2025

8 January 2025
Stiftung Humboldt Forum, Berlin (Germany)

Tatjana Thelen: Familie, Sorge, Staat: Ideale der Zugehörigkeit und Praktiken der Exklusion

Die Idee der „modernen“ Familie ist ein zentrales Element europäischer Selbstbeschreibung. Demzufolge ist in Europa Verwandtschaft auf dem Rückzug, und weitgehend durch eine emotionalisierte (Klein- oder Kern-) Familie ohne politische Bedeutung ersetzt. Diesem Selbstbild steht ein Fremdbild gegenüber, dass eine Beständigkeit, bis hin zu Dominanz „traditioneller“ Verwandtschaft in der Vergangenheit oder außerhalb Europas vermutet. Wirtschaftliche und politische Folgen verwandtschaftlicher Organisation in Europa werden so leicht übersehen. Zudem kann diese Fortschrittserzählung zu einem abwertenden Blick auf andere Formen des Zusammenlebens führen. In Hinblick auf familiäre Sorge ergibt sich jedoch ein ambivalenter Blick. In Europa bedarf sie vermeintlich staatlicher Unterstützung, während sie anderswo ungebrochen vorhanden scheint. „Richtige“ Sorge in Familien wird so zu einem Marker politischer Zugehörigkeit. In meinem Vortrag zeige ich einerseits die politische Bedeutung der Verwandtschaft in Deutschland auf. Andererseits gehe ich auf Formen der Ausgrenzung durch ein spezifisches Verständnis verwandtschaftlicher Sorge ein. 

21 January 2025, 12-1 pm
University of Cologne (Germany)

Panda Belonging: Kinship Measurements and Life’s Value in Species Conservation

Christof Lammer will give a talk on his current research project “Panda Belonging: Kinship Measurements and Life’s Value in Species Conservation” at the Global South Studies Center (University of Cologne, Seminarraum 3.03). This event is part of the GSSC Seminar Series, on invitation by Rewilding the Anthropocene.

29 January 2025, 4:15 pm
Free University of Berlin (Germany) & online

New Books on the Anthropology of the State: On Relations and Boundaries (hybrid event)

Christof Lammer and André Thiemann will present their latest publications at the Free University of Berlin (Germany):

>> Christof Lammer: Performing State Boundaries. Food Networks, Democratic Bureaucracy and China. New York: Berghahn.

>> André Thiemann: The Politics of Relations. How Self-Government, Infrastructures and Care Transform the State in Serbia. New York: Berghahn.

You’re welcome to join on site or online via WebEx:

Wed, 29 January 2025 | 4.15 pm
Institute for Social Anthropology, Free University of Berlin
FU Seminar Centre, L113
WebEx-meeting link: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=me0e028dc397165a56ffbb5baf40081cc 
(meeting ID: 2730 192 5532; meeting password: BAS_winter_2024)

11 March 2025
STS Hub 2025 Berlin (Germany)

Data and the boundaries of welfare and the state

Julia Malik presents her paper “Data and the boundaries of welfare” at this year’s STS Hub “Diffracting the Critical” in Berlin. Her talk is part of the panel “Demarcating boundaries of and with data: Boundary work in the age of datafication”. Read the abstract here:

In this paper, I explore boundary work in the context of datafication in state welfare based on ethnographic research on Colombia’s digital welfare infrastructure. People, algorithms, data, and databases take part in socioeconomically classifying households, thereby configuring the boundary between those “in need/deserving” and those “not in need/undeserving” of social benefits. Besides determining access to state welfare, these data systems and practices also shape the boundaries between different institutions and levels of the state. Boundaries of the state are also reconfigured through entanglements with the private sector through labor outsourcing and data sharing. Furthermore, local administrators of the digital welfare infrastructure engage in boundary work to either present themselves as state actors or as on the side of the classified citizens by distancing the (central) government and attempting to help citizens. People working in the central administration of the digital welfare infrastructure use data and information systems as well as statistical and economic sciences to argue that their work is “neutral” and purely “technical” and to thus delineate it from “the political”. By discussing these different dimensions of boundary work, I argue that data re central in drawing, shifting, and dissolving boundaries of the state and of welfare.

