Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
130
Welcome Address
International Conference on
Placing Urban Anthropology: Synchronic and Diachronic Reflections
Guido Vergauwen
(Rector, University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear guests,
It is my pleasure, as Rector of the University of Fribourg, to welcome you to this international
conference. Since its very beginnings – 125 years ago – Fribourg University has understood itself
not just as a local Swiss institution but as an academic institution with an eminently international
character and outlook – a full university in which humanities and natural sciences, law and
economics, medicine and theology do not simply live together in the same administrative
structure, but in which they collaborate in order to create an habit of mind and an intellectual
culture. In his lectures on the Idea of a University, John Henry Newman spoke about the practical
end of university courses: ‘it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social
life, and its end is fitness for the world … a University training aims at raising the intellectual
tone of society, at cultivating the public mind … at facilitating the exercise of political power,
and refining the intercourse of private life’. Our university has been faithful to this idea of liberal
education, contributing at the same time to the development of scientific investigation and the
expansion of knowledge in all the fields of arts and science.
Since 1939, Ethnology and Social Anthropology have been part of the teaching and
research activity of our University. At that time, in the methodological perspective of cultural
history in the tradition of the
Wienerschule
(The Vienna School), Professor Wilhelm Schmidt
initiated courses titled
Ethnologie und Menschheitsgeschichte
(Ethnology and History of
Humanity), ‘
Anfänge der menschlichen Gesellschaft
-
Familie und Staat
(The Beginnings of
Human Society- The Family and the State) and
Überblick über die Völker und Sprachen der Erde
und die sie berührenden Probleme
(Overview of the Peoples and Languages of the World and the
Problems Affecting Them). No less than 200 persons attended his inaugural lecture – in spite of
the cantonal minister of education’s view that ‘a small University’ did not need a ‘discipline of
minor importance such as ethnology’. In its further methodological development towards social
anthropology, this disciplinary domain has kept its basic orientation, putting at the centre of its
concern the human being, culture and society – with a strong orientation towards Eastern Europe,
Africa and Asia, in close collaboration with political and religious sciences. Professors Giordano
and Ruegg have successfully developed the field of social anthropology, which is now a
substantial part of the Faculty of Humanities, offering in a bilingual setup and collaborating,
among others, to an MA in ‘Culture, Politics and Religion in a Pluralist Society’. Cultural
