I am a doctoral candidate at the Institute for European Ethnology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. My research interests are media and relational anthropology, (digital) labour, platform economy and value.
My PhD project’s working title is “The Valorization of Comparing. The Making of Comparing Platforms through labour practices”.
Comparing platforms like idealo, check24, holidaycheck are a growing economic sector: Enterprises facilitate money by valorizing the comparing practices of people, who seek to find the cheapest product. Maintaining these comparing platforms produces contexts of (immaterial) labour, in which the care of data, the allocation of product information, and the translation of clicks into money are important. The research question is: How is comparing made valuable? It focuses connections between labour practices (working on and with media) and the production of (economic) value. Primal empirical findings lead to an understanding of complex labour cultures, in which employed people take care for the platform, and the specific value creating practices ensure the making of money. Currently I am trying to relate 4 perspectives on the creation of value by media-related labour practices: (1) Economic Anthropology (the making of the platform as an economy and market; the creation of value); (2) Media Anthropology (media practices related to programs, algorithms); (3) Labour Culture Research (media practices as day-to-day work on and with the platform) and (4) Science and Technology Studies (to take care of the platform as infrastructuring the value producing infrastructure).
Contact: denniseckhardt@posteo.de
Publications
2020
Digitale Arbeitskulturen. Transformationen erforschen Journal Article
In: Berliner Blätter: ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, vol. 82/2020, pp. 3-15, 2020.
Körper, Daten, Arbeitskraft. Ein Gespräch zu Migration und Arbeit unter digitalen Bedingungen Journal Article
In: Berliner Blätter: ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, vol. 82/2020, pp. 43-53, 2020.
Digitale Arbeitskulturen: Rahmungen, Effekte, Herausforderungen Collection
Berliner Blätter: ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, Berlin, 2020.
2019
Current work in the Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations: Doing research in a more-than-thought collective Journal Article
In: EASST Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2019.
From the Collaboratory Social Anthropology & Life Sciences to the Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations Journal Article
In: EASST Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2019.
Musik machen inmitten Anderer. Reflexionen über das Singen im Chor Book
LIT, Münster, 2019.