Felix Ringel
Biographic Data
| ID | 174205 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Felix Ringel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Felix |
| FAMILY NAME | Ringel |
| SIGNATURE | RINGEL F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0841-0648 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 193 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Generations and/in time: Facing capitalist futures in a postsocialist German city
This paper explores the conceptual relationships between ‘generations’ and time. It is based on empirical material from Hoyerswerda, previously Germany’s fastest shrinking city, where particular age-groups are united by the demands of a problematic capitalist present. If at all, distinct generations in Hoyerswerda are here constituted by different futurities
Re-Turns, Entanglements and Collaborations: Anthropological Experimentations
A Season for Plastics: Polyethylene Times in Blantyre, Malawi
This article examines the temporal complexity of polyethylene plastics in Blantyre, Malawi. As the location of the country's main plastic manufacturers, all kinds of plastics flow through the city. However, various non-plastic times intersect with these flows, from rainy seasons to the sowing of maize, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and the availability of fertilizer. Movements of local plastics thereby fluctuate according to other times and …
Afterword: Time and Politics
Beyond outmigration: Im/mobilities and futures in peripheral postindustrial cities
This paper explores negotiations of futures within and beyond Germany’s formerly fastest shrinking city, the East German city of Hoyerswerda. Originally built for the German Democratic Republic’s miners and energy workers, its model socialist New City attracted tens of thousands of people in the latter half of the 20th century. In the wake of German reunification, this direction of mobility reversed. Economic transformations resulted in widesprea…
The time of post-socialism: On the future of an anthropological concept
When accounting for changes in the post-socialist era, anthropologists were forced to carefully distinguish between what had remained the same, what had actually changed and what was emerging anew and on its own terms. As a sub-discipline, the anthropology of post-socialism has thereby contributed prominently to theories of time, change and temporal agency. It has also shown that the post-socialist present is, if at all, as determined by its soci…
Tides of Concrete: Sensing Infrastructural Times in a Former Socialist Model City
Through a guided tour of a concrete city, Felix Ringel explores how citizens of Hoyerswerda measure the changing of infrastructural time sensorially
Postsocialist Dialectics or Postindustrial Critique? On Discomfort in a Former Socialist Model City in East Germany
Over the last 30 years, the inhabitants of Hoyerswerda, the German Democratic Republic’s second socialist model city, have struggled through de-industrialisation, unemployment, outmigration and urban decay. With the help of Karl Polanyi’s concept of ‘countermovement’, this essay scrutinises their various critiques of contemporary forms of capitalism. I investigate how these critiques help them to navigate their hometown’s prospects in the postind…
Hope and the future: Temporal agency and the politics of hope in late capitalism
This special issue on the Labour of Hope constitutes a most welcome milestone in the ongoing debates around hope and capitalism.To kick-off this discussion, I offer three observations on the context in which it emerges.The first observation is historical.Arguably, this collection has been written at a moment when hope has become a scarce resource for many people around the world.Not because of the recent global pandemic, but because of the curren…
Contextualising expectations
This chapter takes the readers to Bremerhaven and the context in which the author&s;s informants reconfigure their expectations. It reviews some recent contributions to the literatures on maintenance, repair, and the crisis of liberalism. With their help, the chapter extrapolates some characteristics of the context of our discipline’s contemporary stances to the future. It returns to Bremerhaven and its post-industrial revitalization programmes. …
Zur Zukunft der Ostdeutschlandforschung: Kommentar zu Matthias Bernt und Andrej Holm „Die Ostdeutschlandforschung muss das Wohnen in den Blick nehmen“
In diesem Kommentar bestärkt Felix Ringel die von Bernt und Holm formulierten Thesen zum Scheitern der deutschen Ostdeutschlandforschung und fragt, erstens, nach den Gründen dieses Scheiterns und, zweitens, ob ein Ausweg aus diesem Scheitern durch eine bewusst ‚ostdeutsche‘ Ostdeutschlandforschung geschafft werden kann. Ein derartiger strategischer Essentialismus könnte helfen, ostdeutsche Themen als solche wahrzunehmen und zu erforschen, und dam…
On the Side of Predictable: Visioning the Future in Serbia
In order to be able to contextualize and understand social worlds, anthropologists pay close attention. We observe how individuals and communities relate to each other and to their ideas. We study the intimate and subjective, as well as the large-scale cosmologies by which people make themselves and the world. Our participatory methods and reflective analysis document the complex, intricate, patterned, and also random aspects of people's reasonin…
