anders deutsch

Am 7.11.17 trägt Christina Schwenkel im Institutkolloquium des Berliner Instituts für Europäische Ethnologie „Wissen schaffen über und durch das Andere - Reflexionen zur Differenzlinie West/Ost in Deutschland“ vor:

Producing ‘Other’ Experts: Knowledge Transfers and the Training of
Vietnamese Students in East Germany

While there is a growing body of literature on Vietnamese “Vertragsarbeiter” in East Germany and the formation of an unintended diaspora after “die Wende,” much less attention has been paid to the training of Vietnamese students and the formation of an “other” culture of expertise. This talk draws on fieldwork in Hanoi, Halle, and Berlin to explore the relationship between scientific training and socialist nation building through an examination of global technology transfers to assist with revolutions unfolding in the Global South. Focusing on the College of Industrial Design in Halle (Burg Giebichenstein), I show how design pedagogy was essential to Cold War cultural strategies of containing capitalism and building global socialism in Vietnam under the guise of “international solidarity.” At the same time, training to assist the beneficiary-Other with the creation of a new knowledge economy led to the creation of a body of knowledge about the Other in East Germany.