PROJECTS
CENTRAL ASIA

VILLAGE IDENTITY AND STATE INFLUENCE IN BUDDHIST CENTRAL ASIA
(1) Elke Studer | Races for the Gods. Byang thang ’char can rta rgyug.
(2) Hilde Schäffler | Ethnological Knowledge, Objects and Colonial Power.
(3) Guntram Hazod | Historical Maps of Central Tibet.
(4) Walter Probstler | Cultural History of the Buryats in Northeastern Mongolia.
(5) Stephan Kloos | Tibetan Medicine among the Buddhist Dards of Ladakh.


 
HILDE SCHÄFFLER | ETHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE, OBJECTS AND COLONIAL POWER.
A Book Project.
  
Hilde Schäffler’s book project provides a deeply-nuanced analysis of the first field research conducted in northeastern India by social anthropologist Christoph Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995) who, although he studied in Vienna, is better known in the English-speaking world.
 
The starting point for her analysis is a head-hunter trophy that Fürer-Haimendorf brought home from a research trip and donated to the Vienna Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde) in 1937. She uses the trophy to construct a range of arguments concerning head hunting, ethnological method and praxis, the history of ethnology, its development in Nagaland, and a critique of colonialism. Through a discussion of the institutional, intellectual and personal history of Fürer-Haimendorf, Schäffler creates a comprehensive analysis of his research projects in north-east India in relationship to these themes, in particular the problem of head hunting in its local varieties and in reference to anthropological theories. In conclusion, Schäffler considers the complicity between ethnological researchers and their practices with the colonial project.
 
Schäffler also provides a detailed documentation and re-contextualization of several of the objects in the Fürer-Haimendorf collection. She relocates the objects into the social and cultural environment from which they came and presents new readings of them. Schäffler’s book, Begehrte Köpfe. Christoph Fürer-Haimendorfs Feldforschung im Nagaland (Nordost-Indien) der 30er Jahre, was published in 2006 by Böhlau Press.


 
Schäffler, Hildegard (2006): Begehrte Köpfe. Christoph Fürer-Haimendorfs Feldforschung im Nagaland (Nordostindien) der 30er Jahre. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag.
-> see publications

Schäffler, Hildegard (2006): Koloniale Ränder und postkoloniale Identitäten: Das Beispiel der Naga in Nordostindien.
In: Gingrich, Andre and Guntram Hazod (ed.): Der Rand und die Mitte. Beiträge zur Sozialanthropologie und Kulturgeschichte Tibets und des Himalaya. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.
-> see publications
 
 		 
     
 
 

Wittgenstein-Preis 2000
Kommission für Sozialanthropologie
Schwindgasse 14/6
A-1040 Wien

Tel.: 0043/1/515 81 - 6677
Fax: 0043/1/503 68 73 - 6680
wittgenstein2000@oeaw.ac.at

Notice: We want to inform you that the research program will come to an end on the 31st of March 2007. Since that time this homepage will not be updated anymore.