Migration, Culture, and Migrating Culture(s)

By Jens Schneider:

From Universal Human Condition to Universal Culture?

Human beings have always migrated and human beings have always had ‘culture’, both are intrinsic to the human condition and were precondition for the human conquer of the world.This essay discusses what happens when culture(s) migrate? This question is, of course, particularly interesting when culture(s) do not enter previously human-free areas, but encounter ‘other’ people and cultures.One answer to the question is, of course, always the specific observation of each case that specific conditions, a specific historical moment, and specific actors.What I am interested here is, if there are also very general answers: Are there fundamentally anthropological aspects that come forth from how ‘culture’ works and what role it plays in the encounters of people in the context of ‘migration’? Are there aspects that we should understand, in order to not be surprised when we observe, or maybe even become able to predict,certain things happening with some level of likelihood when people and cultures migrate?