[DVRW 2013] - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

will lie on the rather new occurence of commemoration films on YouTube, which
are – because of the fact that they usually include stills or clips of dead or dying
infants, which by many commenters are considered to be inappropriate and / or
“too drastic“ – are highly debated online and offline.
Harish Naraindas: Child bereavement in Germany and the USA: religious
responses, practices and rituals to pregnancy loss and neonatal death
This paper will consider the history and practice of prenatal diagnostics in selected
German and US American urban centers. Comparing data form Germany and
the US, this paper will focus on religious practice and discourses related to
various emotional, moral, socio-political as well as scientific opinions of how a
foetus or dead infant should be cared for, treated or disposed off and how the
“orphaned parents” should be cared for. The project will focus on a range of
bereavement counseling and ritual handling of dead babies in case of stillbirth,
neonatal death and abortion.
Karin Polit: Medical technology and religion in India: What prenatal diagnostics
have to do with social responsibility
How do biomedical practices, technologies, connected ontologies and epistemologies
intersect transculturally with religious and other cultural practices in
cases of threatened or actual pregnancy loss, terminations of pregnancy, early
infancy death or disability of foetuses and infants of urban middle class families
in highly technologized hospitals in India? This paper will consider the history of
and practices related to the spread of biomedical reproductive technologies in
connection with changing hopes and imaginaries concerning the unborn child in
urban India. I will trace discourses connected to these sentiments and emotional
responses among the upper middle classes of India. How does scientific epistemology
interact with local understandings of personhood, emotional attachment,
practices of caring and grieving practices or ideas of handling, analyzing and
disposing of the small dead bodies?
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Panelstrang F: ZHG 006
Katharina Wilkens (München) und Jörg Haustein (Heidelberg)
Afrikanische Religionsgeschichte: Postkoloniale Perspektiven (I)
Einleitung: Katharina Wilkens
Ricarda Stegmann: Moderne Imame in Algerien? Der Wandel religiöser
Autoritäten und ihrer Ausbildungsstätten im Kontext der französischen
Kolonialherrschaft
Jörg Haustein: Religion und „Eingeborenenrecht“ in Tanganjika: Islamische
Jurisdiktion und koloniale Rechtsetzung in Deutsch-Ostafrika
Samuel Krug: ‚Äthiopische Juden‘: Die Beta-Israel und die Konstruktion
einer jüdischen Identität