Alle Publikationen
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2016
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(2016): Teaching Wedding Rules. In: Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 31 (1), S. 33-67. DOI: 10.1177/0891241602031001002
Abstract: Salespeople must educate their customers and teach them to be good consumers of products. To maximize sales and minimize potential problems, salespeople must also develop strategies to control their customer's behavior. To examine the "generic social process" of gaining control over customers, the author focuses on the bridal shop to show how workers attempt to establish themselves as professionals. In the world of bridal wear, workers and brides must maintain extensive contact over many months. Bridal workers strive to gain control over their brides behavior by presenting a professional self. By establishing familiarity with their clients and demonstrating their expertise, bridal workers can give orders to their customers and chastise them when they deviate from appropriate behavior without fear that the customer will not return.
2015
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(2015): Studying Social Robots in Practiced Places. In: Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 19 (2), S. 143-165. DOI: 10.5840/techne20159833
Abstract: What is the strength of anthropological fieldwork when we want to understand human technologies? In this article we argue that anthropological fieldwork can be understood as a process of gaining insight into different contextualisations in practiced places that will open up new understandings of technologies in use, e.g., technologies as multistable ontologies. The argument builds on an empirical study of robots at a Danish rehabilitation centre. Ethnographic methods combined with anthropological learning processes open up new way for exploring how robots enter into professional practices and change values, social relations and materialities. Though substantial funding has been invested in developing health service robots, few studies have been undertaken that explore human-robot interactions as they play out in everyday practice. We argue that the complex learning processes involve not only so-called end-users but also staff, management, doings and discourse in a complex amalgamation of materials and values.
2012
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(2012): Natural interaction with culturally adaptive virtual characters. In: Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces 6 (1-2), S. 39-47. DOI: 10.1007/s12193-011-0087-z
Abstract: Recently, the verbal and non-verbal behavior of virtual characters has become more and more sophisticated due to advances in behavior planning and rendering. Nevertheless, the appearance and behavior of these characters is in most cases based on the cultural background of their designers. Especially in combination with new natural interaction interfaces, there is the risk that characters developed for a particular culture might not find acceptance when being presented to another culture. A few attempts have been made to create characters that reflect a particular cultural background. However, interaction with these characters still remains an awkward experience in particular when it comes to non-verbal interaction. In many cases, human users either have to choose actions from a menu their avatar has to execute or they have to struggle with obtrusive interaction devices. In contrast, our paper combines an approach to the generation of culture-specific behaviors with full body avatar control based on the Kinect sensor. A first study revealed that users are able to easily control an avatar through their body movements and immediately adapt its behavior to the cultural background of the agents they interact with.
2011
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(2011): The con man as model organism. The methodological roots of Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical self. In: History of the Human Sciences 24 (2), S. 138-154. DOI: 10.1177/0952695111398828
Abstract: This article offers a historical analysis of the relationship between the practice of participant-observation among American sociologists and Erving Goffman's dramaturgical model of the self. He was a social scientist who privileged ethnography in the field over the laboratory experiment, the survey questionnaire, or the mental test. His goal was a natural history of communication among humans. Rather than rely upon standardizing technologies for measurement, Goffman tried to obtain accurate recordings of human behavior through secretive observations. During the 1950s, he conducted three major studies as a participant-observer, disguised from those studied through insincere performances. As originally presented, his dramaturgical theory did not draw upon the theater as the governing metaphor, but rather the confidence game. It is suggested that Goffman's writings exemplify what Gerd Gigerenzer calls the tools-to-theories heuristic. Goffman's depiction of the confidence man's behavior closely mirrored how he and his fellow sociologists described the practice of participant-observation. Both were represented as embedded and attentive yet coolly detached observers skilled at playing different roles as the situation necessitated. The similarities between his own professional behavior and the activities of the confidence man may have suggested to Goffman the latter as a model for human nature
2003
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(2003): Persecutors or victims? The moral logic at the heart of eating disorders. In: Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy 11 (3), S. 219-228. DOI: 10.1023/B:HCAN.0000005494.66782.4e
DOI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14708934 Abstract: Eating Disorders, particularly anorexia and bulimia, are of immense contemporary importance and interest. News stories depicting the tragic effects of eating disorders command wide attention. Almost everybody in society has been touched by eating disorders in one way or another, and contemporary obsession with body image and diet fuels fascination with this problem. It is unclear why people develop eating disorders. Clinical and sociological studies have provided important information relating to the relational systems in which eating disorders are mainly found. This paper shows that their explanations are not conclusive and points out that the reasons why people develop eating disorders should not be found in the dysfunctional interactions occurring in both familial and social systems, but in the moral beliefs that underlie these interactions. Eating disorders are impossible to understand or explain, unless they are viewed in the light of these beliefs. A moral logic, that is a way of thinking of interpersonal relations in moral terms, gives shape to and justifies the clinical condition, and finds consistent expression in abnormal eating behaviour. The analysis offered here is not mainstream either in philosophy (eating disorders are in fact seldom the subject of philosophical investigation) or in clinical psychology (the methods of philosophical analysis are in fact seldom utilised in clinical psychology). However, this paper offers an important contribution to the understanding of such a dramatic and widespread condition, bringing to light the deepest reasons, which are moral in nature, that contribute to the explanation of this complex phenomenon.
Keywords: Beeinflussung der Bewertung moralischer Urteile, Bewertung von sozialem Verhalten (/sozialer Angemessenheit), Culture, Disziplin, Ethnographie, Feeding and Eating Disorders/ethnology/psychology, Health Behavior/ethnology, Humans, Internal-External Control, Interpersonal Relations, Moral, Moral und Kognition, Morals, Observablen/Kriterien für sozial angemessenes Verhalten und dessen Bewertung, Pathologie, Philosophie, Philosophie in der Psychologie, Psychologie, Social Environment, Sozialverhalten 1971
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(1971): Sense and Nonsense in St. Vincent. Speech Behavior and Decorum in a Caribbean Community. In: American Anthropologist 73 (3), S. 762-772. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1971.73.3.02a00160
Abstract: Speech behavior, among the Afro-American peasants of St. Vincent, British West Indies, is the focus of a high degree of interest, self-consciousness, and value judgment. A segment of the speech economy of Vincentian peasants is analyzed in terms of a native taxonomy of speech acts and related terms, illuminating Vincentian ideas concerning proper and improper behavior as well as the realm of speech behavior itself. The analysis paves the way for a consideration of the conduct and significance of the tea meeting, one of the most popular performance events on the island and a key to the dynamics of social change in contemporary Vincentian society.
Keywords: Ethnographie, im/proper, proper behaviour, improper behaviour, Kommunikation, Kultur, Kulturelle Normen, Kulturelle/soziale Rituale, Kulturvergleich, Linguistik, Non/sense, Rhetorik, Sinn, Sinnproduktion, Sinnzuweisung, Soziale Angemessenheit, Speech Behaviour, Sprachgebrauch, Sprechakt, Sprechgewohnheit, Sprechökonomie, Taxonimie, Teezeremonie 1968
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(1968): The Etiquette of Bargaining in the Middle East. In: American Anthropologist 70 (4), S. 698-706. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1968.70.4.02a00020
Abstract: Bargaining takes place in free markets, as in the sûqs of the Middle East, where prices fluctuate and where the buyers and sellers meet with opposed economic interests. It brings order to such markets by enabling the buyer and the seller to develop lasting economic relationships between them, based on mutual trust. Should the bargaining partners, buyer or seller, fail to establish such trust by the use of culturally determined polite formulas, conflict between them arises and no transaction takes place.
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