Carper, Pearl-Sue
Dissertation topic:
"A superfruit: cultural anthropological perspectives on the rose hip." (working title)
Contact address at the University of Würzburg:
Chair of European Ethnology / Folklore
Am Hubland
97074 Würzburg
First supervisor: Prof. Dr Michaele Fenske
Second supervisors:
Prof. Dr Gisela Welz (Univ. Frankfurt)
Class in the Graduate School: "Environmental Humanities"
Doctorate in the Graduate School from WS 2021/2022.
Abstract:
The planned dissertation project deals with the significance of the rose hip and the discourses and possibilities it opens up from a cultural anthropological perspective. Known in everyday culture as a 'native' wild fruit and regionally localised, the fruit of the rose is used in a variety of ways and, as a hedge plant, is not only a component of landscape design, but is also essential for the everyday lives of human and non-human creatures in the form of food, for example. Despite its widespread use as a native rose tree and its local cultivation, in Germany it is largely imported for industrial processing into teas, jams, cosmetics, etc.
This work focusses on the interweaving of locality and globality, non-human plantations and plantation cultivation, economic and ecological aspects as well as the common development of humans, plants and animals. Using the example of the everyday fruit rosehip, these complex relationships are analysed against the background of current ecological crises, drawing on post-anthropocentric theories, and the power of the rosehip to act and have an impact is worked out. In this way, the study aims to contribute to an understanding of the possibilities for shaping rural spaces and economies as well as the production of basic products of human life under the conditions of the Anthropocene.
