Jörg Niewöhner
Biographic Data
| ID | 86549 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jörg Niewöhner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jörg |
| FAMILY NAME | Niewöhner |
| SIGNATURE | NIEWÖHNER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9034-9761 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 204 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Anthropology after Progress: Situating Public Chemistries Ethnographically to Better Understand Life as Aftermath
Synthetic chemicals are ubiquitous. They circulate in large amounts turning organisms and their environments anthropogenic and constituting life as aftermath (Landecker 2025). Trying to understand life as aftermath challenges modern chemistry and the life sciences. I propose here to use relational-processual ontology, para-siting/parasighting, and anthropology’s anticipatory competences to develop in collaboration with chemistry situated and publ…
From situated knowledges to situated modelling: A relational framework for simulation modelling
In this paper we extend the use of a relational approach to simulation modelling, a widely used knowledge practice in sustainability science. Among modellers, there is awareness that model results can only be interpreted in view of the assumptions that inform model construction and analysis, but less systematic questioning of those assumptions. Moreover, current methodological discussions tend to focus on integrating social and ecological dynamic…
Exploring fruitful links between real-world laboratory and disciplinary research: Introduction of the DKN Future Earth working group LinkLab
LinkLab is a newly established working group under the umbrella of German Committee Future Earth (DKN Future Earth). It opens up a space to discuss relevant connections and interfaces between real-world lab research and various scientific disciplines, exploring fruitful connections and pathways for mutual learning for future sustainability-oriented research
The Weariness of Hoping: Synchronizing Affect While Awaiting Organ Transplantation for Cystic Fibrosis in Germany
We describe the challenges in synchronizing affect during the lengthy lead-up to organ transplantation. Our analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Eastern Germany among medical staff caring for patients with cystic fibrosis, a progressive, genetic illness. Patient and practitioners must together endure an uncertain wait for a donor organ, while simultaneously living and working toward living as well as possible. The organizing affective prin…
Infrastructure
The notion of infrastructure commonly refers to the networked technical support structures that facilitate the provision of services and the movement of goods, people, and ideas through space. In anthropology, the notion of infrastructure also designates an analytic. As such, infrastructure is sensitive to the constant interweaving of technical objects, social organization, knowledge practices, and moral orders. Three key perspectives have been f…
Sciences interdisciplinaires et politique du climat
Dans cet article, je m’intéresse à la relation qu’une recherche interdisciplinaire sur les conséquences du changement climatique (ou « impacts climatiques ») entretient avec la politique du climat, en particulier en Allemagne. J’esquisserai d’abord le style de pensée dominant dans ce champ de recherche et montrerai comment l’accent mis sur la modélisation rend invisibles certaines différences (sociales) significatives. Sur cette base, et en prena…
Whose energy sovereignty? Competing imaginaries of Mexico's energy future
Mexico started down a path toward renewable energy in 2013 when the central government set ambitious targets for clean energy and carbon emissions through long-term electricity auctions and clean energy licenses. In 2018, these efforts came to a drastic halt when President López Obrador was elected. Since then, efforts to transition to renewable have been stalled, and even reversed to some extent. At this moment of fundamental political, societal…
Curating the Widerstandsaviso: Three cases of ethnographic intravention in R&D consortia
Aligning technological innovation with societal needs is a key concern for knowledge economies. Integrating ethical, legal, and social inquiry into research and development consortia that drive innovation processes has thus become common practice. Ethnographic research in consortia is one such practice. Here, these cover three cases of open ethnographic engagement within R&D consortia in the field of medical and rehabilitation technology. Rather …
Making and unmaking gold as a resource. Resistant socionatures in Maidan, Kyrgyzstan
Distributing Reflexivity through Co-laborative Ethnography
In ethnographic research and analysis, reflexivity is vital to achieving constant coordination between field and concept work. However, it has been conceptualized predominantly as an ethnographer’s individual mental capacity. In this article, we draw on ten years of experience in conducting research together with partners from social psychiatry and mental health care across different research projects. We unfold three modes of achieving reflexivi…
Integrierte Forschung – ein ethnographisches Angebot zur Ko-Laboration
Lockdown texts
Shades of Conflict in Kyrgyzstan: National Actor Perceptions and Behaviour in Mining
Confronted with advancing resource frontiers, local communities increasingly rely on conflict to re-establish order in the face of problematic interdependences brought about by mining transactions. This article captures the interactions at national level that engender these interdependences in the first place. We explore how national actor groups influence emerging regularities of behaviour in mining through the example of gold mining in Kyrgyzst…
