Technology

Within the field of Historical and Cultural Anthropology, researchers investigate how people deal with technology in their everyday lives, and how technological developments have affected our daily lives in the past, and continue to do so today. One of the factors that led to the emergence of technology as a field of research in Folklore Studies and the academic disciplines that developed out of it was the analysis and postdoctoral thesis by Hermann Bausinger on popular culture in the world of technology (1961). In the years that followed, groundbreaking papers were written at the Ludwig Uhland Institute (LUI) on the culture of technology. These include, among others, the dissertation by Stefan Beck entitled “Umgang mit Technik” (“Interaction with Technology”) (1997). More recent studies have, moreover, dealt with Science and Technology Studies (STS), and have generated interdisciplinary topics associated with media, objects and knowledge.