Eva Riedke

Eva RiedkeNetwork Member

Eva Riedke is a postdoctoral researcher in social anthropology at the University of Konstanz and is pursuing a DFG-funded project entitled: Life Lived off the Grid: The study of solar infrastructure and ethical subjects. This ethnographic project engages with how solar products (in particular ‘solar home systems’) are conceptualized and designed by solar entrepreneurs – including the energy futures they envision, their ethical projects, logics, assumptions and principles and the manner in which these are translated, transformed and also drawn into question. Secondly, by ‘following the product’, the project engages with the customers and users of these solar off grid products in Kenya, exploring the coming into being of electricity infrastructures and the mundane, everyday experiential aspects of living a life ‘off the grid’.

 

Research

Eva completed her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Mainz in 2017. The thesis with the title “Concerning issues: Making things political in Durban”, focused on ‘issue’ politics and processes of ‘issue-ification’ unfolding in Durban, South Africa. Pursuing an STS and pragmatist-inspired approach, she sought to trace specific trajectories of ‘issue-ification’ – in her case pertaining particularly to HIV/AIDS, development, service delivery and political violence in Durban. The larger argument she makes is that by tracing the articulation of ‘issues’, prompts us to reconsider what we readily come to recognise as the sites of the ‘political’ in post-apartheid South Africa.

Publications

  • Riedke, Eva (2021) "Inner Dialogues: Negotiations Unfolding between the Field and one’s Desk." in Ethnoscripts 23 (1): 45-58.
  • Riedke, Eva (2018) "Concerning issues: Making things political in Durban." published PhD Dissertation, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, published open source through Gutenberg Qualify. → http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hebis:77-diss-1000021179
  • Drotbohm, Heike and Eva Riedke (2018) "Expecting justice: Struggling with the indeterminate between ideals and practices." in The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 50 (3): 294-298.
  • Riedke, Eva and Richard Rottenburg (2016) "Introduction." in The ordering power of narratives, Working Paper of the DFG Priority Programme 1448, Nr. 21, pp 5-16 , edited by Eva Riedke. → http://lost-research-group.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/SPP1448_WP21_Riedke.pdf
  • Riedke, Eva (2016) "Antagonising ‘past times’: A King Shaka statue in Durban." in The ordering power of narratives: Working Paper of the DFG Priority Programme 1448 21: 25-29 , edited by Eva Riedke.
  • Riedke, Eva (2015) "'You shouldn’t be seen talking to them!': Accidental frontlines, building trust and coping with danger." in Civilisations 64. Special Issue: "Field Research in Difficult Contexts: Hostile Settings Sensitive Topics, Taboos".
  • Gebauer, Claudia, Eva Riedke, and Norman Schräpel (2015) "Introduction: Space and the production of order and disorder." in Space and the production of order and disorder. Working Paper of the DFG Priority Programme 1448, Nr. 12, pp. 3-5 , edited by Claudia Gebauer.