Institute of Historical and Cultural Anthropology

Knowledge

Questions regarding the creation, distribution and impact of knowledge (whether everyday knowledge or academic knowledge) are of importance in nearly all of the areas of research in Historical and Cultural Anthropology. Research projects on everyday culture and the culture of memory, on museums, archives and religion all deal with their subjects from the perspective of the production and popularization of knowledge. At the Ludwig Uhland Institute (LUI), a number of research projects in recent years have dealt explicitly with issues from the field of the history of knowledge. In the process, the history and state of being of the field of Folklore Studies – the predecessor discipline to Historical and Cultural Anthropology – and the knowledge that is being produced and published in the discipline today (and has been produced and published in the past), has become the focus of attention in various research projects. In addition, the museum as an institution that not only puts knowledge on display and imparts it to visitors, but also collects and ultimately, produces it, is an object of research interest at LUI: Taking museums as a model, it is possible to examine mechanisms and effects of the transmission of knowledge in both contemporary and historical contexts.