Anthropologische Perspektiven auf Elternschaft. Ringvorlesung Beziehungsweise Familie

In the organizer's words:

Erdmute Alber, professor at the University of Bayreuth, has been studying childhood, youth, intergenerational relationships and the overlap between politics and kinship for many years. She has worked intensively on the phenomenon of kinship care in West Africa, i.e. the fact that children in some regions do not grow up with their biological parents but with others.

In her publications, she explores the ways in which political processes create kinship and, conversely, how changes in kinship influence social change and political processes. Her research has taken her to various countries on the African continent, as well as to the Latin American Andean region. Erdmute Alber has published extensively, including the book "soziale Elternschaft im Wandel" published in German in 2010 by Dietrich Reimer Verlag, as well as the book "Verwandtschaft heute".

Participants

Erdmute Alber (University of Bayreuth)

"In my lecture, I would like to show that parenthood is an underestimated topic in social anthropology. I will take you on a journey through approaches from social anthropology on the subject. A perspective on parenthood makes it possible to think fundamentally about how societies reproduce themselves, organize the future and how claims, goods and affiliations are passed on intergenerationally both socially and in specific families. I begin by describing a conversation in which a young man from West Africa explains some of his plans for the future and show that the topic of parenthood permeates the entire conversation. On this basis, I arrive at various approaches and, building on this, at a definition of parenthood that goes beyond the nuclear family model and includes the state as an actor. Furthermore, I deal with ideas of parenthood that deviate from the Western model."

The lecture is part of the interdisciplinary lecture series "Beziehungsweise Familie", which kicks off the Humboldt Forum's annual program of the same name for 2025-26.

The lecture series takes place as part of a cooperation between the Humboldt Forum's network of institutions.

Programmatic director of the cross-institutional cluster: Dr. Laura Goldenbaum

- Free admission

- Language: German

- Location: Room 3, ground floor

- Part of: Lecture series Beziehungsweise Familie