writing gender and gendered writing in ethnography, revealing how these twin themes touch the history of the discipline itself and the classics of anthropology. Has the legacy of Writing Culture and Women Writing Culture obviated the need to consider gender in writing? Or could it be that the very mechanics of ethnographic writing are still imbued with hidden gendered divisions of labor? Following the editors’ extensive overview of the question, the contributing authors tackle gender and ethnographic writing from various vantages: with a view to the past, but also to the influence of previous feminist critiques in the present, and with accounts of the issues they themselves have faced and the solutions they have devised.
In: Platenkamp J. and A. Schneider (eds.), Integrating Others – Perspectives from Elsewhere. New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2019
LIT Verlag. 2nd revised edition., 2014
Amidst the sometimes devastating nation-state dynamics of Central Europe, the Sinti survived as s... more Amidst the sometimes devastating nation-state dynamics of Central Europe, the Sinti survived as small groups invisible in their cultural appearance. Their survival is still one of the unexplained phenomena of European history. The present ethnography traces the central moments that are significant for the continuation of a cultural cohesion that is rarely recognizable from the outside. It is marked by the great themes of life - love and death - which become visible for a brief moment during and after the Sinti's flight marriage.
Inmitten der zuweilen vernichtenden nation-state-Dynamiken Mitteleuropas überlebten die Sinti als kleine, in ihrem kulturellen Erscheinungsbild unsichtbare Gruppen. Ihr Überleben gehört bis heute zu den ungeklärten Phänomenen der europäischen Geschichte. Die vorliegende Ethnographie zeichnet die zentralen Momente nach, die für die Fortführung einer von Außen selten erkennbaren kulturellen Kohäsion bedeutsam sind. Diese ist geprägt von den großen Themen des Lebens - Liebe und Tod -, die während und nach der Fluchtheirat der Sinti für einen kurzen Augenblick sichtbar werden.
Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour Presses Universitaires de France. © Presses Universitai... more Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour Presses Universitaires de France. © Presses Universitaires de France. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.
Regionale Zivilgesellschaft in Bewegung – Cittadini innanzi tutto, 2012
Anlass für das Buch ist der 60. Geburtstag von Hans Heiss, einem der profiliertesten und weit übe... more Anlass für das Buch ist der 60. Geburtstag von Hans Heiss, einem der profiliertesten und weit über die Landesgrenzen hinaus bekannten Südtiroler Historiker und politischen Intellektuellen der letzten Jahrzehnte. Der Band versammelt wissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem historischen, kulturgeschichtlichen und politikwissenschaftlichen Bereich: 30 AutorInnen erörtern zivilgesellschaftliche Themen aus historischer und in vergleichender Sicht, insbesondere zur Bürgergesellschaft, zur Nationalismusforschung und zur politischen Ökonomie. Im Vordergrund steht dabei der Südtiroler und Tiroler Raum, der aber um Ausblicke auf die Nachbarregionen inner- und außerhalb des Alpenbogens ergänzt wird. Mit Beiträgen von Laurence Cole, Nikola Langreiter, Michael Gehler, Rolf Petri, Hans Woller und vielen anderen.
Papers by Tauber Elisabeth
Focusing on Sinti concepts of time, space, memory and respect, this paper explores the overlooked... more Focusing on Sinti concepts of time, space, memory and respect, this paper explores the overlooked presence of Sinti in the Alps and their relationship to Alpine landscapes, which is closely linked to their relationship to their dead. Their way of making the world calls for a rethinking of concepts concerning the relationship between humans and land and opens up a different possibility for thinking about societies in the Alps.
