Contestations of ‘the Social’ – Towards a Movement-based Ethnographic Social (State) Regime Analysis

• Applicant: Dr. Lisa Riedner
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 490697580

The research group analyses contestations of social (state) regimes in post-pandemic and post-colonial cities of the Global North. It addresses – and connects – six research gaps by introducing the concept of social (state) regimes and the methodology of the movement-based ethnographic social (state) regime analysis: (1) So far, transformations of the welfare state appear only as a silhouette background in debates on urban dynamics, migration, labour, care and policy within the German-speaking anthropological community. Hence, the potential interventions of a cultural anthropology of ‘the social’ into the interdisciplinary field of (comparative) welfare research have not yet be sufficiently explored. (2) Several migration scholars have recently made the case for thinking migration and social policies closer together. Most of them are conceptually and theoretically very eloquent but lack an empirical basis. Many empirical studies, however, fail to perceive power dynamics that cut across the migrant/non-migrant divide or understand contested demarcations of ‘the social’ that criss-cross different territories of governance. (3) The role that social policy and mobility play in the intersectional relations between market and non-market practices and infrastructures of social reproduction has not yet been sufficiently explored. (4) Research on the precarisation of labour either focuses solely on migrant labour or disregards the efficacious dynamics of racism in societal labour relations. (5) De- and post-colonial urban research discusses how necropolitics do not only articulate in the wastelands and necropolis of the Global South and in violent border zones but increasingly also in cities of the Global North. However, empirical research on homelessness, urban citizenship and urban inequality is often not in touch with these debates. (6) The approach of movement-based research in US-American critical urban scholarship has not yet been brought into dialogue with debates around engaged anthropology, at least in the European context.The research group addresses these six research gaps – and their complex entanglements – with five movement-based ethnographic social (state) regime analyses. The researchers will take part in the activities of local grass root community organisations which lead social struggles in everyday life, and organise multilingually and across status groups and nationalities. The first part of the project (subprojects 1–3) is based in Berlin, Frankfurt a.M. and Oldenburg (Germany). The second part (subprojects 4–5) opens up a transnational comparative perspective with London (UK) and Los Angeles (USA). A movement-based epistemic vantage point and interest in understanding the processes that b/order ‘the social’ allow for a distinct reading of unequal social relations and attempts of governing poverty, migration and low-wage (reproductive) labour in crises-ridden, post-colonial and post-pandemic capitalism.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups