State of the Arts

Jonas Tinius is a sociocultural anthropologist, and currently scientific coordinator and post-doctoral researcher in cultural anthropology in the European Research Council project Minor Universality: Narrative World Productions after Western Universalism based at Saarland University. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (2009-2012), before completing a PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology (2016). Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, funded by Sharon Macdonald's Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. He is an associate member of CARMAH and teaches at the Institute of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He was founding co-convenor of the Mellon-Newton Interdisciplinary Performance Network at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge and co-founded the Network for Anthropology and the Arts of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) with Roger Sansi. His publications include Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial (with Margareta von Oswald, 2020), Der fremde Blick. Roberto Ciulli und das Theater an der Ruhr (two volumes, with Alexander Wewerka, 2020), and Minor Universality. Rethinking Humanity After Western Universalism (with Markus Messling, 2023).

'In this truly captivating book, Jonas Tinius shows most convincingly anthropology´s unique quality to explain the large scale: Germany as a nation and ideas of Bildung in combination with recent migration, through a small scale case of contemporary theatre, the Theatre an der Ruhr. By including the concept 'ethico-aesthetic' the analysis opens up for further understandings of how ethical issues and practices complement aesthetic ones, importantly also further afield. Inspiring and impressive, State of the Arts is a game-changer.' Helena Wulff, Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University

• Introduction. Scaling Traditions: An Anthropology of Theatre, Migration, and State; 1. Activism, Aesthetic Education, and the Making of Modern German Theatre; 2. A Public Migrant Theatre: Inventing Institutional Traditions and the Becoming of an Artistic Organisation; 3. Rehearsal as Method: Ethnographies of Conduct and Character; 4. Repertoire Politics: Transnational Theatre and Travel as Diplomacy; 5. Places Along the Ruhr: Situated Knowledge and Refugee Theatre; Conclusion. Proposals for an Ethnography of Theatre and Performance.