The SGKS Annual Conference 2024 focuses on processes, policies, and poetics of appropriation, which have long been underexplored in Western cultures and need to be reexamined and discussed in light of current debates. Possible guiding questions include: What function does property serve today, especially concerning bodies, intellectual creations, and nature? Is there a commodification of societies and cultures in this regard? What concepts from legal ethnology, literary studies, art history, sociology, and media theory can help to describe appropriation processes more accurately? Can literature, similar to looted art, become colonial plunder? What role does ownership of both material and immaterial goods play in aesthetics? And, given platforms like Uber or Facebook, can we still sensibly distinguish between material and immaterial goods?
Organization: Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg von Arburg and Prof. Dr. Thomas Wegmann