Kathrin Eitel

Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University Zurich

works at the intersection of science and technology studies, infrastructure studies, and critical urban studies, with a focus on Cambodia, Vietnam, and Turkey. She is particularly interested in how climate-related impacts in urban contexts are differentially responded by technologies, and in the impact that these technologies, including their traveling concepts and prevailing imaginaries, have on life and design of (future) cities.

During her PhD project, she conducted ethnographic research on waste. In this context, she explored the relationship between the emergence of recycling infrastructures, their use as a political platform, and their potential for shaping the city of Phnom Penh (Cambodia). Currently, she is working on her postdoctoral research project on water. The project focuses on the flood-prone Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) and its technological fixes in form of the mega-project of a sea dyke. Kathrin is particularly interested in adjacent political fields that challenge these measures in different ways and produce 'alternative' forms of resilience in daily urban life, e.g. towards the floods, but also towards the prevailing political (infra-)structures.

 

You can find Kathrin and her work here

 

Recent Publications:

(2023). Resilience. In: The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. http://doi.org/10.29164/23resilience.

(2022). Dam Visions. In: EASST Review 42 (2), 63.

(2022). Reshuffling Responsibility: Waste, Environmental Justice, and Citizenship in Cambodia. In: Worldwide Waste. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 5 (1), 1-13. 

(2022). Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia. Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh. London/New York: Routledge.

with Laura Otto, Martina Klausner, Gisela Welz (eds.) (2021). Interventions with/in Ethnography. Kulturanthropologie Notizen 83 (1). 

(2021). Oozing Matters. The Infrastructure of ‘Waste Management’ in Phnom Penh and Emergent Naturecultures. In: Casper Bruun Jensen (ed.), ‘Material Itineraries’. Journal for East Asian Science & Technology Studies 15 (2), 135-152.

with Michaela Meurer (eds.) (2021): Ecological Ontologies. Approaching Human-Environmental Engagements. Berliner Blätter: 84(1).

with Michaela Meurer (2021). Introduction. Exploring Multifarious Worlds and the Political Within the Ontological Turn(s). Berliner Blätter 84: 3-19.

(2020). PlastiCorona: who cares about that waste? Social Anthropology 28 (2), 261–262.

(2019). Reflexivität als Prinzip. Für eine Ökologie des Forschens und über die methodologische Anschlussfähigkeit an eine Soziale Ökologie. In: Sattlegger, L./ Deppisch, L./ Rudolfi, M. (Hrsg.): Methoden umweltsoziologischer Forschung. Band zur 11. Tagung der Nachwuchsgruppe Umweltsoziologie. ISOE-Materialien Soziale Ökologie, Frankfurt am Main: 30-44.

(2019). [Waste×] Matter in and out the Place: a Story about Wastefulness, Hybridity, and Flows of Plastic. In: Journal für Entwicklungspolitik, Müll und Globalisierte Ungleichheiten, XXXV (2): 166 – 194.