Articles | Volume 69, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-69-99-2014
© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-69-99-2014
© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Standard article
| 
22 Jul 2014
Standard article |
| 22 Jul 2014
Science + Space + Society: urbanity and the risk of methodological communalism in social sciences of space*
J. Lévy
Chôros Laboratory, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
* This text is the revised version of the Geographica Helvetica Lecture at the International Geographical Conference in Cologne, 29 August 2012.
* This text is the revised version of the Geographica Helvetica Lecture at the International Geographical Conference in Cologne, 29 August 2012.
Related subject area
Human Geography
„Der Park als Problemraum“. Regieren städtischer Drogenkulturen am Beispiel des Görlitzer Parks
Die räumliche Produktion von Alternsbildern durch Smart-Home-Technologien
Material agency in art installations: exploring the interplay of art, space, and materials in Detroit
Au centre est l'État-nation. Le Monde vu par des étudiants du Kazakhstan
Von Stadt, Land, Fluss zur Nachhaltigkeitskunde: (Irr-)Wege der Ausgestaltung des Fachwissens in den Berliner Geographielehrplänen der letzten drei Jahrzehnte
Intime Infrastrukturen: Feministisch-geographische Perspektiven auf Energie
Shifting values at the cemetery – the artistic interventions of DeathLab
Making space for community energy: landed property as barrier and enabler of community wind projects
Theorizing power and agency in state-initiated municipal climate change adaptation: integrating reflexive capacity into adaptive capacity
A situated governmentality approach to energy transitions: technologies of power in German and Indian smart grid strategies
Critical critical posthumanism in human geography
Editorial: Infrastructures and migration
Towards an integrative understanding of multiple energy justices
„We are making it on ourselves“ – Infrastrukturen der (Im)Mobilität in Bosnien und Herzegowina
Legal Ecologies der Klimawandelanpassung
Infrastructuring environmental (in)justice: green hydrogen, Indigenous sovereignty and the political geographies of energy technologies
Methodologische Reflexionen zur reflexiven Fotografie aus den Perspektiven postkolonialer Kritik
Sauerian phenomenology: German Theory and Carl Sauer's The Morphology of Landscape
Situated sites of migration control: Swiss deportation practices and their relational materiality in prisons, hospitals, and airports
Challenging global changes in a post-revolutionary context: the case of irrigated olive growing in central Tunisia
Adaptive governance as bricolage
Arrival brokers as a key component of the arrival infrastructure: how established migrants support newcomers
Intentionality and visibility in state- and society-led climate approaches: towards a more comprehensive understanding of local adaptation initiatives
Infrastructures in the context of arrival – multidimensional patterns of resource access in an established and a new immigrant neighborhood in Germany
The open society and its life chances – from Karl Popper via Ralf Dahrendorf to a human geography of options and ligatures
German Theory als Geographie im Konjunktiv, oder: „Was nie geschrieben wurde, lesen“
„Diskursiv-konsensual ausgerichtete Konfliktregelung“? Versuche der Versachlichung und die Widerständigkeit von Emotionen im Umgang mit Atommüll
The contested environmental futures of the Dolomites: a political ecology of mountains
Unruly waters: exploring the embodied dimension of an urban flood in Bangkok through materiality, affect and emotions
Landscape and its possible “new” relevance: ethics and some forgotten narratives on human mobility
Framing REDD+: political ecology, actor–network theory (ANT), and the making of forest carbon markets
Production of knowledge on climate change perception – actors, approaches, and dimensions
„Just human“ – Eine phänomenologische und philosophisch-anthropologische Perspektive auf unser leibliches Mensch-Umwelt-Verhältnis
What is lost from climate change? Phenomenology at the “limits to adaptation”
Overview: Für eine (Neu-)Theoretisierung und (Neu-)Methodologisierung bevölkerungsrelevanter Phänomene
Mackinder's “heartland” – legitimation of US foreign policy in World War II and the Cold War of the 1950s
Wissenschaftliche Episteme und Geltung. Von der Konstruktion zum Dialog
Friedrich Ratzel, géographie et sciences sociales en France (1890–1918) – Centralité et distanciations
Was sind kulturelle Gedächtnisräume? – Erinnern, Raum und das kulturelle Gedächtnis nach Aleida und Jan Assmann
Dependent or not? From a daily practice of Earth observation research in the Global South to promoting adequate developmental spaces in science and technology studies
Sensing weather: scientific and experiential modes of knowledge production for small-scale farming in western Kenya
Großraum versus Lebensraum. Die Interdependenzen geographischer, juristischer und rassenbiologischer Ordnungsvorstellungen
Ratzel contre la géopolitique ? Référence allemande et géographie politique dans la géographie française de l'entre-deux-guerres
Resonanz und Rezeption. Werk und Wirkung Friedrich Ratzels im internationalen Vergleich
Applying Friedrich Ratzel's political and biogeography to the debate on natural borders in the Italian context (1880–1920)
Das Theater mit den Wissenschaften: Affektive Atmosphären einer künstlerisch-kollaborativen Bearbeitung der Klimakrise
„Wir sind hier, wir sind laut“ – Artikulationen von Emotionen der Nähe auf Fahrraddemonstrationen
Dal Lebensraum allo spazio vitale – la ricezione politica del pensiero di Ratzel in Italia, 1900–1943
Modellierung klimaneutraler Energielandschaften – eine kritische Reflexion regionaler Strategien zum Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien unter Berücksichtigung des Zwei-Grad-Ziels
Perspektivenwechsel der Politischen Ökologie – Back to the roots!
