Volkskunde (Cultural Anthropology)

The decipline of Volkskunde (also called Cultural Anthropology and Cultural Studies) is a small, modern academic discipline with great scope and concern: it is the systematic study of the comlexity of human life. It sets itself apart by it’s unique definition of "culture". While other academic disciplines restrict their understanding of "culture" to art or high culture, our open concept of culture encompasses all relations in human life - the "whole way of life" as Raymond Williamsput it. It’s broad foucus enables us to look at the whole world of human imaginings that form the foundations upon which people live together and organize their existence. In short, an ethnological concept of culture combines hamburgers and faith, homeland and strangers, youth cultures and traditions. At the center of the subject culture therefore is the multitude of answers that people find to cope with and give meaning to their lives. Cultural Anthropology explores cultural processes - foreign and familiar, global and local, well-known and marginal. The focus of Cultural Anthropology as understood by us, is therefore on an open concept of culture, centered on everyday life itself, human mindsets, experiences, and forms of human life.