Ruins of pre-gentrification: Schrotthäuser and urban standstill in a postindustrial city
The Goetheviertel is the poorest district of Germany's poorest city, the postindustrial harbour city of Bremerhaven. However, for many local inhabitants it is also the city's most beautiful district with its 19th century architecture and central location, and any visitor of Bremerhaven would agree: this district is ripe for gentrification. Gentrification has been anticipated for the district at least since the 1980s when the city declared the Goe…
Brexit as postindustrial critique
Anthropologists and other commentators struggle to make sense of pre-COVID-19 political developments in the postindustrial Global North. Various narratives were created to explain these dramatic events and changes, deploying an armory of social science analysis. We could approach one of these worrying developments, Brexit, as a postindustrial phenomenon. To make this case, I will compare my ethnographic material from postindustrial German cities …
On expectations in the aftermath of the 'refugee crisis: Ethnographic prospects from a post-industrial German city
At the height of the 'refugee crisis' in Europe, right-wing critics challenged refugees' rights to asylum. One of the ways they did this was by predicting chaotic, doom-laden futures. In reality, nobody - neither the communities hosting the refugees, nor the refugees themselves - knew what the post-crisis future would bring. Anthropologists are in a position to consider that future ethnographically. This article discusses the emerging future expe…
Beyond temporality: Notes on the anthropology of time from a shrinking fieldsite
With the help of ethnographic material from Germany’s fastest shrinking city, I critically engage in this paper with the term ‘temporality’. By bringing together recent insights from the anthropology of time and the future, the literature on post-socialism, and contemporary philosophical debates on the problem of presentism, I pursue a thorough re-conceptualization of time as a matter of knowledge practices. I thereby question the idea of tempora…
Can Time Be Tricked? A Theoretical Introduction
This theoretical introduction develops a conceptual argument stemming from the concept of 'time-tricking'. Whilst most theories of time in anthropology develop a coherent definition of the nature of time - for instance, as 'cyclical' or 'linear' - I draw attention to a seemingly common metaphysical distinction in our temporal ontologies, that between the past and the future. This distinction allows me to do two things: first, I present two differ…
Time-Tricking: A General Introduction
This general introduction presents the term that is the theme of this Special Section: ‘time-tricking’. Whilst initially mapping a few problems and perspectives that arise from it, we focus particularly on the question of temporal agency. We claim that the concept of time-tricking allows a reconsideration of temporal agency, and then set out how the articles that make up this Special Section contribute to this reconsideration. We will see that tw…
Post-industrial times and the unexpected: Endurance and sustainability inGermany's fastest-shrinking city
This paper investigates the impact of recent politico-economic changes on contemporary experiences of time from the perspective of the future. By discussing endurance, permanence, and sustainability inGermany's fastest-shrinking city, I present a set of future-orientated practices which are post-industrial, but unexpectedly so: namely, hopeful and not subject to the widely attested phenomenon of 'enforced presentism'. I subsequently position the …
Differences in temporal reasoning
Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local tempor…
Towards anarchist futures? Creative presentism, vanguard practices and anthropological hopes
Recently, new political but also conceptual hopes have been invested in the study of anarchy as a non-prescriptive, native category, proposing a dialogue between actually existing anarchism and the discipline of anthropology. My article contributes to this anthropology of anarchists with an analysis of a specific form of temporal reasoning exhibited in the social, ethical and lifestyle practices of an anarchist group in the East German city of Ho…
Beyond temporality: Notes on the anthropology of time from a shrinking fieldsite
With the help of ethnographic material from Germany’s fastest shrinking city, I critically engage in this paper with the term ‘temporality’. By bringing together recent insights from the anthropology of time and the future, the literature on post-socialism, and contemporary philosophical debates on the problem of presentism, I pursue a thorough re-conceptualization of time as a matter of knowledge practices. I thereby question the idea of tempora…
Can Time Be Tricked? A Theoretical Introduction
