Institute for Social Anthropology
| Institut für Sozialanthropologie | |
| Predecessor | Ethnologische Kommission |
|---|---|
| Formation | November 22, 1961 |
| Location | |
| Leader | Andre Gingrich |
|
Parent organization
|
Austrian Academy of Sciences |
|
Staff (2015)
|
29 |
| Website | www |
The Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) is a research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS) in Vienna, Austria.
The Institute for Social Anthropology is an Asia-specialized research institute at the AAS. Its long-term research focus lies on "Consensus and Conflict in Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean". Special emphasis is placed on transnational developments in Asia, such as regional integration and cooperation, transformations of family and kinship relations, as well as regional and internal migration.
ISA’s medium-term research program (2012-2017) is entitled "Engaging with Crisis, Mobility and Transformations in Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean". It focuses on systemic and biographic crises in Asia’s past and present, on the relationships between crises and mobility, and on the role of major social, economic and political transformations in connection with this. In short, ISA’s research problematizes the ways in which Asian societies engage with crises, mobility and transformations.
Prof. Ulf Hannerz is the current chair and Prof. Regina Bendix the current deputy chair of ISA’s Scientific Advisory Board for the term 2014-2016.
The roots of the current Institute for Social Anthropology can be traced back to March 2, 1938, when the erstwhile Commissions for "Research on Illiterate Languages of Non-European Peoples" and for "Publishing Songs and Texts Recorded in Prisoner of War Camps" at the Austrian Academy of Sciences were merged into the new "Commission for Research on Primitive Cultures and Languages." As the Commission’s research focus increasingly turned to complex societies, in line with developments within anthropology at the time, it was renamed "Ethnological Commission" on November 22, 1961. In the years between 1955 and 1965, Prof. Robert Heine-Geldern established a focus on the region of Southeast Asia for the first time in the history of AAS.
From 1980 to 2000 Prof. Walter Dostal substantially expanded the already existing focus on Southeast Asia by two additional core fields – South-Western Arabia and Tibet. A second institutional merger took place under Prof. Walter Dostal on January 1, 1993, when the "Arabic Commission" was integrated into the Ethnological Commission, resulting both in an interdisciplinary approach that provided a strong foundation for research on intercultural relations, and in a special emphasis on language competency in its anthropological work.
As it became clear that the term "ethnos" did not adequately capture anthropology’s research focus on the human anymore, the Commission for Ethnology was renamed, on January 18, 1995, to "Commission for Social Anthropology." Since 1995, this socio-anthropological research approach follows an interdisciplinary program by conducting empirical and ethnographic investigations in connection with philological and historical analyses and intercultural comparative studies of socio-cultural phenomena. The award of the Wittgenstein prize to Prof. Andre Gingrich in the year 2000 marked the start of a new era at the Commission.
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