Realising Climate Change
Climate change counts today as the cardinal problem for the reproduction of society. It serves as a natural crisis experiment, making visible the ways and extents of realizing this existential problem. By realizing, my sociological study does not mean just knowing and understanding climate change, but actually fighting it. I observe ways and degrees of realization as member of society and as sociologist by turning towards a number of social stages: everyday practices such as small talk or consumption; the problem-oriented work of apparatuses as stabilised capacities such as offices or labs; the dispositions of these practices and apparatuses by governing technologies such as markets or bureaucracies. The stages serve as arenas, where doings and undoings of climate change take place for members and sociologists to relate to, such as myself. The thick phalanx of stages demonstrate the degree by which the society takes climate change for real and responds to it. The various stages give the impression of a rising discrepancy of knowing and acting about this existential problem.
Innovating methods: Trans-sequential analysis
By carrying out a number of ethnographies in professional contexts, we developed new methods for combining field- and discourse research. We interpret what is going on here/now as work episodes in line with previous and anticipated episodes. The members involved come to be oriented towards a shared formative object. They try to complete it and do so by following an image of what such an object demands in order to count as complete. The formative object makes accessible even winded work processes, allowing members to contribute to the current state of work. The formative object forms a collective, formats the members' possible contributions to it right now, and has been formed over a series of importing and exporting work episodes. We made the method accessible through a number of journal articles and book chapters to a wider academic audience. Colleagues from various social science disciplines published case studies carried out using TSA as a research procedure
Recht im Anthropozän (zusammen mit Prof.in Doris Schweitzer)
RiA ist eine Kollaboration verschiedener Rechtssoziolog*innen, Rechtsanthropolog*innen und Rechtsphilosoph*innen, die die Wechselwirkung des Rechts im Anthropozän und des Anthropozäns im Recht untersuchen. Das Forscher*innen-Netzwerk veranstaltet Tagungen und entwickelt trans-disziplinäre Arbeitsformen, um mögliche rechtliche Innovationen wie bestehende rechtliche Hemmnisse zur Beantwortung menschengemachter Umweltprobleme zu identifizieren.
Reconfigurations of ecological work
How are (human) ecological workplaces tuned to (natural) ecological processes when they face existential problems? Following the work of conservation biologists and environmentalists on the one hand, and their nonhuman encounters on the other hand, this project engages ethnographically with the difficulties and opportunities that emerge in contemporary more-than-human workplaces.
Die Produktion von Klimaflucht als Theoretisierungsanlass
Der beschleunigte Klimawandel setzt Gesellschaften weitreichenden Realitätsprüfungen aus. Insbesondere der vorhersehbare Verlust an menschlichen Nutzungs- und Siedlungsräumen scheint zur Aushandlung aufwendiger Anpassungsstrategien und Aufnahmeprogramme zu drängen. Vor diesem Hintergrund analysiert das Teilprojekt die ›Klimaflucht‹ als jüngst angelaufene Produktion mit offenem Ausgang. Wie, so fragen wir, vollzieht sich in diesem Fall die Produktion von Migration, die von verschiedenen Seiten (Inselstaaten, NGOs, UN-Institutionen, Forschung u.a.) vorangetrieben wird und im Lichte klimawissenschaftlicher Prognosen unabwendbar erscheint? Welche Anstrengungen, Auseinandersetzungen und Zwischenschritte lassen sich im Zuge der Produktion von Klimaflucht beobachten?
Das Forschungsvorhaben ist Teilprojekt am Sonderforschungsbereich 1604 "Produktion von Migration" der Universität Osnabrück.
(1) Eine vergleichende Ethnographie von Strafverfahren in den UK, US und Deutschland (abgeschlossen): http://www.law-in-action.de/
(2) Die mediatisierte Fertigung und Verwertung politischer Positionen im Parlamentsbetrieb (abgeschlossen): http://www.mediatisiertewelten.de/projekte/2-foerderphase-2012-2014/politische-positionen/
(3) Kriminalpolizeiliche Prävention als Wissensarbeit (abgeschlossen): http://www.codisp.de/
(4) Cultures of War Discourse. Studienprojekte in Kooperation mit dem Academic College Hadassah, Jerusalem (abgeschlossen): http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2328
(Alphabetisch nach Vornamen sortiert)
Andrea Stoll: "'Normalelternschaft' in Deutschland - Eine ethnomethodologische komparative Studie von Elternschaft durch Annahme von Embryonen, Adoption und Pflegeelternschaft"
Deepali Ramesh Wighe: "Knowing Nomadic and Denotified Tribes. An institutional ethnography"
Joshua Lipp: "Versuch eines erweiterten Agentiellen Realismus. Barad als Differenztheoretikerin im diffraktiven Trialog mit Bergson und Tarde"
Lea Deborah Scheu: "Diversitätsverständnisse und Institutionalisierung von Diversität bei der Polizei"
Mami-Kuokor A. Amartey: "Tracing the cultural change of gender relations. Reflecting on the scope and the variety of gender relations in popular films"
Markus Rudolfi: "Doing Rewilding. Following Conservation Biologists through Multispecies Resurgence"
Nils Richterich: "Subjects of Nature. The Creation of the Rights of Nature"
Parishmita Dutta: "Ethnography of Prison Education in India"
2023
Deep Chand: "Understanding the Escalation and De-Escalation of Conflict: A Case of Citizenship (Amendment) Act [CAA: 2019] in India"
LaSST hosts the MA program “Science and Technology Studies: Economies, Governance, Life" at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The program is coordinated by the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, and invites students from inside and outside of Germany to apply.
