Carole Ammann

• PhD in Social Anthropology
• Senior Researcher and Lecturer at Unversity of Lucerne

In this paper, we analyse the understanding of 'good' fathering amongst white, heterosexual, and highly educated men living in the Netherlands with whom we conducted interviews. Their narratives showed that they consider 'good' fathering as a constant learning process, in which they put much emphasis on individualism, spending quality time with the...

Drawing from two case studies from South Africa and Guinea, in this chapter we analyse the importance of fatherhood for the notion of masculinities. Using narratives of two (temporally) migrant men, we first explore how the ideas of masculinities and kinship impact specific enactments of fatherhood. We specifically analyse paternal (dis)connections...

In this article, based on anthropological research conducted in the Netherlands and Switzerland, I show the diversity and multi-faceted nature of GBTIQ+ (gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer) parenting. In contrast to recent research on GBTIQ+ parents, which often distinguishes between parents who have children through a (former) heterosexual...

In Europe, the number and especially the visibility of queer families have increased. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions that explore the possibilities and constraints of doing and undoing queer families within structures geared towards heterosexual, cis-gender, two-parent families. Long Abstract In Europe, the number and especially...

Carole Ammann ist Sozialanthropologin und erforscht unsere Gesellschaft. Ihr Spezialgebiet sind Regenbogenfamilien. Sie erforschte in Holland und in der Schweiz, wie Regenbogenfamilien funktionieren, welche Probleme sie haben und welche Vorteile Kinder haben, die in queeren Familien aufwachsen. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ZDrv0NT7kIILb62N3LJL...

Die Autorinnen analysieren in ihrem Beitrag die Berichterstattung Deutschschweizer Medien zum Thema Regenbogenfamilien. Obwohl die Berichterstattung unter dem Strich wohlwollend und offen ist, werden dennoch in vielen Beiträgen stereotype Vorstellungen von 'Familie' reproduziert. (https://www.gendercampus.ch/de/blog/post/regenbogenfamilien-in-deuts...

The wives of (former) heads of state form an important part of the political elite in Guinea, considerably shaping the country’s sociopolitical and economic past and present.

The development of the health care system in Switzerland has recently been driven by different processes such as economic rationalization, bureaucratization, or digitalization, while maintaining professional notions of 'good cure and care.' Drawing on qualitative data from a Swiss acute hospital, we analyze how potentially market driven modes of go...

This article is based upon field notes I wrote during the so called first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, whilst I was a postdoctoral mobility fellow at the University of Amsterdam. First, I elaborate on the challenges of moving with one’s family to a new place and conducting anthropological fieldwork in a novel site during a global pandemic. I also...

This article claims space for secondary cities in urban studies. It criticizes that scientists tend to study urban life in metropolises and, hence, do not represent urban life in its full diversity. In reality, the majority of the worlds’ urban dwellers live in secondary cities; therefore, research on urbanity should reflect this fact. The article...

nccr on the move blog post https://nccr-onthemove.ch/blog/stranded-in-academic-mobility-the-isolating-effects-of-the-covid-19-pandemic/?lang=demm

In this article, we analyse two parallel processes taking place in the Swiss healthcare sector, namely differentiation and standardisation: On one hand, the health sector is increasingly characterised by differentiation that originates from the specialisation of training, the differentiation and academisation of nursing, the feminisation of medicin...

In this article, we analyse two parallel processes taking place in the Swiss healthcare sector, namely differentiation and standardisation: On one hand, the health sector is increasingly characterised by differentiation that originates from the specialisation of training, the differentiation and academisation of nursing, the feminisation of medicin...

Open Access: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2020.1846019 Rapidly changing and divergent everyday realities on the African continent call for a more differentiated examination of the complex experiences and representations of men than is offered by the discourse on the ‘crisis of masculin- ity’, which depicts men as being cri...

Rapidly changing and divergent everyday realities on the African continent call for a more differentiated examination of the complex experiences and representations of men than is offered by the discourse on the ‘crisis of masculinity’, which depicts men as being criminal, violent, dominant, and irresponsible. By contrast, this introduction to the...

We argue in this article that a close analysis of disruptions, understood as cracks and disturbances in routines and procedures, is useful and productive. Firstly, methodological disruptions force us to consider the appropriateness of our methodological tools, our own positionalities, and the relationship between the researcher and the researched....

The researcher with his or her multiple identities, his or her background, and habits forms part of the experience in the field and therefore influences data generation. In this chapter, Ammann reflects on how her identity shaped her field research on the women-state nexus in a Muslim West African city. She analyses how she has dealt with gender-re...

Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent. The stupendous pace of urbanisation challenges the usual image of Africa as a rural continent. The sheer complexity of African cities contests conventional understandings of the urban as well as standard development policies. Lingering between chaos and creativity, Western images of African citi...

L’Afrique s’urbanise plus vite que tout autre continent. Le rythme effréné de son urbanisation contredit l’image habituelle d’un continent rural. La complexité profonde des villes africaines interroge les conceptions traditionnelles de l’urbain et des politiques classiques de développement. Suspendues entre chaos et créativité, les images occidenta...

The researcher with its multiple identities, its background, its habits, its academic training, and its imaginations forms part of the experience in the field and therefore influences data generation. My aim with this paper was to reflect on how my identity, in particular the fact of being a young white woman, shaped my field research on the women-...

The literature on women and politics in Guinea is still very scarce. There exists, for example, no study that exclusively deals with women’s national or local political participation. Furthermore, women’s role within political parties, as well as women’s participation and organization in associations, is very much under-researched. Based on the ava...

Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent. The stupendous pace of urbanisa-tion challenges the usual image of Africa as a rural continent. The sheer complexity of African cities contests conventional understandings of the urban as well as standard development policies. Lingering between chaos and creativity, Western images of African cit...

Do African cities such as Sikasso, Sfax, Gulu, Port-Gentil and Gweru ring a bell? Do not worry; you are probably not alone in that respect. Four out of the five cities mentioned above are the second most populated cities in their respective countries. They all have played a crucial role in the history and have central economic and political functio...

The time to come - as well as the exploration thereof - remains elusive for social actors and social scientists alike. The contributors accept the challenge to depict young men and women's future-creating activities in urban contexts of sub-Saharan Africa. Very consciously, they study young graduates having obtained a university degree and provide...

Until recently, anthropological literature on the collaboration between the researcher and his/her assistant(s) was rather scarce – although these helpers in the fi eld are highly involved in our knowledge production. In PhD theses, where sole authorship is required for academic degrees, the work with assistants is mentioned briefl y in the methodo...

Introduction to a specical Issue of Stichproben. Guinea: One Revolution at a Time

The Guinean state has not only been shaped and reshaped by the political elite, but also by people's daily actions. Women selling at Dibida market in Kankan, the stronghold of Guinea's current President Alpha Condé, are doing politics although in interviews they often deny to do so. Thus, I propose to focus on these women's everyday agency so as to...

NGOs, but also journalists and scholars often generalize about gender relations in (African) Muslim societies, and their conclusions tend to be normative: either that women there will always be oppressed or they overemphasize changes over the last decades, for example, the emerging (Muslim) women’s movements. Both conclusions are simplistic. Muslim...

The population of Guinea, a Muslim dominated West African country of about ten million inhabitants, is currently facing challenging times: After a permanent fall in standards of living and a rise in poverty in the last ten years, the country’s economy has additionally been ravaged by the recent Ebola crisis. Guinea’s current real food prices are am...