This theoretical introduction develops a conceptual argument stemming from the concept of 'time-tricking'. Whilst most theories of time in anthropology develop a coherent definition of the nature of time - for instance, as 'cyclical' or 'linear' - I draw attention to a seemingly common metaphysical distinction in our temporal ontologies, that between the past and the future. This distinction allows me to do two things: first, I present two differ…
Post-industrial times and the unexpected: Endurance and sustainability inGermany's fastest-shrinking city
This paper investigates the impact of recent politico-economic changes on contemporary experiences of time from the perspective of the future. By discussing endurance, permanence, and sustainability inGermany's fastest-shrinking city, I present a set of future-orientated practices which are post-industrial, but unexpectedly so: namely, hopeful and not subject to the widely attested phenomenon of 'enforced presentism'. I subsequently position the …
Time-Tricking: A General Introduction
This general introduction presents the term that is the theme of this Special Section: ‘time-tricking’. Whilst initially mapping a few problems and perspectives that arise from it, we focus particularly on the question of temporal agency. We claim that the concept of time-tricking allows a reconsideration of temporal agency, and then set out how the articles that make up this Special Section contribute to this reconsideration. We will see that tw…
Towards anarchist futures? Creative presentism, vanguard practices and anthropological hopes
Recently, new political but also conceptual hopes have been invested in the study of anarchy as a non-prescriptive, native category, proposing a dialogue between actually existing anarchism and the discipline of anthropology. My article contributes to this anthropology of anarchists with an analysis of a specific form of temporal reasoning exhibited in the social, ethical and lifestyle practices of an anarchist group in the East German city of Ho…
The time of post-socialism: On the future of an anthropological concept
When accounting for changes in the post-socialist era, anthropologists were forced to carefully distinguish between what had remained the same, what had actually changed and what was emerging anew and on its own terms. As a sub-discipline, the anthropology of post-socialism has thereby contributed prominently to theories of time, change and temporal agency. It has also shown that the post-socialist present is, if at all, as determined by its soci…
On the Side of Predictable: Visioning the Future in Serbia
In order to be able to contextualize and understand social worlds, anthropologists pay close attention. We observe how individuals and communities relate to each other and to their ideas. We study the intimate and subjective, as well as the large-scale cosmologies by which people make themselves and the world. Our participatory methods and reflective analysis document the complex, intricate, patterned, and also random aspects of people's reasonin…
Differences in temporal reasoning
Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local tempor…
Beyond outmigration: Im/mobilities and futures in peripheral postindustrial cities
This paper explores negotiations of futures within and beyond Germany’s formerly fastest shrinking city, the East German city of Hoyerswerda. Originally built for the German Democratic Republic’s miners and energy workers, its model socialist New City attracted tens of thousands of people in the latter half of the 20th century. In the wake of German reunification, this direction of mobility reversed. Economic transformations resulted in widesprea…
Hope and the future: Temporal agency and the politics of hope in late capitalism
This special issue on the Labour of Hope constitutes a most welcome milestone in the ongoing debates around hope and capitalism.To kick-off this discussion, I offer three observations on the context in which it emerges.The first observation is historical.Arguably, this collection has been written at a moment when hope has become a scarce resource for many people around the world.Not because of the recent global pandemic, but because of the curren…
Postsocialist Dialectics or Postindustrial Critique? On Discomfort in a Former Socialist Model City in East Germany
Over the last 30 years, the inhabitants of Hoyerswerda, the German Democratic Republic’s second socialist model city, have struggled through de-industrialisation, unemployment, outmigration and urban decay. With the help of Karl Polanyi’s concept of ‘countermovement’, this essay scrutinises their various critiques of contemporary forms of capitalism. I investigate how these critiques help them to navigate their hometown’s prospects in the postind…
Brexit as postindustrial critique
Anthropologists and other commentators struggle to make sense of pre-COVID-19 political developments in the postindustrial Global North. Various narratives were created to explain these dramatic events and changes, deploying an armory of social science analysis. We could approach one of these worrying developments, Brexit, as a postindustrial phenomenon. To make this case, I will compare my ethnographic material from postindustrial German cities …
On expectations in the aftermath of the 'refugee crisis: Ethnographic prospects from a post-industrial German city