Another important activity of LaSST is the 'Frankfurt Kitchen STS'– a discussion group that brings together sociologists, cultural anthropologists, political scientists, human geographers, literary scholars, historians of science and others interested in old debates and new developments in Science and Technology Studies. The name has (at least) two components. First, it refers to the location of the meetings: the kitchen area of the Sociology Department at the Goethe University (PEG 3G 204). Second, it alludes to the famous Frankfurt Kitchen: a political technology that serves as a constant reminder that in design oppression and liberation are hardly ever separable from each other. The 'Frankfurt Kitchen STS' is not a reading group; rather, it provides space for engaging in discussions about STS with the help of guests, texts and other materials.
If you are interested in attending 'Frankfurt Kitchen STS', please send a short email with your name, affiliation and research interests to Josef Barla, Franziska von Verschuer or Markus Rudolfi. There is also an email list, which you can subscribe to by clicking on this link. For more information about Kitchen STS as well as past and upcoming meetings and events, please visit our blog.
Realising Climate Change
Climate change counts today as the cardinal problem for the reproduction of society. It serves as a natural crisis experiment, making visible the ways and extents of realizing this existential problem. By realizing, my sociological study does not mean just knowing and understanding climate change, but actually fighting it. I observe ways and degrees of realization as member of society and as sociologist by turning towards a number of social stages: everyday practices such as small talk or consumption; the problem-oriented work of apparatuses as stabilised capacities such as offices or labs; the dispositions of these practices and apparatuses by governing technologies such as markets or bureaucracies. The stages serve as arenas, where doings and undoings of climate change take place for members and sociologists to relate to, such as myself. The thick phalanx of stages demonstrate the degree by which the society takes climate change for real and responds to it. The various stages give the impression of a rising discrepancy of knowing and acting about this existential problem.
Innovating methods: Trans-sequential analysis
By carrying out a number of ethnographies in professional contexts, we developed new methods for combining field- and discourse research. We interpret what is going on here/now as work episodes in line with previous and anticipated episodes. The members involved come to be oriented towards a shared formative object. They try to complete it and do so by following an image of what such an object demands in order to count as complete. The formative object makes accessible even winded work processes, allowing members to contribute to the current state of work. The formative object forms a collective, formats the members' possible contributions to it right now, and has been formed over a series of importing and exporting work episodes. We made the method accessible through a number of journal articles and book chapters to a wider academic audience. Colleagues from various social science disciplines published case studies carried out using TSA as a research procedure
Recht im Anthropozän (zusammen mit Prof.in Doris Schweitzer)
RiA ist eine Kollaboration verschiedener Rechtssoziolog*innen, Rechtsanthropolog*innen und Rechtsphilosoph*innen, die die Wechselwirkung des Rechts im Anthropozän und des Anthropozäns im Recht untersuchen. Das Forscher*innen-Netzwerk veranstaltet Tagungen und entwickelt trans-disziplinäre Arbeitsformen, um mögliche rechtliche Innovationen wie bestehende rechtliche Hemmnisse zur Beantwortung menschengemachter Umweltprobleme zu identifizieren.
Reconfigurations of ecological work
How are (human) ecological workplaces tuned to (natural) ecological processes when they face existential problems? Following the work of conservation biologists and environmentalists on the one hand, and their nonhuman encounters on the other hand, this project engages ethnographically with the difficulties and opportunities that emerge in contemporary more-than-human workplaces.
