DEPARTMENT OF
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY STUDIES

Postdoc-Ass. Dr. Mag. Christof Lammer, B.A.

Postdoc-Ass. Mag. Dr. Christof Lammer, Bakk.

Phone:: +43 463 2700 6157
E-mail:: Christof [dot] Lammer [at] aau [dot] at
Room:: B07.1.203

Research areas / ÖSTAT - Subject areas

anthropology of China
economic anthropology, anthropology of development
Ethnography
Ethnology
kinship studies
political anthropology, anthropology of the state
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Social studies of science

Curriculum Vitae

Professional Experience

Biography

Christof Lammer studied Social and Cultural Anthropology and China Studies at the University of Vienna, Tianjin University and Renmin University of China. Since 2011, he has conducted more than 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the People’s Republic of China.

As predoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna (2013-2017) and as fellow at the ZiF-Research Group 'Kinship and Politics' at Bielefeld University (2017) he wrote his doctoral thesis Performing State Boundaries: A Stategraphy of Citizen Participation in China (2018). Bringing the concept of boundary work from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to the anthropology of the state and adding a focus on performance, he studies civic initiatives that promote ecological agriculture as well as the bureaucratic administration of state assistance for the poor.

Besides political anthropology, his research interests are in economic anthropology, kinship studies and the anthropology of science and technology.

Since 2019 he is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Science, Technology and Society Studies at the Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt. Presently, Christof Lammer is preparing the book manuscript Performing State Boundaries: Citizen Participation in Rural Development and Bureaucracy in China and two special issues: Measuring Kinship: Gradual Belonging and Thresholds of Exclusion (with Tatjana Thelen, University of Vienna) and Infrastructures of Value: New and Historical Materialities in Agriculture (with André Thiemann, Czech Academy of Sciences).

Positions

since 2019: postdoctoral researcher, Department of Science, Technology and Society Studies, Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt

August 2019: guest researcher, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale)

2018: fellow and lecturer, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna

2017: fellow, ZiF Research Group 'Kinship and Politics', Bielefeld University

2013-2017: predoctoral researcher, Department of Methods in the Social Sciences (Ethnography Group) and Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna

Memberships

American Anthropological Association (AAA) & Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA)

CaSt Research Network (Care and State)

German Anthropological Association (GAA/DGSKA) & Regional Group Anthropology of China

European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) & Network on Anthropologies of the State

LOST Research Network (Law, Organization, Science and Technology)

Postgraduate Supervision and Review

Fahimi, Miriam: “F:AI:R: An Ethnography on Constructing Algorithmic Fairness”, PhD thesis, University of Klagenfurt (co-supervision with Prof. Dr. Katharina Kinder-Kurlanda, current).

Malik, Julia: “Classifying Citizens, Updating the State: How Practicing Digital Welfare Shapes Statehood in Colombia”, PhD thesis, University of Klagenfurt (co-supervision with Prof. Dr. Daniel Barben, current)

Baltiņa, Reičela (2022): “Standardization of People and their Environment: Practicing Certified Green Care in Carinthia, Austria”, MA thesis, University of Klagenfurt (primary supervision, completed).

De Pablos Sanz, Paula (2022): “Ethics of Care in Agro-Food Innovations: The Cases of Vertical Farming and Permaculture”, MA thesis, Maastricht University (review, completed).

Education

2018: PhD Social and Cultural Anthropology (with distinction, promotio sub auspiciis praesidentis: 12 March, 2019), University of Vienna

2014-2015: Rural Studies, Renmin University Beijing

2012: MA Social and Cultural Anthropology (with distinction), University of Vienna

2009-2011: all courses of the MA China Studies, University of Vienna

2009: BA China Studies (with distinction), University of Vienna

2006-2007: language studies (Chinese), Tianjin University

Selected Publications

Lammer, Christof

2018. "Distancing the regulating state: corruption, transparency and the puzzle of personal relatedness in a food network in Sichuan". (Special Issue: The Chinese state as regulator). Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development 47(3,4): 369-406.

2018. Performing state boundaries: a stategraphy of citizen participation in China. Doctoral thesis (Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tatjana Thelen, MA, Vienna; Reviewers: Prof. Dr. Chris Hann, Halle, Prof. Dr. Thomas G. Kirsch, Konstanz), Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna.

2017. “Reworking state boundaries through care: ‘peasant friends’, ‘greedy entrepreneurs’ and ‘corrupt officials’ in an ‘alternative’ food network in China”. Vienna Working Papers in Ethnography 5: 1-29.

2012. Imagined cooperatives: an ethnography of cooperation and conflict in New Rural Reconstruction Projects in a Chinese village. Master thesis, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna.

Selected Events

Lammer, Christof

2017. IKSA Graduate Forum “The many social lives of policy: across different processes and regional contexts”, 27-29 April 2017, University of Vienna, Austria, together with Volha Biziukova, Cansu Civelek, Alexandra Sindrestean, Andreas Streinzer and Melanie Sindelar.