At the height of the 'refugee crisis' in Europe, right-wing critics challenged refugees' rights to asylum. One of the ways they did this was by predicting chaotic, doom-laden futures. In reality, nobody - neither the communities hosting the refugees, nor the refugees themselves - knew what the post-crisis future would bring. Anthropologists are in a position to consider that future ethnographically. This article discusses the emerging future expe…
Ruins of pre-gentrification: Schrotthäuser and urban standstill in a postindustrial city
The Goetheviertel is the poorest district of Germany's poorest city, the postindustrial harbour city of Bremerhaven. However, for many local inhabitants it is also the city's most beautiful district with its 19th century architecture and central location, and any visitor of Bremerhaven would agree: this district is ripe for gentrification. Gentrification has been anticipated for the district at least since the 1980s when the city declared the Goe…
Towards anarchist futures? Creative presentism, vanguard practices and anthropological hopes
Recently, new political but also conceptual hopes have been invested in the study of anarchy as a non-prescriptive, native category, proposing a dialogue between actually existing anarchism and the discipline of anthropology. My article contributes to this anthropology of anarchists with an analysis of a specific form of temporal reasoning exhibited in the social, ethical and lifestyle practices of an anarchist group in the East German city of Ho…
Differences in temporal reasoning
Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local tempor…
Post-industrial times and the unexpected: Endurance and sustainability inGermany's fastest-shrinking city
This paper investigates the impact of recent politico-economic changes on contemporary experiences of time from the perspective of the future. By discussing endurance, permanence, and sustainability inGermany's fastest-shrinking city, I present a set of future-orientated practices which are post-industrial, but unexpectedly so: namely, hopeful and not subject to the widely attested phenomenon of 'enforced presentism'. I subsequently position the …
Beyond temporality: Notes on the anthropology of time from a shrinking fieldsite
With the help of ethnographic material from Germany’s fastest shrinking city, I critically engage in this paper with the term ‘temporality’. By bringing together recent insights from the anthropology of time and the future, the literature on post-socialism, and contemporary philosophical debates on the problem of presentism, I pursue a thorough re-conceptualization of time as a matter of knowledge practices. I thereby question the idea of tempora…
Can Time Be Tricked? A Theoretical Introduction
This theoretical introduction develops a conceptual argument stemming from the concept of 'time-tricking'. Whilst most theories of time in anthropology develop a coherent definition of the nature of time - for instance, as 'cyclical' or 'linear' - I draw attention to a seemingly common metaphysical distinction in our temporal ontologies, that between the past and the future. This distinction allows me to do two things: first, I present two differ…
Time-Tricking: A General Introduction
This general introduction presents the term that is the theme of this Special Section: ‘time-tricking’. Whilst initially mapping a few problems and perspectives that arise from it, we focus particularly on the question of temporal agency. We claim that the concept of time-tricking allows a reconsideration of temporal agency, and then set out how the articles that make up this Special Section contribute to this reconsideration. We will see that tw…
On expectations in the aftermath of the 'refugee crisis: Ethnographic prospects from a post-industrial German city
At the height of the 'refugee crisis' in Europe, right-wing critics challenged refugees' rights to asylum. One of the ways they did this was by predicting chaotic, doom-laden futures. In reality, nobody - neither the communities hosting the refugees, nor the refugees themselves - knew what the post-crisis future would bring. Anthropologists are in a position to consider that future ethnographically. This article discusses the emerging future expe…
Contextualising expectations
This chapter takes the readers to Bremerhaven and the context in which the author&s;s informants reconfigure their expectations. It reviews some recent contributions to the literatures on maintenance, repair, and the crisis of liberalism. With their help, the chapter extrapolates some characteristics of the context of our discipline’s contemporary stances to the future. It returns to Bremerhaven and its post-industrial revitalization programmes. …
Zur Zukunft der Ostdeutschlandforschung: Kommentar zu Matthias Bernt und Andrej Holm „Die Ostdeutschlandforschung muss das Wohnen in den Blick nehmen“
In diesem Kommentar bestärkt Felix Ringel die von Bernt und Holm formulierten Thesen zum Scheitern der deutschen Ostdeutschlandforschung und fragt, erstens, nach den Gründen dieses Scheiterns und, zweitens, ob ein Ausweg aus diesem Scheitern durch eine bewusst ‚ostdeutsche‘ Ostdeutschlandforschung geschafft werden kann. Ein derartiger strategischer Essentialismus könnte helfen, ostdeutsche Themen als solche wahrzunehmen und zu erforschen, und dam…