From Scholastic to Emic Comparison: Generating Comparability and Handling Difference in Ethnographic Research
Situating local biologies: Anthropological perspectives on environment/human entanglements
Assembling Comparators – Assembling Reflexivities
Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations*The Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations is a research and writing collective based at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin’
Landscapes of hoping - urban expansion and emerging futures in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Hope is much discussed as a future-oriented affect emerging from uncertain living conditions. While this conceptualisation illuminates the role that hope plays in shaping life trajectories, hope itself remains largely unaddressed. In this paper, we approach hope ethnographically as practice through the lens of material-semiotics. We draw on fieldwork in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where hoping turns out to be co-constitutive of peri-urban life and…
Embodying Practices: The Human Body as Matter (of Concern) in Social Thought
Infrastructures of Society, Anthropology of
Epigenetics: Localizing Biology Through Co-Laboration
This paper reports on a co-laborative laboratory ethnography in a molecular biology laboratory conducting research on environmental epigenetics. It focuses on a single study concerned with the material implications of social differentiation. The analysis briefly raises biopolitical concerns. Its main concern lies with an understanding of the human body as local in its working infrastructure or "inner laboratory", an understanding that emerges fro…
The material gene: Gender, race, and heredity after the Human Genome Project
Review of the book “The material gene: gender, race, and heredity after the Human Genome Project” (by Kelly E. Happe, 2013)
Mapping the new molecular landscape: Social Dimensions of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA itself. The field is rapidly growing and being widely promoted, attracting attention in diverse arenas. These include those of the social sciences, where some researchers have been encouraged by the resonance between imaginaries of development within epigenetics and social theory. Yet, sustained attention from science and technology studies (…
Inhalt
Vorwort
Von der Wissenschaftssoziologie zur Soziologie wissenschaftlichen Wissens
Robert K. Merton begründete in den 1930 und 40er Jahren die Wissenschaftssoziologie mit seinen Untersuchungen über die Entwicklung der Wissenschaft im England des 17. Jahrhunderts und ihren wechselseitigen Zusammenhang mit gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen, speziell dem Puritanismus. Wissenschaft wird durch diesen Forschungsansatz als Institution bzw. als Organisation erstmals Untersuchungen durch die Sozialwissenschaften zugänglich. Aus diesem Ve…
Epigenetics: Embedded bodies and the molecularisation of biography and milieu
Mapping the new molecular landscape: Social Dimensions of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA itself. The field is rapidly growing and being widely promoted, attracting attention in diverse arenas. These include those of the social sciences, where some researchers have been encouraged by the resonance between imaginaries of development within epigenetics and social theory. Yet, sustained attention from science and technology studies (…
Epigenetics: Localizing Biology Through Co-Laboration
This paper reports on a co-laborative laboratory ethnography in a molecular biology laboratory conducting research on environmental epigenetics. It focuses on a single study concerned with the material implications of social differentiation. The analysis briefly raises biopolitical concerns. Its main concern lies with an understanding of the human body as local in its working infrastructure or "inner laboratory", an understanding that emerges fro…
The British 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis: A comparative study of public risk perceptions, trust and beliefs about government policy in two communities
This mixed methodology study examines public attitudes to risk and its management during the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic in Britain. A quantitative survey and qualitative focus groups were conducted to examine how two communities (Norwich and Bude) responded to the crisis. People were more concerned about a broad range of indirect consequences than about the direct (health) impacts of the disease, especially about the effects on th…
Landscapes of hoping - urban expansion and emerging futures in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Hope is much discussed as a future-oriented affect emerging from uncertain living conditions. While this conceptualisation illuminates the role that hope plays in shaping life trajectories, hope itself remains largely unaddressed. In this paper, we approach hope ethnographically as practice through the lens of material-semiotics. We draw on fieldwork in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where hoping turns out to be co-constitutive of peri-urban life and…
The meta‐governance of risk and new technologies: GM crops and mobile telephones
The stylistic shift from government to governance in the regulation of risks associated with new technologies is often portrayed as an attempt to reach a deeper consensus over public controversies and to avoid future risk management failures. Stakeholder involvement in decision‐making through more inclusive and learning styles is seen as increasingly necessary in order to correct the steering deficit of the state, to rebuild trust in state instit…
Cardiovascular Disease and Obesity Prevention in Germany: An Investigation into a Heterogeneous Engineering Project