Frederieke Westerheide and Boris Michel
Geogr. Helv., 79, 191–204, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-191-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-191-2024, 2024
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The governance of urban drug use and its economies has played an important role in the production and control of public space in numerous cities of the global North since the 1970s. Using the example of Görlitzer Park in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, this paper argues for a spatially sensitive perspective on the spatializing practices of urban drug policies.
Marlene Hobbs and Linda Pasch
Geogr. Helv., 79, 177–189, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-177-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-177-2024, 2024
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Smart home technologies promote
ageing in placeas solution for the care crisis in ageing societies. Based on an ethnographic investigation in technology showrooms and interviews with developers, we show how smart home technologies construct images of active age on the one hand, and dependent old age on the other. We show that images of ageing are also spatial constructions that idealize the home as a place of active age and devalue the nursing home as a place of old age.
Nora Mariella Küttel
Geogr. Helv., 79, 149–160, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-149-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-149-2024, 2024
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Decades of neglect and disinvestment have left Detroit with many abandoned buildings, ruins, and empty lots. These structures and materials can act as catalysts, substances, and co-creators of artworks. By focusing on the two Detroit artists Olayami Dabls and Scott Hocking, the paper explores how art, space, and materials interact and how materials actively contribute to art.
Clarisse Didelon Loiseau, Almagul Mussina, Yann Richard, Nurzhanat D. Shakirova, and Julien Thorez
Geogr. Helv., 79, 101–117, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-101-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-101-2024, 2024
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In a 2010 survey, Central Asia was absent from the representations of the World of students in 18 countries. The survey was repeated in 2018–2019 in Kazakhstan, on the assumption that Central Asia would be represented by the students. The results support the theory of social representations of space, but shed some original light on the issue, particularly the importance of states in the way the world is divided up.
Péter Bagoly-Simó
Geogr. Helv., 79, 73–84, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-73-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-73-2024, 2024
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This article explores whether the reduction in geographical knowledge leads to better Education for Sustainable Development or to a general loss of quality in Geography teaching and learning.
Rosa Aue
Geogr. Helv., 79, 65–72, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-65-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-65-2024, 2024
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Facing multiple and embodied inequalities inscribed in the energy system, this intervention argues for an feminist perspective on energy geographies. Extending critical research on urban infrastructure with concepts of care, it seeks to contribute to more just energy relations.
Mirko Winkel, Mathias Siedhoff, and Jeannine Wintzer
Geogr. Helv., 79, 51–59, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-51-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-51-2024, 2024
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Cemeteries are a reflection of the values, history, and composition of their communities. Current social developments are therefore also visible through them. This contribution describes the work of DeathLab, a public event series that uses contemporary artist-designed urns as a means of exploring shifting values in funeral culture and linking them to population geography. It explores the possibilities of scientific analysis by incorporating artistic interventions.
Robert Wade and David Rudolph
Geogr. Helv., 79, 35–50, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-35-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-35-2024, 2024
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Renewable energy technologies require land. Landowners therefore often play a crucial role in wind energy development, shaping participation opportunities of various groups. Through case studies of the Netherlands and Scotland, we unpack how landownership influences the possible strategies for community energy. We find that securing community ownership of the land or wind resource itself is a potentially powerful, long-term strategy for community energy movements to achieve their goals.
Dennis Fila, Hartmut Fünfgeld, and Stefanie Lorenz
Geogr. Helv., 79, 21–33, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-21-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-21-2024, 2024
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This paper explores the role of power, institutions, and actors in climate change adaptation. We introduce
reflexive capacity, which is the ability of organizations to include diverse stakeholders and knowledge in decision-making. By analyzing a case study from Germany, we highlight how this capacity can transform over time and impact adaptation strategies. We conclude that understanding power and agency in this context can provide important insights for improving climate change adaptation.