Selected Lectures

2021
Anthropology and China(s): Co-Constructions of Ethnographic and Academic Regions
Anthropology and the Study of China(s) – 1st Conference of the DFG Scientific Network “Anthropology and China(s)”
Köln, 05.11.2021
2020
The Puzzle of Personal Relatedness: Corruption, Transparency, and State Boundaries in Food Regulation
16th EASA Biennial Conference New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe
Lissabon/Online, 24.07.2020
Introduction: Infrastructuring Value
16th EASA Biennial Conference New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe
Lissabon/Online, 21.07.2020
Minimum Living Allowances and the Boundary between Family and State
Workshop "Care in China"
Workshop on Zoom, 11.05.2020
2019
Sinified’ social work, globalising middle-class ideals: rural community education for China’s ‘left-behind’ children
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropological Society (CASCA)
Vancouver, 20.11.2019
Studying state boundaries: performative boundary work—stategraphy extended
Inaugural meeting of the EASA Anthropologies of the State Network
Leiden, 01.11.2019
Introduction: measuring kinship—negotiating belonging
Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie
Konstanz, 30.09.2019
Knowing quality food: certification and people as globalizing infrastructures of value in China
Workshop “Consuming the unique: food, art and the globalizing infrastructures of value”
Budapest, 09.05.2019
“Performing the ‘standardised’ state: making social policy and avoiding confrontations at the street-level in rural China”
RSU Research Week 2019, PLACES Conference, Panel “State in everyday life: users and losers”
Rīga Stradiņš University, 02.04.2019

Lammer, Christof

2018. “Grey and green infrastructure: un/doing state boundaries in an ‘ecological village’ in China”. 4th Vienna Ethnography Laboratory, “Infrastructures: Imagination, Materiality, Process” organised by Tatjana Thelen, Kirsten Rüther und Peter Schweitzer, University of Vienna, Austria, 26 September 2018.

2017. “Listing signatures of belonging: welfare and performances of community and state in China”. German Anthropological Association (GAA/DGV) Biannual Conference “Belonging: Affective, moral and political practices in an interconnected world”, Panel “The politics of lists” organised by Sabine Strasser and Martin Sökefeld, FU Berlin, Germany, 5 October 2017.

2017. “Distancing the entangled state: performances of peasant participation in a food network in China”. Workshop “China and Chinas: the many faces of the nation state” organised by Jean-Baptiste Pettier and Roberta Zavoretti, University of Cologne, Germany, 27 July 2017.

2017. “Intervening by upholding the state/family-split: participation in an NGO’s ‘rural community education’ for China’s ‘left-behind children’”. ZiF Summer School “Kinship and Politics. Undoing the Boundaries”, ZiF Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld University, Germany, 3 July 2017.

2017. “Reworking state boundaries through performances of care”. Werkstatt Series, organised by Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Germany, 13 June 2017.

2017. “Staging ecology, consuming transparency civil society style”. IKSA Graduate Forum “The many social lives of policy: across different processes and regional contexts”, University of Vienna, Austria, 28 April 2017.

2016. “Peasant friends, greedy entrepreneurs and corrupt officials? Caring for food safety in China”. 14th European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Biennial Conference: “Anthropological legacies and human futures”, Panel “Cross-cutting care and care across cuts: dimensions of care in contexts of crisis and social change” organised by Antónia Pedroso de Lima and Rosie Read, Milano, Italy, 22 July 2016.

2016. “Avoiding to offend others: ‘democratic’ participation in rural governance in China”. 3rd Vienna Ethnography Laboratory, “Practices of Bureaucracy and State Practices. Power, Interaction, Exclusion” organised by Tatjana Thelen, Birgit Sauer and Wolfram Schaffar, University of Vienna, Austria, 10 June 2016.

2015. “Peasant friends and state certification: negotiating boundaries on the way to food safety in China”. Workshop “Chinese Capitalism in the World System: New Perspectives” organised by Felix Wemheuer, Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany, 12 December 2015.

2015. “Being the crisis of someone else: Chinese ‘peasants’ as objects of transformation”. German Anthropological Association (GAA/DGV) Biannual Conference “Crises: reconfigurations of life, power and worlds”, Marburg, Germany, 2 October 2015.

2014. “Co-production beyond ‘alternative’ food networks”. STS Conference Graz 2014 “Critical Issues in Science and Technology Studies”, Graz, Austria, 5 May 2014.

2013. “Relocating capitalism and reproducing inequalities: unintended outcomes of experiments with cooperation in post-Mao rural China”. IAMO Forum 2013 “Rural Areas in Transition”, Halle (Saale), Germany, 20 June 2013.

2013. “Imagined cooperatives: an ethnography of cooperation and conflict in New Rural Reconstruction Projects in a Chinese village”. Guest lecture in “Introduction to Economic Anthropology” by Gertraud Seiser, University of Vienna, 21 January 2013.