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apl. Prof. Dr. Susanne Fehlings

D700 20200717 041 korr cut34

Press and public relations

Phone: +49-(0)69-79833054

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ResearchGate

Academia

Susanne Fehlings studied art history and anthropology at the Sorbonne, Paris IV, at the Lomonosov State University in Moscow and at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. From 2008 to 2016 - with brief interruptions for various research stays - she was a research assistant at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology in Tübingen, where she received her doctorate in 2014 with a thesis on Yerevan in urban anthropology. Since 2016 she has been leading an international and interdisciplinary research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation entitled "Informal Markets and Trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus" at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. Her postdoctoral thesis, submitted to Goethe-University in March 2020, was written within the framework of this project and deals with mobile retail trade, entrepreneurship and local markets in and between Georgia and China. 

Main research topics

Thematic focus:
trade, markets, economic exchange, entrepreneurship, space and city, funeral culture, ideology and history
Regional focus:
Post-Soviet area, Black Sea region/South Caucasus and contacts with China

Selected publications:

Academic Comic

2024 (mit Hasan H. Karrar und Krish Raghav) Bazaars in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Comic. Download

Articles

(Peer reviewed) 

2023 (mit Heiko Conrad) The Transformation of Green Zones in Yerevan, Armenia: Domestication of Nature, Times of Ruination and the Idea of ‘New Hanging Gardens’, Global Environment 16: 291-324, https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/whp/ge/2023/00000016/00000002/art00006

2022 Debt Relations in Georgian Bazaars: A Creditors’ Perspective on Risky Engagements, Journal of Extreme Anthropology 6 (1): 1-25, https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.9466

2021 ”They are like Georgians but bigger“: The Perception of Chinese Businesspeople in Georgia, New Diversities 23 (2): 79-92

2021 Ethnologie und Science Fiction: Begegnungen mit der Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft, Paideuma 67: 35-61

2020 mit Hasan H. Karrar) Negotiating State and Society: The Normative Informal Economies of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Central Asian Survey 39 (1): 1-10, https://doi.org/ 10.1080/02634937.2020.1738345

2019 Doing Business in Yabaolu Market, Beijing: (Inter-)ethnic Entrepreneurship, Trust and Friendship between Caucasian and Chinese Traders, Central Asian Survey, 39 (1): 95-115, https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2019.1696281

2017 From Chelnoki to Global Players: Encounters in the Context of Caucasian (-Chinese) Trade since the 1990s, Paideuma 63: 183-205

2017 Armenian History in Urban Everyday Life, Habitus: Studies in Anthropology and Archaeology 2: 10-41, http://iae.am/sites/default/files/database/Habitus_2_2017_10-41.pdf

2016 The Ignoble Savage in Urban Yerevan, Central Asian Survey 35 (2): 195-217, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2015.1134142

2015 Intimacy and Exposure – Yerevan’s Private and Public Space, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 35 (7/8): 513-532, http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-02-2015-0028

2010 The Private and the Public Spheres in Yerevan, as observed from an Anthropologist from abroad, Armenian Popular Culture XV, Tradition and Modernity in Armenian Culture. 2010. Yerevan: Gitutyun pub.; Armenian Academy of Sciences: 108-118

2010 Die Kaskade von Jerewan, Armenien, Trialog 105, 2/2010: 38-41 http://www.trialog-journal.de/wpcontent/uploads/2016/01/TRIALOG_105_Preview.pdf

(Non refereed)

2024 About the histoire croisée approach in social and cultural anthropology, Kölner Arbeitspapiere zur Ethnologie / Cologne Working Papers in Cultural and Social Anthropology (KAE) 9: 13-26, http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/73330

2021 Bazaar Pathologies: Informality, Independent Businesses, and Covid-19 in the South Caucasus, Working Paper Series on Informal Markets and Trade 12, http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/61926

2019 Encounters at the Grassroots Level: Chinese-Georgian Interactions in the BRI Era, Caucasus Analytical Digest 111: 14-17

2018 Caucasian “Biznes” (Business)—Informality, Cultural Embeddedness, and the Global World, Anthropological Researches IV, Tbilisi: Association of Georgian Anthropologists: 24-40

2018 (mit Hamlet Melkumyan) Introduction: Transnational Trade, Trade Routes, and Local Marketplaces between the Caucasus and Central Asia, Anthropological Researches IV, Tbilisi: Association of Georgian Anthropologists: 8-13

2017 The Chinese Connection – Informal Trade Relations between the Caucasus and China since the Early 1990s, Caucasus Analytical Digest 96: 2-5

2016 (mit Roland Hardenberg) Informality Reviewed: Everyday Experiences and the Study of Transformational Processes in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Working Paper Series on Informal Markets and Trade 2, http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/41517

2016 (mit Hasan Karrar) Informal Markets and Trade in the Caucasus and Central Asia: A Preliminary Framework for Field Research,
Working Paper Series on Informal Markets and Trade 1, http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/41516