Leonie Büttner and Lucas Barning
Geogr. Helv., 78, 581–592, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-581-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-581-2023, 2023
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This paper develops a situated governmentality approach to the particularities of energy transition projects, focusing on smart grid strategies in Germany and India. By analysing the underlying rationalities and power dynamics driving these energy transition projects, we challenge the dominant perception of smart grids as a universal solution. Our findings emphasize the different contexts in which smart grids are being developed and the various technologies of power at play.
Huib Ernste
Geogr. Helv., 78, 567–580, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-567-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-567-2023, 2023
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A critique of critical posthumanism from the perspective of the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner argues that practitioners of critical posthumanism are too quick with their critique of hitherto used conceptualisations of the human and too easily assume their utopian thinking to be the end of the debate, instead of engaging in a continuing search for a more human or posthuman world. This reflection could help to make critical posthumanism even more critical.
Anna-Lisa Müller and Leonie Tuitjer
Geogr. Helv., 78, 559–565, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-559-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-559-2023, 2023
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This article deals with the interrelation of migration and infrastructures. These are key topics of social geographic research. With this article we provide an overview on conceptualisations of infrastructures and migration, focussing in particular on the forms that infrastructures take in the course of migration journeys and the actors that are involved, as well as the effects the infrastructures have on migrants and their (im-)mobility.
Stefanie Baasch
Geogr. Helv., 78, 547–558, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-547-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-547-2023, 2023
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Energy transitions are closely linked to various justice issues, which are increasingly being studied in research contexts. In order to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the complexity of energy justice, including a greater consideration of emotions, this paper proposes an expanded model of energy justice that brings together existing concepts of environmental and energy justice.
Philipp Themann and Benjamin Etzold
Geogr. Helv., 78, 531–546, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-531-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-531-2023, 2023
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The article focuses on the cross-border movements of refugees at the Croatian external EU border and which infrastructures are used to enable, guide, regulate or completely prevent (im)mobility. The places presented in the article are nodes where physical, digital and social dimensions of infrastructures are intertwined in order to cope with situations of protracted displacement, social marginalization and forced immobilization.
Tino Petzold
Geogr. Helv., 78, 507–518, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-507-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-507-2023, 2023
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More comprehensive legislation and litigation indicate a new significance of law in recent years within climate change politics. In order to illuminate these issues, this article engages with the political and legal scientific debates on juridification; traces the processes of juridification of climate policies in the German context from a historical perspective; and introduces the concept of "Legal Ecologies of Climate Change Adaptation" as a novel and legally nuanced perspective.
Benno Fladvad
Geogr. Helv., 78, 493–505, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-493-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-493-2023, 2023
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This article develops a conceptual approach for energy-related environmental justice research. This
infrastructural lensis exemplarily applied to the issue of green hydrogen, drawing on brief insights from Colombia and Canada. It shows that hydrogen infrastructures can be sources of injustice but also vehicles for decolonization and Indigenous sovereignty. The conceptual research was conducted as part of a fellowship at the Research Institute for Sustainability, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam.
Andreas Eberth
Geogr. Helv., 78, 479–491, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-479-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-479-2023, 2023
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In diesem Beitrag wird der Fokus primär auf post- und dekoloniale Konturierungen epistemischer Gewalt gelegt. Dabei wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob und inwiefern Visualisierungen, die im Rahmen qualitativer empirischer Forschung entstehen, einen Beitrag leisten können, der Kritik zu begegnen und Gewaltverhältnisse zumindest zu reduzieren oder epistemische Gewaltverhältnisse weiter stützen.
Maximilian Gregor Hepach
Geogr. Helv., 78, 467–478, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-467-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-467-2023, 2023
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Carl Sauer is considered to be the founder of cultural geography. I reassess Sauer's work by considering the debates in German geography that led up to the publication of his seminal work
The Morphology of Landscape. Instead of focusing on culture, I focus on Sauer's use of phenomenology (for the first time in geography). I argue that Sauerian phenomenology provides answers for central philosophical problems of geography regarding the reality of area, region, and landscape.
Lisa Marie Borrelli
Geogr. Helv., 78, 453–465, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-453-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-453-2023, 2023
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This work takes up diverse sites of deportation and their socio-materiality. It adds to the growing literature on deportation infrastructures by emphasizing the inseparability of deportation procedures from the specific sites in which they unfold. It highlights the analytical interest and political agency of such spaces. The ethnographic data analyse the role of human and non-human actors, giving particular attention to the situatedness and relationality of deportation infrastructures.
