“Enabling dis/ability”, “diversify sexualities”, “normalize ethnic diversity” – under these headings, this sub-project uses three ethnographic case studies – from the perspective of socio-cultural anthropology – to study the implementation and mobilization of the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) in Berlin. With the AGG from 2006, EU directives for the long-term elimination of social discrimination have been implemented in German law. Although, from a legal perspective, the regulatory and sanctioning powers of the AGG are considered inadequate, the effects of the law on social attitudes and on long-term changes are still emphasized. But how is the AGG put into action? How are normalizing, everyday and political aspects of the law structuring the practices of the AGG? How does the AGG become part of the everyday political and practical work of NGOs, administrative bodies, institutions and interest groups? How does the AGG critically engage with social exclusion and reduced participatory possibilities, and how does it contribute to the instigation of concrete changes?

This sub-project is located in the area of empirical legal studies. With a decided emphasis on praxis and gender studies, the sub-project engages with concepts and theories from legal, political and socio-cultural anthropology that pertain to community building, as well as with their respective extensions into gender studies. It uses ethnographic methods and a comparison of the three case studies to (1) research, on a local level, the social and (everyday) practical effects of the AGG along certain intersections with other legal regulations, (2) to query interrelated collectivization processes, and the negotiation of individuality and collectivity in anti-discrimination practices, (3) to determine how AGG-related institutionalization and collectivization processes are gendered, and (4) to explore the entanglements of legal and political praxis with regards to belonging to, and participating in, (urban) society.

Team:   Beate Binder   Martina Klausner   Nabila El-Khatib   Alik Mazukatow   Hendrik Steppke   Michèle Kretschel 

Funding phase 2 (2021-2024)