11-14 March 2025
STS Hub 2025 Berlin (Germany)

Critical Species: Measuring Kinship, Valuing Lives

The STS Hub “Diffracting the Critical” will take place in Berlin in March 2025, with Christof Lammer and Sandra Calkins hosting the panel ‘Critical Species: Measuring Kinship, Valuing Lives’: Conservation, agriculture and public health identify specific “critical species” that need to be protected, managed or exterminated. Determining who or what is critical requires assessing similarities, gauging proximities, and setting boundaries. Such valuations of species are underwritten by a set of material-semiotic practices that we call kinship measurements. The Panel collects 15 contributions in three sessions on ‘Multiple Measurements, Changing Valuations’, ‘(De)Valuing the Wild, Domesticating Kinship’, and ‘Redrawing Species Boundaries’.

20 March 2025, 1:00-2:30 pm (EDT)
Brown Bag Seminar @ The New School (US)

After Critique: Becoming the Authoritarian State

Tatjana Thelen, who is currently a visiting scholar at The New School in New York City, will give a talk with the title “After Critique: Becoming the Authoritarian State”. Read the abstract here:

In this talk, I offer a perspective on how starting with a critical stance towards the state can paradoxically lead to becoming the (authoritarian) state. Based on my long-term ethnographic engagement in post-socialist regions of Europe, I follow the rise of a Roman Catholic NGO. This organization arrived in the region with a critique of gaps in state care and as a charity it continues to receive international support for its activities. However, its critical stance has faded as its activities and norms have increasingly merged with the state’s in Hungary.
This development could be seen as resulting from an unforeseen and maybe unintentional overlapping of norms and ideals related to work, but it still paved the way for the NGO’s integration into the state. This development is significant in two ways. First, since liberal civil-rights-based approaches largely failed to improve the situation of the poorest segments of society, new patron-client relations sometimes seemed the only, or even the preferable, option. Second, this situation, might leave both local residents and researchers feeling practically and theoretically stuck. Thus, to avoid an overly simplistic or reductionist interpretation, I analyze the changing role of critique of the state in this process. I aim to offer hope by demonstrating how these situations are always fluid and open. 

26 March 2025, 5:00 pm
University of Vienna (Austria)

Surveillance and Sanctions over Recipients: A Coercive Turn in Social Welfare

Vincent Dubois, who will be Paul Lazarsfeld guest professor, will give a talk with the title “Surveillance and Sanctions over Recipients: A Coercive Turn in Social Welfare”:

Among numerous innovations and changes, welfare reform in western countries has recently revitalized welfare surveillance, defined as the institutional arrangements and practices aimed at checking that recipients comply with the rules of welfare benefits. Why did this revival of control occur? How has welfare fraud been constructed and promoted as a public problem? How has a bureaucratic routine been raised to the status of a political and policy issue? How is control organized and implemented? What are its impacts on the lives of the recipients? By addressing these questions, this book provides an original contribution to the analysis of the new balance between politics, economics and morals that define the contemporary social state. It shows how legal regulation, financial constraints, surveillance technologies and direct interactions between bureaucrats and clients intertwine in the new government of the underprivileged.

25-27 June 2025
University of Helsinki (Finland)

Care on trial: Critical Perspectives on the Jurisprudence on Care and Human Rights

In June 2025, the 7th Transforming Care Conference will take place in Helsinki. The theme will be ‘Social and Human Rights in Care’. Petra Ezzeddine and Maroš Matiaško will host the panel ‘Care on trial: Critical Perspectives on the Jurisprudence on Care and Human Rights’.Further information on registration and deadlines can be found here:https://www.transforming-care.net/2025-transforming-care-conference/presentation/