M.A. Transcultural Studies/Cultural Anthropology (single-subject)

On the Master's degree course in Transcultural Studies/Cultural Anthropology, you will study how cultural, but also economic, ecological and political processes have shaped social groups in different regions of the world - Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, North America, Africa - in the past and continue to do so in the present. They learn that migration movements, conflicts over national identity, negotiations of cultural heritage and processes of digitalization can only be understood comprehensively if we follow them across regional and national borders. Furthermore, the transculturality approach fundamentally assumes that social groups in all parts of the world have always been involved in cultural exchange processes and are in diverse relationships with one another.

The Master's degree programme in Transcultural Studies / Cultural Anthropology focuses primarily on questions of cultural phenomena in the broadest sense, from everyday cultural practices such as forms of housing and consumption to mobility practices and protest cultures. We are interested in how people give meaning to their past through forms and rituals of collective remembrance, define themselves together with others as a community and at the same time set themselves apart from other groups. We are also interested in cultural phenomena in the narrower sense, e.g. pop-cultural and artistic practices such as musical styles and scenes, video games or literary phenomena such as autobiographical texts. In general, it is about the question of how people, together with others, organize the world in a meaningful way in order to make sense of it and be able to exist in it. It is also about how people's everyday ways of making sense are integrated into collective and conflictual negotiations of power and domination and how people use cultural forms and practices to try to assert their interests and views of the world.

The term „transculturality“ is made up of two parts of the word that need to be explained. Let's start with the question of what exactly is meant by „-culturality“. Transcultural studies are interested in „culture“ or the „cultural“ aspects of society. But what exactly does that mean? Scholars have been arguing about this for at least 60 years, sometimes more and sometimes less, and there is no clear definition in sight. Instead, there are various definitions of „culture“, which are often shaped by the different research subjects of the academic disciplines in which they circulate - from literary studies, philosophy and sociology to ethnology and cultural anthropology.

Culture - a broad concept

In our Master's degree programme Transcultural Studies / Cultural Anthropology, we therefore work primarily with a broad and ethnologically influenced concept of culture. „Culture“ or the „cultural“ is therefore the way in which people, as members of social groups, give meaning or sense to their own existence and the environment around them on a daily basis and how they act meaningfully in their environment. People do this by applying existing knowledge about the world in their daily lives or by creating new knowledge and sharing it with each other. Examples include sharing memories by looking at old family photos together, posting pictures on social media and presenting texts, images and sounds in museums. However, it is not just about knowledge in the sense of linguistic or visual phenomena. Cultural knowledge also plays a role when we try to form an idea of climate change by discussing it with other people or even organizing ourselves to become politically active. We apply cultural knowledge sometimes more and sometimes less consciously, for example when we dress „masculine“ or „feminine“, or when we share certain social rules, values and norms with other people and live them in practice, e.g. ideas about good nutrition, hygiene or child rearing. For the most part, we have an implicit rather than an explicit relationship to this type of knowledge; it is closely tied to our bodies and seems to us to be self-evident. In short, we have become accustomed to this type of knowledge and have virtually forgotten that we need and apply it all the time.

Above all, we are interested in how people act together in the world with knowledge, how they give meaning and significance to the world in a very practical way with their bodies or with the help of certain technologies, and how their actions are implicitly shaped by knowledge. In this context, we are also interested in how people shape their relationships to and with other people through such meaningful and meaning-creating actions, e.g. when they define themselves as a group that belongs together and is different from other groups - be it as a nation, as soccer fans or as a social movement. One could also go so far as to say that the cultural arises precisely in the relationships and develops between people.

Trans–…?

What characterizes the transcultural perspective on the cultural, so what exactly does „trans-“ mean? It has already been mentioned that, from a transcultural perspective, cultural phenomena and processes that transcend regional and national borders and whose significance is not limited to individual localities are of particular interest. In its beginnings in the 1940s, the innovative content of the term lay in not assuming „ethnic“ or otherwise defined cultural groups that were very stable, unchanging and clearly distinguishable from other groups. The term was coined by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz. Using the example of Cuban society and its European colonizers, he not only assumed that they interacted within a strong power imbalance. He argued that these (often conflictual) interactions gave rise to new cultural practices and ideas on both sides.

Ortiz was thus a pioneer of many concepts of culture that would only emerge a few years later, particularly in the context of post-colonial movements and theories. Concepts such as hybridity, mimicry, nomadism or the contact zone, which developed following Ortiz's ideas, have in common that they are primarily interested in how social groups permanently change culturally and how cultural innovation arises in the transformation of social groups. In general, these approaches assume that cultural stability - fixed ideas about cultural rules, identities or even rituals - can only ever exist for a limited period of time and that people are constantly negotiating them, often in conflict. The perspective of transculturality therefore also emphasizes that these processes are shaped and contested by power relations.

Trans(g)local

However, this does not only apply to cultural exchange and cultural negotiation (e.g. of collective identity or cultural heritage) between social groups. Instead, the approach of transculturality must be understood in such a way that the cultural is also constantly changing and in flux within social groups that share certain ideas and practices and is also constantly contested here. This becomes quite clear in current debates about migration, cultural identity or the right way to deal with the climate crisis. It is evident when political actors define migrants as a homogeneous group with a distinct "culture" that should be clearly distinguished from "our culture". However, it also becomes clear when everyday practices such as the consumption of or abstention from meat, the choice of means of transportation or sexual orientations are questioned and become part of political disputes within social groups.

Transculturality - in a nutshell...

