Paper short abstract:

Description and activities of the SIEF WG Space-lore and Place-lore

Paper long abstract:

The relationship of ethnology and cultural anthropology towards the notions of space and place in the history of our discipline has been manifold and is offering a multitude of theoretically and methodologically different approaches. People and their communities shape many spaces and places, that in turn influence them and their culture. Both scientific and popular concepts of space, place, locality or landscape have become extremely diverse in the course of the 20th century and political and natural, social, symbolical, religious, ethnic, linguistic and other borders criss-cross our lives, continuously shaping the space and place of our lives producing a distinctive regionalism and regional consciousness. By exploring the unique contexts and reactions to the preservation, removal, and transformation of spaces and places impacted by variety of sociocultural processes, we can learn much about the ways in which contested histories and futures are mediated through built and natural environments, and the emotions that they inspire.

Our working group wishes to examine these themes, mainly in ethnological and anthropological case studies, with a global and local outlook or comparative approach. We welcome all those researchers who wish to deal with spatial experience from any relevant disciplinary angle (European ethnology, geography, sociology, cultural studies, urban studies, anthropology, heritage studies, etc.).

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