B??rose : Encyclopedie internationale des histoires de l'anthropologie, 2019
This article draws on biographical and bibliographical sources, as well as on archival data, in o... more This article draws on biographical and bibliographical sources, as well as on archival data, in order to examine two under-investigated and intertwined aspects of the life and career of Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): his working collaboration with his first wife, the Australian writer and journalist Elsie Masson (1890-1935), and their connection to South Tyrol (Northern Italy), where they lived in 1920s and 1930s and where they purchased a house that is still in the family. We aim to highlight the biographical relationality between the Malinowskis, some of their friends, relatives and colleagues, the places they inhabited, the houses in which they dwelled and the works they produced in that period and left to us. The research upon which this essay is based was conducted under the aegis of the Malinowski Forum for Ethnography and Anthropology (MFEA), coordinated by Dorothy Zinn and Elisabeth Tauber with the scientific collaboration of Daniela Salvucci at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
Gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing, 2021
Introduction to gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing. This book provides new insights into an... more Introduction to gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing. This book provides new insights into an intense and long-standing debate on women, gender, and masculinity with an explicit focus on ethnographic writing. The six contributors to this book investigate and discuss the multiple connections between ethnographic writing and gender in both the history of anthropology and contemporary anthropology, underlining problems, potentialities, stereotypes, experiments, continuities, changes, and challenges. Building on a prologue by two Malinowski grandchildren and an exploration of the role that Bronislaw Malinowski’s first wife, Elsie Masson, played in his literary presentation, the anthropologists collected here problematize writing gender and gendered writing in ethnography, revealing how these twin themes touch the history of the discipline itself and the classics of anthropology. Has the legacy of Writing Culture and Women Writing Culture obviated the need to consider gender in writing? Or could it be that the very mechanics of ethnographic writing are still imbued with hidden gendered divisions of labor? Following the editors’ extensive overview of the question, the contributing authors tackle gender and ethnographic writing from various vantages: with a view to the past, but also to the influence of previous feminist critiques in the present, and with accounts of the issues they themselves have faced and the solutions they have devised.
Integrating Strangers in Society, 2019
In this chapter Elisabeth Tauber tells of a process of integration in another society that is pro... more In this chapter Elisabeth Tauber tells of a process of integration in another society that is probably the most comprehensive of all cases presented. As a gagi, a female ‘outsider’, she married a Sinti husband and became intimately connected to her relatives-in-law living in a caravan site in an Italian town. She describes her gradual integration in a world sustained mainly by a female conducted economy of begging and peddling, in which she naturally must play her part too. But it is a death in the family binding her personally to an immediate ancestor that grants her the unreserved status and respect as a Sinti person.
Comparison as one of the core element of anthropological thinking has been brought to its best in... more Comparison as one of the core element of anthropological thinking has been brought to its best in a classical study of a European alpine region. Cole and Wolf’s The Hidden Frontier; Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley (1974) is based on joint ethnographic fieldwork in Italy, conducted over three years in the 1960s in two adjacent villages at the border of South Tyrol and Trentino. As a first anthropological study of ethnicity in Europe the authors questioned, and finally refuted, a fundamental assumption of the cultural-ecological approach in anthropology, that similar environmental conditions lead to similar forms of social life. This also questioned the suppositions (many of which were based on Steward, 1972 [1955]) of their contemporary American colleagues, doing research in the Alps at that time. Would Cole and Wolf have had the same insights, would their results have been similarly ground-breaking and sustainable in time – we are still gaining valuable understandings from this study – had they not based their analysis on comparison?
L'articolo delinea i primi risultati di una ricerca europea riguardante la scolarizzazione de... more L'articolo delinea i primi risultati di una ricerca europea riguardante la scolarizzazione dei rom. Viene presentato il progetto generale, l'articolazione tra Italia, Francia e Spagna del disegno complessivo delle indagini etnografiche e quantitative. Fra le ricerche condotte in Italia col metodo dell'osservazione partecipante, vengono riferiti alcuni dati riguardanti una comunit\ue0 di xoraxan\ue9 rom\ue0 e una di sinti estraixaria
This paper analyses affirmative bureaucratic intervention into the informal commercial practices ... more This paper analyses affirmative bureaucratic intervention into the informal commercial practices of scrap metal collection among the Sinti in a North-Italian province. To contextualize these events it is vital to examine institutional logics, and how they resonate with public officials’ sense of self as well as political loyalties. In everyday bureaucracy Gypsies are considered to be perplexing subjects, provoking contrasting images of poverty and excess. These cultural representations are the opposite of the idea of a decent social-work client. Hence, bureaucratic intervention on behalf of the Sinti put the former in a deontological and moral limbo, one which stimulates them to navigate the political and organisational structures of their organisations in a creative way. This paper aims to bring a positive example of where the social and institutional discrimination against Roma and Sinti in Italy and Europe can be broken. Even if it is not possible to reverse this discrimination, ...
