ÖAW funded interinstitutional interdisciplinary research initiative on the river Vjosa (Albania and Greece) Linguistic anthropological subproject: Conceptualizing the Own and the Foreign in the Aoos/Vjosa Valley The Vjosa valley is a sparsely populated area in modern Albania and Greece with very few urban settlements. The demographic landscape is dominated by small-scale agricultural farming and pastoralism as well as contains several monastic communities in the south. The sparsity of urban structures in the Vjosa valley dates back to ancient times. Nevertheless, small communities ‒ sedentary, transhumant, and transient ‒ have been interacting with each other when using the river and its resources. Apart from the fact that the ecology of a river valley provides conditions for the development of a different lifestyle and consequently a different culture than mountainous tributaries do, human mobility in the area results in perpetual cultural contact and exchange. The river serves concomitantly as the binding and the separating factor impacting social awareness and behavior. Multiple local cultural paradigms found in communities scattered all over the largely pristine Vjosa area offer a unique research field in terms of the conceptualization of the ‘own’ and the ‘foreign’ in the Balkan context. The Vjosa functioning as a constant and simultaneously fluid and permeable boundary is the defining feature in the awareness and realization of the group affiliation and the respective identification of the ‘self’ vs. the ‘others’ by the people inhabiting the region. It is common knowledge that language is though not the direct but the most conclusive way to access conceptual structures. Therefore, our analysis focuses primarily on the linguistic realization of the conceptual dichotomy described above and its varying contextual embedding. The Vjosa area is home to speech communities of Albanian, Greek, Aromanian, previously Slavic (visible in toponymy) and presumable Romani idioms. Socioeconomic and cultural contacts between them fostered linguistic interferences occurring within and across the linguistic boundaries. The resulting diversity of the linguistic expression provides an excellent projection surface of mental construals anchored in the framework of the ‘own’ – ‘foreign’ conceptual differentiation. Historical anthropological subproject: The Visual Memory Archive Aoos/Vjosa Valley The project aims at comprehensive documentation of the Vjosa/Aoos habitat through photographic means by tracing its course from northwestern Greece to the Adriatic Sea. Simultaneously, we  conduct ethnographic explorations of the Aoos/Vjosa valley and its tributaries—Lengarica, Lumica, Drinos, Bënça, Shushica—collecting and curating historical and contemporary photographic records. The visual database will be meticulously compiled […]

ÖAW launch funding The world view in any culture possesses a range of categories allocating all humankind a particular position along the axis of ‘own’ vs. ‘foreign’: crucial antithetic notions in the conceptualization of the social environment. The “space” in-between of both poles, hence, encompassing all those neither belonging to the inner circle of a community nor to total strangers, is shared by all “others” who might be further subdivided in closer and farther circles. However, the boundaries separating groups of people of different status (i.e., the circles of various radius with respect to the own community) could be fluid and to a certain extent permeable, which is a matter of each particular cultural context. The degree of permeability is described by the categories openness vs. closeness of a social community towards “others”. The realization of the conceptual axis ‘own’ vs. ‘foreign’ is one of the central topics in linguistic anthropology. Since it enables deep insights into the dynamics and the driving forces of social interaction. The latter has already been in focus of scientific enquiry into the Balkans, however, in completely different socio-ecological settings. In recent years, there has been an intense discourse on the view upon and the concept of the Balkans from the outside, which (as often happens) is tainted with stereotypes. The Balkans allegedly serve as a projection surface for the attribution of negative characteristics. In the heated discussions, however, this opinion was put into perspective by also exploring and analyzing the internal view, which itself is very multifaceted and equally also afflicted with stereotypes. While this debate on a macro level counterposes mostly Europe vs. the Balkans, the question of the internal reciprocal counter-perspectives and their conceptualizations, on the other hand, largely remains unknown and in fact unnoticed. Involved researchers: Katsiaryna Ackermann (PI) Joachim Matzinger Milica Santa Niko Pavic Tamara Haddad Nermin Mahic Antonio Punoš  

A human is not only part of the physical world but also a major actor in a complex sociocultural space. Human interaction is always imbedded in sociocultural frameworks within which cognitive content gets its shape in form of conceptions and attitudes. Vectors of cultural and linguistic development are unprogrammable, yet most content if “translated” is mutually intelligible. But how does it actually work? How can we lend our thoughts without lending the language? What is universal and what specific in the ways we construct concepts? Here, scholarly opinions diverge significantly. Knowing which constituents of conceptual formulae are variable and which invariable and how they interplay helps to reanalyze cognitive underpinnings of cultural and linguistic diversity and reshape theories of cultural logic. Pursuing the answers the project introduces several novel perspectives – in focus, theory and methods, and data sourcing. PI Katsiaryna Ackermann affiliated researchers