Research group for the ethnographic inquiry into ecologies, infrastructures, bodies and knowledges
Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations

Dennis Eckhardt

Dennis Eckhardt 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

Dennis Eckhardt, Sarah May, Martina Röthl, Roman Tischberger and

Digitale Arbeitskulturen. Transformationen erforschen Journal Article

In: Berliner Blätter: ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, vol. 82/2020, pp. 3-15, 2020.

Links

Moritz Altenried, Manuela Bojedzijev, Mira Wallis, Dennis Eckhardt

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.

Links

Dennis Eckhardt, Sarah May, Roman Tischberger, Martina Röthl et al. (Ed.)

Digitale Arbeitskulturen: Rahmungen, Effekte, Herausforderungen Collection

Berliner Blätter: ethnographische und ethnologische Beiträge, Berlin, 2020.

Links

2019

Sabine Biedermann, Patrick Bieler, Milena Bister, Sascha Cornejo Puschner, Adina Dymczyk, Dennis Eckhardt, Janine Hauer, Maren Heibges, Dženeta Hodžić, Jonna Josties, Martina Klausner, Anja Klein, Céline Lauer, Ruzana Liburkina, Jörg Niewöhner, Stefan Reinsch, Christine Schmid, Tim Seitz, Itzell Torres, Krystin Unverzagt, Jorge E. Vega-Marrot

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.

Links

Sabine Biedermann, Patrick Bieler, Milena Bister, Sascha Cornejo Puschner, Adina Dymczyk, Dennis Eckhardt, Janine Hauer, Maren Heibges, Dženeta Hodžić, Jonna Josties, Martina Klausner, Anja Klein, Céline Lauer, Ruzana Liburkina, Jörg Niewöhner, Stefan Reinsch, Christine Schmid, Tim Seitz, Itzell Torres, Krystin Unverzagt, Jorge E. Vega-Marrot

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.

Links

Dennis Eckhardt

Musik machen inmitten Anderer. Reflexionen über das Singen im Chor Book

LIT, Münster, 2019.

Links