Ethnologie française, 2018
Cet article s’interesse a la maniere dont les Sinti des Alpes italiennes percoivent leurs « manie... more Cet article s’interesse a la maniere dont les Sinti des Alpes italiennes percoivent leurs « manieres de faire » comme complementaires aux idees, valeurs et pratiques du travail et du salariat en vigueur dans la societe majoritaire. J’y analyse la creation invisible et silencieuse des cadres ontologiques sinti par la pensee, le souvenir et les reves, qui leur permet d’equilibrer ce qu’ils percoivent des relations qu’ils entretiennent avec leurs clients Gage lorsqu’ils s’agit de collecter de l’argent. L’article contribue plus largement aux discussions sur les concepts de travail, de mendicite et de colportage, en deplacant la perspective d’une opposition entre societes roms et societes majoritaires a l’analyse d’une epistemologie sinti qui vise a penser le monde relationnellement, en le comprenant comme un systeme reciproque d’echange etendu auquel les Gage clients appartiennent egalement.
Questo saggio introduce la sezione tematica di Anuac da due prospettive. La prima parte guarda al... more Questo saggio introduce la sezione tematica di Anuac da due prospettive. La prima parte guarda alla vita di Malinowski ed Elsie Masson in Sud Tirolo, contemplando il contesto storico-politico della regione e mettendo in luce la presenza e le relazioni della famiglia Malinowski nello scenario locale. La veranda della villa a Oberbozen e il punto di partenza per una visione panoramica su questo territorio e sulla sua gente, e funge da cornice per ripensare la figura di Malinowski. La seconda parte traccia lo sviluppo del Forum Malinowski per l’Etnografia e l’Antropologia (MFEA) alla Libera Universita di Bozen-Bolzano, un progetto che dal 2016 ha portato alla luce nuove conoscenze sulla presenza dei Malinowski in Sud Tirolo. Il Forum Malinowski fa da sfondo al Simposio che ha ispirato gli articoli qui presentati allo scopo di riflettere sull’etnografia oggi nei termini delle sue continuita e discontinuita rispetto al canone stabilito da Malinowski quasi un secolo fa.
Geschichte und Region/Storia e Regione, 2022
2022, Salvucci, Daniela; Tauber, Elisabeth; Zinn, Dorothy L., “Von Ozeanien nach Südtirol. Bronis... more 2022, Salvucci, Daniela; Tauber, Elisabeth; Zinn, Dorothy L., “Von Ozeanien nach Südtirol. Bronislaw Malinowski, der Vater der modernen Ethnographie, in Oberbozen”, Forum, Geschichte und Region/Storia e Regione v. 31, n.1, pp. 159-166. Link: https://storiaeregione.eu/it/rivista/leggi/kloester-im-aufgeklaerten-staat-monasteri-nello-stato-illuminato
Romani Studies, 2004
The discussion on schooling and education for Gypsy children has been running for a long time now... more The discussion on schooling and education for Gypsy children has been running for a long time now. At present this discussion is taking several—sometimes quite opposite— directions. Some authors make a plea for schools which help to rediscover the lost cultural identity of the Gypsies, while others want liberation from school as Gypsy culture expresses itself outside the state apparatus of education. In many of these discussions the emic, or internal, vision of the Gypsy way of interpreting school and education is omitted. This article focuses on a concrete ethnographic example in which Italian Sinti give their own answers to the global dimension of school. The internal perspective is favoured here, and we can see Sinti children and their families interacting with and interpreting school according to their way of thinking. The article shows how Sinti, both children and adults, redefine and reinterpret their presence at school. It shows how school can be defined in relative terms, as a cultural value.