Cardiovascular diseases present the leading cause of death worldwide. Over the last decade, their preventio has become not only a central medical and public health issue but also a matter of political concern as well as a major market for pharma, nutrition, and exercise. A preventive assemblage has formed that integrates diverse kinds of knowledges, technologies, and actors, from molecular biology to social work, to foster a specific healthy life…
Investigating Emerging Biomedical Practices: Zones of Awkward Engagement on Different Scales
This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values critically explores a new stage in which the life sciences and biomedical practices have entered. This new stage is marked by postgenomic developments and an increased interest of life sciences in the everyday lives of people outside laboratories and clinical settings. Furthermore, particular attention is given to many chronic and degenerative disorders such as cardiovascular disease, Alzh…
Making and unmaking gold as a resource. Resistant socionatures in Maidan, Kyrgyzstan
Shades of Conflict in Kyrgyzstan: National Actor Perceptions and Behaviour in Mining
Confronted with advancing resource frontiers, local communities increasingly rely on conflict to re-establish order in the face of problematic interdependences brought about by mining transactions. This article captures the interactions at national level that engender these interdependences in the first place. We explore how national actor groups influence emerging regularities of behaviour in mining through the example of gold mining in Kyrgyzst…
Whose energy sovereignty? Competing imaginaries of Mexico's energy future
Mexico started down a path toward renewable energy in 2013 when the central government set ambitious targets for clean energy and carbon emissions through long-term electricity auctions and clean energy licenses. In 2018, these efforts came to a drastic halt when President López Obrador was elected. Since then, efforts to transition to renewable have been stalled, and even reversed to some extent. At this moment of fundamental political, societal…
The Weariness of Hoping: Synchronizing Affect While Awaiting Organ Transplantation for Cystic Fibrosis in Germany
We describe the challenges in synchronizing affect during the lengthy lead-up to organ transplantation. Our analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Eastern Germany among medical staff caring for patients with cystic fibrosis, a progressive, genetic illness. Patient and practitioners must together endure an uncertain wait for a donor organ, while simultaneously living and working toward living as well as possible. The organizing affective prin…
Assembling Comparators – Assembling Reflexivities
Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations*The Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations is a research and writing collective based at Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin’
Producing Comparability Ethnographically. Reply to Robert Prus. Ethnographic Comparisons, Complexities and Conceptualities: Generic Social Processes and the Pragmatic Accomplishment of Group Life
This short contribution is a response to Robert Prus’ commentary paper “Ethnographic Comparisons, Complexities and Conceptualities.” We agree with many of the points raised and merely reiterate three aspects of our position in order to reinforce the unique features of our notion of thick comparison: First, ethnography has an important role to play in social inquiry. Second, ethnographers appropriate fields by getting involved in them. This involv…
The British 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis: A comparative study of public risk perceptions, trust and beliefs about government policy in two communities
This mixed methodology study examines public attitudes to risk and its management during the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic in Britain. A quantitative survey and qualitative focus groups were conducted to examine how two communities (Norwich and Bude) responded to the crisis. People were more concerned about a broad range of indirect consequences than about the direct (health) impacts of the disease, especially about the effects on th…
The meta‐governance of risk and new technologies: GM crops and mobile telephones
The stylistic shift from government to governance in the regulation of risks associated with new technologies is often portrayed as an attempt to reach a deeper consensus over public controversies and to avoid future risk management failures. Stakeholder involvement in decision‐making through more inclusive and learning styles is seen as increasingly necessary in order to correct the steering deficit of the state, to rebuild trust in state instit…
Somatographic Investigations Across Levels of Complexity
Enculturing brains through patterned practices
Putting Complex Worlds into Words ‐ A Final Response to Prus
Published first as (erstmalig folgendermaßen erschienen): Jörg Niewöhner and Thomas Scheffer: “Putting Complex Worlds into Words: A Final Response to Prus”. In: Comparative Sociology 9.4 (2010), pages 544–547. DOI: 10.1163/ 156913210X12555713197295
Producing Comparability Ethnographically. Reply to Robert Prus. Ethnographic Comparisons, Complexities and Conceptualities: Generic Social Processes and the Pragmatic Accomplishment of Group Life
This short contribution is a response to Robert Prus’ commentary paper “Ethnographic Comparisons, Complexities and Conceptualities.” We agree with many of the points raised and merely reiterate three aspects of our position in order to reinforce the unique features of our notion of thick comparison: First, ethnography has an important role to play in social inquiry. Second, ethnographers appropriate fields by getting involved in them. This involv…
Das Selbst als Netzwerk: Zum Einsatz von Körpern und Dingen im Alltag
