Jan Bartsch

Metabolic Apparatusses in or of the Anthropocene. The Political Ecology of Aquaponics

My Research is concerned with metabolic apparatuses in or of the Anthropocene. More specifically I am working on the Political Ecology of Aquaponics. Aquaponics is an experimental technology in which seemingly natural metabolic cycles between fish and plants are used to produce food. Against this background, I address the seemingly contradictory relationship between economic rationalities and ecological sustainability within alternative food production. I try to grasp this relation with the term metabolism in order to show immanent power relations on the one hand and to trace the diverse entanglements of human and other-than-human worlds on the other hand. Through an ethnographically informed understanding of metabolism, it is possible to show how new forms of urban food production imply political factors and at the same time entail contingencies and unpredictable outcomes.

Contact
Research interests
  • Urban Political Ecology
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • More-than-human ethnography
  • Metabolism Studies
  • Environmental Sociology
Vita
  • Since 2020
    PhD  Scholarship holder of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. 
  • 2016 – 2019
    M.A. Cultural- and Social anthropology at the Philipps-University of Marburg.
  • 2010 – 2016
    B.A. Political Science and Cultural Studies at the University of Bremen.
Publications
Talks, Workshops, and Events
  • Talk Metabolic Apparatuses in Urban food production. The Political Ecology of Aquaponics
  • 2022 Conference Exploring Unruly Sites of more-than-human Entanglements. Workshop AG Environmental Anthropology 19.05-20.05.2022.
  • Talk Metabolizing Ethnography. Aquaponics and the Anthropocene.
  • 2022 Conference METABOLISM STUDIES: MATERIALITY AND RELATIONALITY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE. Scientific research symposium. 28.06-30.06.2022 in Lyon, France.
Back to overview
diversity and plurality

“Join us to create more diversity and plurality in knowledge production.”

Gisela Febel
hierarchy of norms

“If social contradictions are reflected in law, law cannot form a hierarchy of norms free of contradictions.”

Andreas Fischer-Lescano
idea of democratic critique

“If you think that acts of contradicting someone always need to point to better solutions, you haven’t really understood the idea of democratic critique.”

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every day

“Living in contradictions is what we experience every day. Why do we know so little about it?”

Gisela Febel
Afterlife of colonialism

“Contradiction comes in many different forms. None is so debilitating than when the coloniser transitions, textually not politically, to decoloniality without taking the responsibility for the afterlife of colonialism, which they continue to benefit from. Self-examination and self-interrogation of the relations of coloniality, a necessity, seem nearly impossible for the coloniser who continues to act as beneficiary, masked in the new-found language of White fragility, devoid of an ethical responsibility of the very system of White domination they claim to be against.” (Black Consciousness and the Politics of the Flesh)

Rozena Maart