Every situation has an atmosphere. This means that there is a felt space, which is created through the affective relations between human and non-human bodies as well as the material environment, and which equally transcends these elements. In recent years, anthropologist and philosophers have made significant progress describing and theorizing what atmospheres are and how they emerge.
What remains to be shown, however, is what atmospheres do. By this, it is meant to address how atmospheres shape how we think, feel, and act. There still seems to be a lack of constructive and productive theoretical concepts and empirical evidence to better describe and understand how atmospheres enable and constrain behaviors and how they form the background that contributes to the emergence of cultural meanings.
Addressing these issues, the goal of this symposium is to foster the dialogue between philosophers and anthropologists to explore what atmospheres do, how they function in society, what meanings they generate, and what methodological tools one can employ to achieve a descriptive and hermeneutical grasp of their relevance. In so doing, the participants contribute to establishing atmosphere as a third layer in social and cultural theory, alongside individual agency and structural opportunities and constraints.
To debate these questions, philosophers and anthropologists are invited to the Third Hamburg Symposium on Philosophy and Anthropology. The Hamburg Symposium on Philosophy and Anthropology is a forum initiated by Michael Schnegg and Thiemo Breyer in 2023 to bring the two disciplines into close communication. The format grew out of a fellowship at HIAS and continues to be supported by HIAS as well as the Universities of Hamburg and Cologne and the DFG.