Conferences

• The 4th Conference on Scientific Network Anthropology and China(s)

to know the details about this conference please click here

• Symposium

to know the details about this conference, click Hard Choices for the Democracy Movement in Myanmar and for the Myanmar Diaspora (Jan. 21st, 2022) / Symposium Review

• “Decision Analysis: Introduction to the Discipline of Better Decision Making”

Ph.D. Candidate Mr. Philipp Rolf introduced the “Discipline of Better Decision Making” to the students of the Elite Master Program “Decision-Making Across Cultures”

Mr. Philipp Rolf, who is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Bayreuth at the Chair for Production Management and Industrial Management, delivered some insights on how decision-maker in the private sector are prepared to make “good” decision. His presentation referred to his Ph.D. Theses on „Proactive Decision-Making in Operational Research and Consumer Research Contexts”.

Decisions in private enterprises often have a complex structure. Managers have to find a way to deal with low frequency / high impact decisions, with the lack of information, unclear preferences, late feedback responses, and numerous trade-offs. For a professional conduct prospective decision-maker need to acquire a set of skills through practical experience. However, research on decision-making can accelerate the learning curve. Mr. Rolf presented some tools that have been developed to address multi-attribute evaluation problems, decision problems under uncertainty and probabilistic inference problems.

As an advocate for a forward-focused approach, Mr. Rolf argued that the decision-maker should specify values first before they identify and consider possible actions. According to Rolf, alternatives are a means to achieve certain values. Therefore, decision analysis should always start with the values at stake. The preferred values and objectives can serve as a compass to navigate through the subsequent decision-making process and the final implementation.

The lecture was very well perceived and concluded with a lively discussion between Mr. Rolf, students of the Elite Master Program “Decision-Making Across Cultures”, research fellows of the IKGF and members of the SDAC faculty.

• May the curd of g.yang mature: domesticated animals and allegorical representations of social hierarchies in Bon ritual literature

This paper will address the roles played by animalian symbolism and the theme of domestication in allegorical representations of social status across a variety of g.Yung drung Bon ritual materials. Following a brief introduction to divination and ritual in the Bon tradition, I will focus on the origin narrative of lug lha ba ‘bal chen, the mythological ‘first’ sheep, as it appears in the 14^th century mDo dri med gzi brjid, as well as in a series of 18^th and 19^th century rope divination manuals. The themes that emerge from these materials will then be read against allegorical depictions of domesticated and undomesticated animals in broader ritual literature.