On the Side of Predictable: Visioning the Future in Serbia
In order to be able to contextualize and understand social worlds, anthropologists pay close attention. We observe how individuals and communities relate to each other and to their ideas. We study the intimate and subjective, as well as the large-scale cosmologies by which people make themselves and the world. Our participatory methods and reflective analysis document the complex, intricate, patterned, and also random aspects of people's reasonin…
Ruins of pre-gentrification: Schrotthäuser and urban standstill in a postindustrial city
The Goetheviertel is the poorest district of Germany's poorest city, the postindustrial harbour city of Bremerhaven. However, for many local inhabitants it is also the city's most beautiful district with its 19th century architecture and central location, and any visitor of Bremerhaven would agree: this district is ripe for gentrification. Gentrification has been anticipated for the district at least since the 1980s when the city declared the Goe…
Brexit as postindustrial critique
Anthropologists and other commentators struggle to make sense of pre-COVID-19 political developments in the postindustrial Global North. Various narratives were created to explain these dramatic events and changes, deploying an armory of social science analysis. We could approach one of these worrying developments, Brexit, as a postindustrial phenomenon. To make this case, I will compare my ethnographic material from postindustrial German cities …
Tides of Concrete: Sensing Infrastructural Times in a Former Socialist Model City
Through a guided tour of a concrete city, Felix Ringel explores how citizens of Hoyerswerda measure the changing of infrastructural time sensorially
Postsocialist Dialectics or Postindustrial Critique? On Discomfort in a Former Socialist Model City in East Germany
Over the last 30 years, the inhabitants of Hoyerswerda, the German Democratic Republic’s second socialist model city, have struggled through de-industrialisation, unemployment, outmigration and urban decay. With the help of Karl Polanyi’s concept of ‘countermovement’, this essay scrutinises their various critiques of contemporary forms of capitalism. I investigate how these critiques help them to navigate their hometown’s prospects in the postind…
Hope and the future: Temporal agency and the politics of hope in late capitalism
This special issue on the Labour of Hope constitutes a most welcome milestone in the ongoing debates around hope and capitalism.To kick-off this discussion, I offer three observations on the context in which it emerges.The first observation is historical.Arguably, this collection has been written at a moment when hope has become a scarce resource for many people around the world.Not because of the recent global pandemic, but because of the curren…
The time of post-socialism: On the future of an anthropological concept
When accounting for changes in the post-socialist era, anthropologists were forced to carefully distinguish between what had remained the same, what had actually changed and what was emerging anew and on its own terms. As a sub-discipline, the anthropology of post-socialism has thereby contributed prominently to theories of time, change and temporal agency. It has also shown that the post-socialist present is, if at all, as determined by its soci…
Beyond outmigration: Im/mobilities and futures in peripheral postindustrial cities
This paper explores negotiations of futures within and beyond Germany’s formerly fastest shrinking city, the East German city of Hoyerswerda. Originally built for the German Democratic Republic’s miners and energy workers, its model socialist New City attracted tens of thousands of people in the latter half of the 20th century. In the wake of German reunification, this direction of mobility reversed. Economic transformations resulted in widesprea…
Re-Turns, Entanglements and Collaborations: Anthropological Experimentations
A Season for Plastics: Polyethylene Times in Blantyre, Malawi
This article examines the temporal complexity of polyethylene plastics in Blantyre, Malawi. As the location of the country's main plastic manufacturers, all kinds of plastics flow through the city. However, various non-plastic times intersect with these flows, from rainy seasons to the sowing of maize, the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and the availability of fertilizer. Movements of local plastics thereby fluctuate according to other times and …
Afterword: Time and Politics
Generations and/in time: Facing capitalist futures in a postsocialist German city
This paper explores the conceptual relationships between ‘generations’ and time. It is based on empirical material from Hoyerswerda, previously Germany’s fastest shrinking city, where particular age-groups are united by the demands of a problematic capitalist present. If at all, distinct generations in Hoyerswerda are here constituted by different futurities
Sociology (15 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)