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Books by Tauber Elisabeth
Drawing on a rich collection of ethnographic studies, this book reveals the intersection of local practices with global forces such as industrial agriculture, tourism and height technology. The three thematic sections examine enduring cultural practices, changing landscapes as well as transforming relationships between people and the land. Viewing the Alps as a microcosm of global change, this volume offers new anthropological insights into the Alpine region and beyond.
New Horizons for the Alps is both a critical reflection on the state of Alpine anthropology and an invitation to future research that recognises the complexity of human-environment interactions.
Inmitten der zuweilen vernichtenden nation-state-Dynamiken Mitteleuropas überlebten die Sinti als kleine, in ihrem kulturellen Erscheinungsbild unsichtbare Gruppen. Ihr Überleben gehört bis heute zu den ungeklärten Phänomenen der europäischen Geschichte. Die vorliegende Ethnographie zeichnet die zentralen Momente nach, die für die Fortführung einer von Außen selten erkennbaren kulturellen Kohäsion bedeutsam sind. Diese ist geprägt von den großen Themen des Lebens - Liebe und Tod -, die während und nach der Fluchtheirat der Sinti für einen kurzen Augenblick sichtbar werden.
Papers by Tauber Elisabeth
Drawing on a rich collection of ethnographic studies, this book reveals the intersection of local practices with global forces such as industrial agriculture, tourism and height technology. The three thematic sections examine enduring cultural practices, changing landscapes as well as transforming relationships between people and the land. Viewing the Alps as a microcosm of global change, this volume offers new anthropological insights into the Alpine region and beyond.
New Horizons for the Alps is both a critical reflection on the state of Alpine anthropology and an invitation to future research that recognises the complexity of human-environment interactions.
Inmitten der zuweilen vernichtenden nation-state-Dynamiken Mitteleuropas überlebten die Sinti als kleine, in ihrem kulturellen Erscheinungsbild unsichtbare Gruppen. Ihr Überleben gehört bis heute zu den ungeklärten Phänomenen der europäischen Geschichte. Die vorliegende Ethnographie zeichnet die zentralen Momente nach, die für die Fortführung einer von Außen selten erkennbaren kulturellen Kohäsion bedeutsam sind. Diese ist geprägt von den großen Themen des Lebens - Liebe und Tod -, die während und nach der Fluchtheirat der Sinti für einen kurzen Augenblick sichtbar werden.
social life. This also questioned the suppositions (many of which were based on Steward, 1972 [1955]) of their contemporary American colleagues, doing research in the Alps at that time.
Would Cole and Wolf have had the same insights, would their results have been similarly ground-breaking and sustainable in time – we are still gaining valuable understandings from this study – had they not based their analysis on comparison?
between different levels of analysis, to look into the rhetoric and practices of the state, to take into consideration the agencies and local practices of the police and to look closely into relationships between
peoples on the ground. It also shows how the ethnographic perspective, especially if referring to marginalized voices, can review and deconstruct power relations between those who write and build the archive and
those who are described and documented.
Keywords: archive, ethnography, micro-history, policy, police, peasants, Sinti.
archives. They display how a methodological and theoretical de-construction of the archive allows shedding light on marginalized and often silenced voices within Europe’s history. It is shown how the reduction of the history of the presence of the «Gypsies» in Europe to a succession of repressive acts and negative topos means, in fact, not taking into account the capacity for civilisation on the part of the Romanì people, their being part of contexts that are not only, and not always, marginal. It introduces into how the archival material that contains the category of «Gypsy» unfolds and develops when it is approached through an ethnographic lens. Opening up for the specific combination of European archival sources, and Romanì ethnographies
with their inherently diverging understandings of time and history, the authors propose a twofold approach on how to engage with the archival sources: by ethnographically denaturalizing the archive and by basing its
research on present ethnographic experiences with Romani people.
Keywords: Europe, archive, ethnography, memory, conceptions of time, «Gypsies», Roma and Sinti.