In short, in the M.A. course Transcultural Studies / Cultural Anthropology we are not only interested in the question of how people form stable collective identities, rules, values or ritualized practices. We are also particularly interested in how these are constantly changing and how people shape and (conflictually) negotiate this change with each other.

Can the question of how people make sense of their lives in exchange with their environment be answered satisfactorily if we focus exclusively on relationships between people? This has been the subject of extensive debate in the social and cultural sciences for a number of years.

People with technologies

The question also arises in transcultural studies for various reasons: firstly, because our existence and also our relationships are increasingly shaped by technology. For example, the way smartphones work influences how people (can) act and think. They influence the way we live relationships with other people and how we present ourselves to others. Current media technologies allow us to maintain family relationships and friendships over long distances. However, they can also play a significant role in turning groups against each other, for example by enabling the exchange of conspiracy narratives across national and regional borders.

Humans with non-human organisms

Secondly, the coronavirus pandemic has recently made it impressively clear to us that non-human organisms can also shape our relationships with other people, and in what way. The coronavirus, which transcends national and regional borders, also spread through everyday practices, including the trade and consumption of wild animals at regional markets, through long-distance mobility practices, at ritualistic carnival celebrations in the Rhineland and at tourist après-ski parties in Tyrol. Conversely, it restricted our everyday habits for a long time and combating it through politically imposed restrictions on freedom of movement and changes in everyday behavior led to political conflicts that continue to have an impact even after the measures have been lifted. But even in less globalized and technologized worlds, relationships between humans have always been shaped by relationships with other non-human organisms, such as animals and plants - and still are in many parts of the world today. Humans have lived closely with them, often under the same roof. Animals were feared threats, providers of vital nutrients and energy in the form of meat and milk or companions that enabled mobility. They were also significantly involved as supply and transportation animals or as weapons in armed conflicts between humans. Relationships with plants and animals have made people sedentary on the one hand and enabled mobility and migration across wide geographical areas on the other. They have promoted processes of colonization and changed people's ways of life. Humans have culturally processed their relationships and experiences with animals from early on, as we can see, for example, in cave paintings that are tens of thousands of years old. The categorical separation between human and non-human organisms, on the other hand, is a comparatively new and modern phenomenon. Our current knowledge of the Anthropocene and the climate crisis clearly shows us that the separation between nature on the one hand and (human) culture on the other was not only never really stable, but also has far-reaching and dangerous consequences.

People with (spiritually) imagined beings

Thirdly, we must also think of the relationships that have always existed between humans and spiritual beings, deities, spirits and mythical beings. The existence of such imagined companions has also shaped the coexistence of the vast majority of people and their ways of life in the world in the past and continues to do so in the present. These beings have also traveled with humans across natural and political boundaries, and their relationships with them have caused conflicts or created bonds between people, e.g. through shared religious rituals and ideas or legends and myths circulating in social groups. At the same time, their existence was often disputed within social groups. And even in the present day, relationships between people and spiritual beings are of interest to transcultural studies, for example when indigenous groups come into contact with ethnological museums to negotiate the handling and return of spiritually significant objects.

The application phase for the summer semester 2025 starts on December 2, 2024 and ends on March 15, 2025.

Further information on the application procedure, admission and enrolment can be found on the pages of the Faculty of Arts and the Central Student Advisory Service.

• University degree (domestic or foreign) in a relevant subject
• Modules from the field of Cultural Studies amounting to at least 24 ECTS
• Language skills:
  • German: Certificate DSH 2 or a DSD or a TELC C1 or TestDaF 16 points (4x4) or a Goethe-Zertifikat C1
  • English: language level GeR B2

If you have any further questions about this Master's program, please contact the program management at studiengangsmanagement.kulturanthropologie@uni-bonn.de.

When applying, please note that all required certificates such as university entrance qualification certificate and B.A. certificate (or equivalent degree) must be available as PDF documents in order to upload them to the applicant profile in the application process. If you do not yet have a university degree certificate, please upload your transcript of records.

Optionally, a letter of motivation, internship certificates and a CV can also be uploaded to the application portal for a better assessment of the applicant.

Applicants from abroad should note that the required documents must be available as certified translations (in German or English) in addition to the original documents in PDF format.

If you have any formal questions or problems with the application portal, please contact our degree programme management team by e-mail at studiengangsmanagement.kulturanthropologie@uni-bonn.de.

You can also contact us if you have any questions about the content of the programme. All contact details can be found at the bottom of this page under Student Counselling.

The supplementary area Museum Studies can only be taken in the „Study without profile“ programme. The modules can be freely combined with the other modules in the compulsory elective area. If all three Museum Studies modules are completed, the supplementary area is shown on the certificate.

For organisational reasons, please register in advance with Ms Julia Krings (museumsstudien@uni-bonn.de) if you wish to take the Museum Studies modules.

If the three modules totalling 30 CP are completed, the supplementary area is automatically shown on the certificate.

Modules in the supplementary area: "Museum Studies"

· MS1: Collecting, researching and preserving (10 CP)

· MS2: Exhibiting and mediating (10 CP)

· MS3: Law, Management and Marketing (10 CP)

Further information on the supplementary area „Museum Studies“ can be found here.

The internship takes 300 hours, of which 240 hours are for the internship (approx. 6 weeks) and 60 hours for writing the internship report.

The choice and organisation of an internship should be made by the students themselves. The planned internships and the potential employers should be discussed in advance with Prof. Dr Ove Sutter.

Further information on internships can be found in the relevant guidelines under „Guidelines and Downloads“.