Die Produktion von Klimaflucht als Theoretisierungsanlass
Der beschleunigte Klimawandel setzt Gesellschaften weitreichenden Realitätsprüfungen aus. Insbesondere der vorhersehbare Verlust an menschlichen Nutzungs- und Siedlungsräumen scheint zur Aushandlung aufwendiger Anpassungsstrategien und Aufnahmeprogramme zu drängen. Vor diesem Hintergrund analysiert das Teilprojekt die ›Klimaflucht‹ als jüngst angelaufene Produktion mit offenem Ausgang. Wie, so fragen wir, vollzieht sich in diesem Fall die Produktion von Migration, die von verschiedenen Seiten (Inselstaaten, NGOs, UN-Institutionen, Forschung u.a.) vorangetrieben wird und im Lichte klimawissenschaftlicher Prognosen unabwendbar erscheint? Welche Anstrengungen, Auseinandersetzungen und Zwischenschritte lassen sich im Zuge der Produktion von Klimaflucht beobachten?
Das Forschungsvorhaben ist Teilprojekt am Sonderforschungsbereich 1604 "Produktion von Migration" der Universität Osnabrück.
(1) Eine vergleichende Ethnographie von Strafverfahren in den UK, US und Deutschland (abgeschlossen): http://www.law-in-action.de/
(2) Die mediatisierte Fertigung und Verwertung politischer Positionen im Parlamentsbetrieb (abgeschlossen): http://www.mediatisiertewelten.de/projekte/2-foerderphase-2012-2014/politische-positionen/
(3) Kriminalpolizeiliche Prävention als Wissensarbeit (abgeschlossen): http://www.codisp.de/
(4) Cultures of War Discourse. Studienprojekte in Kooperation mit dem Academic College Hadassah, Jerusalem (abgeschlossen): http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2328
(Alphabetisch nach Vornamen sortiert)
Andrea Stoll: "'Normalelternschaft' in Deutschland - Eine ethnomethodologische komparative Studie von Elternschaft durch Annahme von Embryonen, Adoption und Pflegeelternschaft"
Deepali Ramesh Wighe: "Knowing Nomadic and Denotified Tribes. An institutional ethnography"
Joshua Lipp: "Versuch eines erweiterten Agentiellen Realismus. Barad als Differenztheoretikerin im diffraktiven Trialog mit Bergson und Tarde"
Lea Deborah Scheu: "Diversitätsverständnisse und Institutionalisierung von Diversität bei der Polizei"
Mami-Kuokor A. Amartey: "Tracing the cultural change of gender relations. Reflecting on the scope and the variety of gender relations in popular films"
Markus Rudolfi: "Doing Rewilding. Following Conservation Biologists through Multispecies Resurgence"
Nils Richterich: "Subjects of Nature. The Creation of the Rights of Nature"
Parishmita Dutta: "Ethnography of Prison Education in India"
2023
Deep Chand: "Understanding the Escalation and De-Escalation of Conflict: A Case of Citizenship (Amendment) Act [CAA: 2019] in India"
LaSST hosts the MA program “Science and Technology Studies: Economies, Governance, Life" at the Goethe University Frankfurt. The program is coordinated by the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, and invites students from inside and outside of Germany to apply.
Another important activity of LaSST is the 'Frankfurt Kitchen STS'– a discussion group that brings together sociologists, cultural anthropologists, political scientists, human geographers, literary scholars, historians of science and others interested in old debates and new developments in Science and Technology Studies. The name has (at least) two components. First, it refers to the location of the meetings: the kitchen area of the Sociology Department at the Goethe University (PEG 3G 204). Second, it alludes to the famous Frankfurt Kitchen: a political technology that serves as a constant reminder that in design oppression and liberation are hardly ever separable from each other. The 'Frankfurt Kitchen STS' is not a reading group; rather, it provides space for engaging in discussions about STS with the help of guests, texts and other materials.
If you are interested in attending 'Frankfurt Kitchen STS', please send a short email with your name, affiliation and research interests to Josef Barla, Franziska von Verschuer or Markus Rudolfi. There is also an email list, which you can subscribe to by clicking on this link. For more information about Kitchen STS as well as past and upcoming meetings and events, please visit our blog.
Themen: | Gesellschaft im Klimawandel |
Ökologische Problemarbeit – Problemarbeit der Ökotope | |
Kriegsdiskurse | |
Methodenentwicklung der Praxis- und Diskursforschung | |
Methoden: | Ethnomethodologische Forschungsverfahren (CA, MCA, Studies of Work, Laboratory Studies, TSA) |
Kritische Praxis- und Diskursforschung (Critical Ethnomethodology, Soziologie der Kritik, Critical Description) | |
Analytische Ethnographie (Empirie/Theorie-Dialoge, hier insbes. Systemtheorie, ANT, Post-Strukturalismus) | |
Politische
Ethnographie (Reflexive Feldforschungsmethoden angesichts politische
aufgeladener Gegenstände) |