Institut für Ethnologie
22.04.25: Vortrag im Ethnologischen Kolloquium von Hannes Raßmann
17. April 2025, von Christina Fastner
Hannes Raßmann (Universität Hamburg) zum Thema:
Putting Water to Work Anew? – An Anthropological Inquiry into Water-Based Ecological Modernisation in Leipzig, Germany
Leipzig, like many cities worldwide, is navigating ecological modernisation amidst an accelerating polycrisis, including the imminent collapse of the Holocene climate niche and critical loss of nature, exemplified by the severe degradation of its floodplain ecosystem. Successive hot and dry years since 2018 have amplified the urgency to redefine the city's relationship with water due to their impact on residents and the fragile silvo-riverine ecosystems with which Leipzig historically co-evolved. In his PhD research, Hannes Raßmann traces technological, ideological, economic, and socio-cultural shifts in land and water use in Leipzig from a longue durée perspective. He characterises the city's water and river history as a transformation from a pre- or proto-industrial 'floodplain city', distinguished by diverse forest and river-use practices, to an industrial and (imagined) port city. Raßmann connects these historical trajectories of Leipzig's hydro-social co-evolution with its recent reinvention as a post-socialist and partially post-extractivist/post-industrial 'water city' since the 1990s. Additionally, he links this development to contemporary ecological modernisation projects, which, under the premise of responding to climate and biodiversity crises, specifically target the city's degraded ecosystems. Bringing insights from his ethnographic fieldwork (2021–2024) with municipal water managers, environmental scientists, conservationists, and historians in Leipzig into dialogue with Simon Schaupp’s theoretical framework from Stoffwechselpolitik (2024), Raßmann examines how water is imbued with new meanings and functions within what is currently projected to be a climate-proof sponge city. He argues, however, that contemporary water and forest management practices and ecological restoration efforts, although presented as solutions to current environmental crises, remain inherently technocratic top-down endeavours, unable to fundamentally transform human-nature relations.
Short bio
Hannes Raßmann is a PhD researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Hamburg. His current research explores the historical and contemporary co-evolution of humans and the floodplain (eco)system in Leipzig, investigating how these interactions shape the making and remaking of the city through water management. He is particularly interested in the role of human labour and various energy sources within these processes. His PhD project involves intermittent ethnographic fieldwork conducted with environmental scientists, municipal water managers, conservationists, and historians in Leipzig. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, his research examined similar dynamics of water use and climate adaptation along the Lena River in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in north-eastern Siberia.
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Das Kolloquium findet immer dienstags im großen Seminarraum des Instituts statt:
Institut für Ethnologie
Seminarraum 222, 2. OG
Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, Westflügel
20146 Hamburg