Seit Michel Foucault werden mit »Technologien des Selbst« Praktiken bezeichnet, mit denen die Menschen derart auf sich und ihre Lebensumstände einwirken, dass ihre Leben gewissen ästhetischen Vorstellungen zu entsprechen beginnen. Der Band beschäftigt sich mit diesen Transformationsprozessen und untersucht, wie in bestimmten Alltagspraxen Selbstkonzepte und damit assoziierte Praktiken immer wieder neu konfiguriert, in neue Beziehungen gesetzt und…
Leben in Gesellschaft: Biomedizin - Politik - Sozialwissenschaften
Beständig rückt der Begriff des »Lebens« weiter ins Zentrum sozialanthropologischer und soziologischer Analysen: das ›nackte Leben‹ des »homo sacer«, das biologische Leben der Lebenswissenschaften, das biographische und politische Über-Leben der Philosophie und Literaturkritik, das Leben-an-sich geformt durch Macht-Wissen oder das Leben-als-solches als das konkret gelebte Leben von Geburt bis Tod. Der Band basiert auf einer deutsch-französischen …
Epigenetics: Embedded bodies and the molecularisation of biography and milieu
Investigating Emerging Biomedical Practices: Zones of Awkward Engagement on Different Scales
This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values critically explores a new stage in which the life sciences and biomedical practices have entered. This new stage is marked by postgenomic developments and an increased interest of life sciences in the everyday lives of people outside laboratories and clinical settings. Furthermore, particular attention is given to many chronic and degenerative disorders such as cardiovascular disease, Alzh…
Cardiovascular Disease and Obesity Prevention in Germany: An Investigation into a Heterogeneous Engineering Project
Cardiovascular diseases present the leading cause of death worldwide. Over the last decade, their preventio has become not only a central medical and public health issue but also a matter of political concern as well as a major market for pharma, nutrition, and exercise. A preventive assemblage has formed that integrates diverse kinds of knowledges, technologies, and actors, from molecular biology to social work, to foster a specific healthy life…
Inhalt
Vorwort
Von der Wissenschaftssoziologie zur Soziologie wissenschaftlichen Wissens
Robert K. Merton begründete in den 1930 und 40er Jahren die Wissenschaftssoziologie mit seinen Untersuchungen über die Entwicklung der Wissenschaft im England des 17. Jahrhunderts und ihren wechselseitigen Zusammenhang mit gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen, speziell dem Puritanismus. Wissenschaft wird durch diesen Forschungsansatz als Institution bzw. als Organisation erstmals Untersuchungen durch die Sozialwissenschaften zugänglich. Aus diesem Ve…
Sachindex
Einleitung
Erstmalig folgendermaßen erschienen (published first as): \nJörg Niewöhner, Estrid Sørensen und Stefan Beck: „Science and Technology Studies – Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung aus sozial- und kulturanthropologischer Perspektive“ (Einleitung). In: Science and Technology Studies. Eine sozialanthropologische Einführung. Hrsg. von Stefan Beck, Jörg Niewöhner und Estrid Sørensen. VerKörperungen/MatteRealities 17. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2012,…
Personenindex
Autorinnen und Autoren
Von der Wissenschaftstheorie zur Soziologie der Wissenschaft
Das Forschungsfeld der Science and Technology Studies hat wesentliche Impulse für seine Entstehung und Entwicklung aus der Wissenschaftstheorie, vor allem der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts bezogen. Der logische Positivismus des Wiener Kreises, Karl Poppers kritischer Rationalismus und der Historizismus, entscheidend geprägt von Thomas Kuhn, stellen bis heute die zentralen philosophischen Grundpfeiler der Analyse von Erkenntnisprozessen dar. …
Science and Technology Studies: Eine sozialanthropologische Einführung
Dieser Band ist die erste deutschsprachige sozialanthropologische Einführung in das Feld der Science and Technology Studies - ein Forschungsfeld, das sich der empirischen Untersuchung des alltäglichen Zusammenspiels von Wissenschaft, Technologie und gesellschaftlicher Ordnung widmet. Der sozialanthropologische Zugriff stellt neben den grundlegenden theoretischen und methodischen Aspekten klassische sowie neuere ethnographische Arbeiten in den Mit…
The material gene: Gender, race, and heredity after the Human Genome Project
Review of the book “The material gene: gender, race, and heredity after the Human Genome Project” (by Kelly E. Happe, 2013)
Mapping the new molecular landscape: Social Dimensions of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA itself. The field is rapidly growing and being widely promoted, attracting attention in diverse arenas. These include those of the social sciences, where some researchers have been encouraged by the resonance between imaginaries of development within epigenetics and social theory. Yet, sustained attention from science and technology studies (…
Infrastructures of Society, Anthropology of
Epigenetics: Localizing Biology Through Co-Laboration
This paper reports on a co-laborative laboratory ethnography in a molecular biology laboratory conducting research on environmental epigenetics. It focuses on a single study concerned with the material implications of social differentiation. The analysis briefly raises biopolitical concerns. Its main concern lies with an understanding of the human body as local in its working infrastructure or "inner laboratory", an understanding that emerges fro…
Embodying Practices: The Human Body as Matter (of Concern) in Social Thought
Sociology (23 works) · Political science (18 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Anthropology (9 works) · Ethnography (9 works) · Race, Genetics, and Society (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Social science (8 works)