2012 Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit, in: Kaschuba, W. & Krebs, M. & Pilz, M. (Hrsg.). 2012. Die Postsowjetische Stadt: Aushandlungsprozesse im Südkaukasus, Berliner Blätter, Sonderheft 59. Berlin: Panama Verlag: 150-167

 

Monographies

2022 Traders, Informal Trade and Markets between the Caucasus and China. London: Palgrave Macmillan

2014 Jerewan: Urbanes Chaos und soziale Ordnung. Münster & Berlin: LIT-Verlag (Dissertation)

2008 Ruhestätten in bester Lage: Räumliche Ordnungen sozialer Werte auf Friedhöfen in Simferopol/Krim. Münster: LIT-Verlag

 

Edited Volumes

2024 (mit Philippe Rudaz, Hamlet Melkumyan, Hasan H. Karrar und Ketevan Khutsishvili). Gazes into Trade: Marketplaces in Eurasia. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag.

2021/2022/2023 (mit Roland Hardenberg) Jahrbuch (des Frobenius-Instituts) 2020-2021. Frankfurt am Main: Frobenius-Institut für Kulturanthropologische Forschung

2020 (mit Hasan Karrar) Informal Markets and Trade in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Central Asian Survey 38 (1)

2018 (mit Hamlet Melkumyan) Transnational Trade, Trade Routes, and Local Marketplaces between the Caucasus and Central Asia. Anthropological Researches IV, Tbilisi: Association of Georgian Anthropologists

Seit 2016 (mit Yulia Antonyan, Hasan H. Karrar, Ketevan Khutsishvili, Hamlet Melkumyan, Philippe Rudaz und John Schoeberlein) Working Paper Series on Informal Markets and Trade (Bisher Working Paper 1-12). Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: Electronic Library, ISSN: 2510-2826

 

Book Chapters

 2022 ”Argonauten in der Lehmhütte“: Aufschlussreiche Irritationen und nützliche Missverständnisse in Armenien und Namibia (mit Manja Stutzriemer), in: Hardenberg, R., Platenkamp, J. & Widlok, Th. (Hrsg.). Ethnologie als angewandte Wissenschaft: Das Zusammenspiel von Theorie und Praxis. Berlin: Reimer: 181-207

2018 Informal Trade and Globalization in the Caucasus and post-Soviet Eurasia, in Stephan-Emmrich, M. & Schröder, Ph. (eds.). Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Translocality Beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus. Open Book Publishers: 229-262, https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/603?603

2017 The Ignoble Savage in Urban Yerevan, (reprint) in Schröder, Ph. (ed.). Urban Spaces and Lifestyles in Central Asia and Beyond. London & New York: Routledge: 51-73.

2017 (mit Karina Iwe and Jeanne Féaux de la Croix) Theoretical Promises und Practical Implementation: Interdisciplinary Encounters between Archaeologists and Ethnologists in a Collaborative Research Centre (SFB), in: Scholz, A.K. & Bartelheim, M. & Hardenberg, R. & Staecker, J. ResourceCultures: Sociocultural Dynamics and the Use of Resources – Theories, Methods, Perspectives. Tübingen: 57-69, https://publikationen.uni-tuebingen.de/xmlui/handle/10900/74124

 

Other

Seit 2021 Newsletter des Frobenius-Instituts (Redaktion und Herausgeberschaft)

2017 Post-Soviet (Caucasian) Businessmen in Beijing: From “Chelnoki” to “Globalization from Below”, CESMI-BLOG

2017 Report: Informal Markets and Trade in the Caucasus and Central Asia,
in: Kavkaz: Past, Present, Future. Instytut Historii Universytetu Rzeszowskiego, No. 3: 235-236, http://www.kavkaz.ur.edu.pl/index.php/czasopismo/issue/view/5

2015 Interview with Susanne Fehlings about ‘Yerevan: urban Chaos and Social Order’
(durchgeführt von Dr. Madlen Pilz), http://www.ira-urban.de/yerevan-urban-chaos-and-social-order/

2015 Errord Mas, Yerevan: A Quarter for the Working Class, http://www.banitza.net/2015/05/23/errord-mas-yerevan-a-quarter-for-the-working-class/?lang=en

2012  Capital Cities in Transformation: Spaces, Actors and Transfers (Bericht, Workshop des Sonderforschungsbereichs 640, 08.-09. September 2011), Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 108. Jahrgang 2012, Heft 1: 108-111

2012 (mit Melanie Krebs)
„Every Change is an Object of Research“: Interview with Levon Abrahamian, in: Kaschuba, W. & Krebs, M. & Pilz, M. (Hrsg.). 2012. Die Postsowjetische Stadt: Aushandlungsprozesse im Südkaukasus (Berliner Blätter, Sonderheft 59). Berlin: Panama Verlag: 170-182