The Detour as the Destination: A Motivating Presentation of Professional Opportunities for Cultural Scientists

Abstract

The anthology Berufsorientierung für Kulturwissenschaftler—Erfahrungsberichte und Zukunftsperspektiven (Professional orientation for cultural scientists—field reports and future perspectives), edited by the German ethnologists Bettina Beer, Sabine Klocke-Daffa and Christiana Lütkes, provides a collection of testimonials on career and professional development by academics who have a cultural studies background. The collection impresses due to the number and variety of articles. The explicit aim of the editors, namely to offer professional orientation help to prospective students of cultural studies and to current students and graduates of the same field, is doubtlessly fulfilled by presenting a range of job profiles outside of university. In spite of the all-embracing understanding of the study of culture in the introduction, some of the job profiles described in the articles rely on methodological competencies from ethnology, so that some advice is probably not useful for students of other humanities fields.