ISA International Guest Lecture: DAVID SHANKLAND
This lecture presents reflections on a longitudinal study of a Alevi village that I have been pursuing for approximately thirty five years. Part of this study has been an attempt to trace the way that migration began, and the village opened up to Europe in the latter half of the twentieth century. At the same time, I have been interested in the relationship between social mobility and culture, something which tracing the way that the villagers have fared in Germany and Austria gives ample opportunity to do. The first such study was conducted by the late Paul Stirling, and he raised similar questions in a series of papers before his death. Here, I suggest that following his pioneering example leads to unexpected results that both yield methodological insights and also provoke us to reconsider Weber’s Protestant Ethic in new guise.
David Shankland is a social anthropologist, who has conducted fieldwork in rural Turkey, making a special study of the Turkish Alevis. He is currently Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and former Visiting Professor to the University of Vienna. He is Stadt Wien Fellow at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) 2023-24, during the course of which is he examining the recognition of the Alevi community in Austria.