Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

From 24 to 26 June 2025, the Max Planck Society will host its annual meeting in Magdeburg, bringing together around 500 guests, including both internal members and external participants. The programme will feature a range of events and committee meetings, with two highlights at its core: the awarding of the Harnack Medal and the Plenary Assembly.

In February 2024, the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, in agreement with the management of the Max Planck Society, terminated its working relationship with the Lebanese-Australian guest researcher Ghassan Hage. Hage subsequently filed a legal challenge with the Labour Court contesting his dismissal.

Three Max Planck scientists discuss COP29’s challenges, from the Loss and Damage Fund to human rights and the health risks of climate change.

Research project presents ways of overcoming future immigration challenges

Extreme mining, huge dams, spreading infrastructure: when economic development endangers the habitat and culture of Indigenous and other local communities, environmental rights appear to offer a solution. But how can such human rights or rights of nature really help? A legal and anthropological research team from the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology seeks answers in Mongolia, Ethiopia, Ecuador, and Colombia.

Astronomical observatories mostly require remote locations where human disruption is not a factor. That is why many are located in African countries. However, most of the research takes place in the global north. For a country like Madagascar, the prospect of hosting an observatory can nonetheless set education and science into motion, according to findings by Hanna Nieber of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

The day-to-day life of the Wodaabe, a traditionally nomadic population group in Niger, has never involved staying in one place for long. But since the 1980s, an increasing number of them have begun to settle in cities to work. Florian Köhler, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, has observed the effects this has had on the lives of the Wodaabe.

In Germany’s diverse society, law and order are not just overseen by the police and the courts. There are communities that have their own means of settling disputes: family clans with foreign roots, for instance, but also motorcycle gangs and so-called Reichsbürger (Reich citizens), who turn their back on the modern German state and long for a return of the days of empire. Hatem Elliesie of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle and Clara Rigoni of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law are studying this phenomenon.

Terrorism awakens fear and anxiety. We feel particularly helpless because the perpetrators‘ actions seem so incomprehensible. But there is actually a certain logic behind the actions of terrorist groups. Carolin Görzig and her group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle have set themselves the task of discovering the rules by which terrorists act. Their findings are shedding more light on the enigma of terrorist plots.

Since 2014, the International Organization for Migration has recorded over 34,000 deaths and disappearances of migrants attempting the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. The majority of them are never recovered from the sea, and those who are found often cannot be identified. In addition to the challenges of identifying the victims, responding to sea deaths involves additional legal and practical issues, including how to contact the surviving family, issue death certificates, and ensure dignified burials. Our research project examines the fragmented legislation and local practices that have emerged in response to these tasks, with the goal of developing policy recommendations for a more compassionate and dignified treatment of deceased sea migrants.

The added value of environmental rights is reflected not least in their respective local context. Our research in the ERCC Max Planck Fellow Group combines methods from law and ethnology. Coal mining in the Mongolian province of South Gobi and its effects on the nearby land of cattle herders; a dam on the River Omo and its effects on the Dassanech settlement area in the border region with Kenya; or the right of the Los Cedros cloud forest north-east of Quito to keep the gold in its ground – these are some examples of our research.

A paradigm shift is changing how development policy is understood: with the help of experimental methods, evidence-based, international development cooperation strives to identify and quantitatively assess the effects of development interventions. My research project looks at what these changes mean for local communities in Western Kenya and examines how actors perceive these experimental methods.

Sleep research is booming. With the help of apps and sleep laboratories, sleep seems to have become measurable. New pharmaceuticals and medical technologies promise to give us control over sleep. But how do these new worlds of knowledge affect the experience of sleep, especially for those who yearn for good sleep but fail to achieve it? What is the relationship between subjectively experienced and objectively measured sleep? What happens to sleep at the interface of human and machine? The project draws attention to the dilemmas of sleep knowledge production. 

The refugee crisis, the environmental crisis, the coronavirus crisis – in recent years Europe has found itself in the thrall of transformation processes that are creating enormous rifts within society. But what are the socio-cultural roots that nourish such fragmentation? Why are more and more people choosing to identify with political ideologies that threaten the very foundations of liberal value systems? The research group “Alpine Histories of Global Change” examines these questions as they investigate the origins of ideas of belonging and alienation.