Hamar Ethnography

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ivo Strecker
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 524534540

The project returns to the ethnographic research, which Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall began many years ago. The aim is to further discover and document the cultural genius of the Hamar in southern Ethiopia as it manifests itself in ritual practices. A substantial amount of empirical data (films, sound recordings, notebooks) exists already, as well as a theoretical orientation (rhetoric culture theory). They have served as a basis for two as yet incomplete ethnographic book manuscripts: (1) The leap across the cattle. A rite of transition among the Hamar of southern Ethiopia. (2) Reading the entrails. Sacrifice and divination among the Hamar of southern Ethiopia, by Ivo Strecker und Jean Lydall. Although the manuscripts are already quite substantial, they still need a considerable amount of work to enrich the empirical material and help to interpret manifold symbolical statements and actions. For this purpose the two ethnographers will return for three months to Hamar to work together with well-proven old and also younger informants in order to once again carefully study and discuss films, sound recordings and written notes to reach and adequate and (for the time being) final understanding. Both themes deal with wide ranging cultural domains. Thus, the 'Leap across the cattle' has fifty-five episodes, each of which will need its own analysis and interpretation, and 'Reading the entrails' involves a complex semantic field in which analogies or rather symbolical expressions play a central role. Here the ethnographers often face riddles, which can only be solved with the help of knowledgeable Hamar.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants