Wittgenstein Award Laureate
Wittgenstein Award Laureate 2000 Univ. Prof. Dr. Andre Gingrich
Social and Cultural Anthropology, Vienna University
Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology 
Kommission für Sozialanthropologie (GERMAN)
”In many tribal societies men adorn themselves with daggers like this one from Saudi Arabia. I am investigating connections between local conflicts, relationships between the sexes and globalization.”
APPRECIATING THE VIEW FROM AFAR
Socio-cultural anthropologist Andre Gingrich is studying cultures in Southern Arabia, in Tibet and in the Himalayas. He is particularly interested in relationships between the sexes, social spaces, sacred places and local reactions to external pressure. He is paying special attention to interactions between majority and minority cultures, which might provide comparative perspectives on the European and especially Austrian situation.
An early and active interest for third-world movements left its mark on Gingrich before he turned to anthropological studies. A further factor in his development was the ”rather unusual composition of my family, in Viennese terms. My father came to Vienna as an American soldier and remained in Europe; my mother fled from the Nazis to Switzerland with a few relatives and returned after 1945.” This made him sensitive to marginal, intercultural situations.
His work in Tibet is a continuation of the intense Austrian research tradition in the area, which goes back for many generations and is associated with scholars at least as well known in the academic world as is Heinrich Harrer. In addition, Vienna has in Ernst Steinkellner a world-famous scholar in the field of textual studies. ”He actively supported us socio-cultural anthropologists and became our great mentor in the field. For a long time we were the only social sciences project from a European country – and aside from an American project the only one at all – that could work in Tibet without being constantly subject to Chinese control.”
Gingrich is interested in the manners in which local cultures react to global and local influences in the various phases of globalization. ”Some come under so much pressure that they simply collapse, some react with bitter opposition but some manage in one way or another to react creatively to external influences by giving rise to new types of hybrid cultures.”
Andre Gingrich was one of the two recipients of the Wittgenstein Prize in the year 2000. For him this signalled a growing respect for the entire discipline of cultural and social anthropology over the past years. He plans to use part of the money associated with the award to advance his fieldwork in Asia and to disseminate the results by means of conferences, media reports and books.
In addition, Gingrich has used the money to establish a research programme at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The programme started in early 2001 and deals with local interests and external influences. ”In this research programme we shall form closely networked work groups to examine and compare the development of conflict in the post-communist periphery of Europe; religious developments in Islam; and ethnicity in central and south-eastern Asia.” Some of the results of the work should be presented in 2001 in a book by Günther Windhager, a participant in the programme, dealing with the work of Leopold Weiss, an Austrian of Jewish descent, who under the name Muhammed Asad worked for Islam in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and worldwide.
As Gingrich says, ”This historical example of an ‘international commuter between different cultures’ should provide inspiration for dealings between cultures today.”