Emilie Lavie, Pepita Ould Ahmed, Philippe Cadène, Ismail Chiab, and Vassili Kypreos
Geogr. Helv., 78, 417–428, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-417-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-417-2023, 2023
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Our research in central Tunisia shows how olive growers are implementing strategies to respond to a triple problem: a capitalist agriculture that depends on global governance, climatic changes that are observed through a decrease in rainfall at the regional scale of the Mediterranean Basin and post-revolution political changes at the local scale.
Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky, Rossella Alba, and Kristiane Fehrs
Geogr. Helv., 78, 397–409, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-397-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-397-2023, 2023
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Institutional bricolage and socio-technical tinkering are lenses that expose everyday entanglements, arrangements and processuality in governance. We combine both lenses to analyse adaptive water governance in Accra, Ghana, and Mansfeld-Südharz, Germany. We conclude that the bricolage perspective contributes to bringing multiple forms of being and knowing into engagement when envisioning adaptive water governance in the Anthropocene.
Nils Hans
Geogr. Helv., 78, 381–391, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-381-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-381-2023, 2023
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The article shows that new immigrants in arrival neighbourhoods can draw on the experience of previous immigrants, who pass on their arrival-specific knowledge. The research is part of a PhD thesis, in which the relevance of arrival infrastructures for the arrival process of immigrants is investigated. The findings of this article are based on 17 interviews with established migrants in an arrival neighbourhood in the German city of Dortmund.
Peter Eckersley, Wolfgang Haupt, Viviana Wiegleb, Jens Niewind, and Antje Otto
Geogr. Helv., 78, 369–380, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-369-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-369-2023, 2023
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Research into climate adaptation may neglect activities that are (1) not undertaken by government bodies, (2) not designed specifically to reduce the potential impact of climate threats and/or (3) not labelled explicitly as
adaptation. We present a framework to examine these under-explored initiatives and draw on two studies of municipalities and small businesses in Germany to highlight various activities that contribute to climate resilience but are largely unintentional and/or hidden.
Nihad El-Kayed and Leoni Keskinkılıc
Geogr. Helv., 78, 355–367, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-355-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-355-2023, 2023
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We analyze different kinds of local infrastructures in an established and in a rather new immigrant neighborhood in Germany and compare how they shape the arrival of refugees who have come to Germany since 2014/15. The results show that we need to understand infrastructures and the way they shape arrival in a multidimensional way that includes inclusive as well as exclusive aspects of local infrastructures, specifying for whom infrastructures work in an inclusive or exclusive way.
Olaf Kühne, Laura Leonardi, and Karsten Berr
Geogr. Helv., 78, 341–354, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-341-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-341-2023, 2023
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The struggle for life chances, especially in the context of related social conflicts, is a global phenomenon, although the concept originated in the German-speaking world. Using a case study of possible conflicts over space and landscape, the relevance of these four approaches for spatial research and human geography, as well as for dealing with space- or landscape-related conflicts, is demonstrated.
Benedikt Korf
Geogr. Helv., 78, 325–336, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-325-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-325-2023, 2023
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In this paper, I approach German Theory as a conjunctive geography: as something that could, but did not take place. I explore the reasons why there is no German Theory (yet) by tracing the Foucault reception in German language geography and the German humanities. I study why these two variants of a
German Foucaulthave not traveled to Anglophone geography. Finally, I speculate what could have happened had the German Foucault traveled to Anglophone geography.
Christiane Schürkmann
Geogr. Helv., 78, 309–323, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-309-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-309-2023, 2023
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Managing radioactive waste is a highly emotional issue. From an ethnographic perspective, the article examines how emotions and affects are voiced and represented by the actors involved in the ongoing site selection process in Germany. This opens up a field of tension in which emotions and affects are once marginalized in order to make the procedure objective. At the same time emotions and affects emerge as a resource for engagement in interaction.
Andrea Zinzani
Geogr. Helv., 78, 295–307, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-295-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-295-2023, 2023
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My paper reflects on mountain environmental futures by bringing into dialogue political ecology and mountain geographies. The Dolomites show contested environmental futures and their politicization between accumulation by sustainability ideas and radical environmental visions. Moreover, they encompass experiences and practices that envision the convivial conservation perspective and could advance the political ecology of the mountain with specific regard to the Global North.
Leonie Tuitjer
Geogr. Helv., 78, 281–290, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-281-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-281-2023, 2023
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We need to consider the emotional and bodily ways in which we connect to the ecologies of the city. This paper joins such efforts and explores the flood experiences of a diverse group of Bangkokians during the 2011 inundation. The paper attends to the interactions between social forces and material forces that shaped the flooding event and contributes nuanced insights about the embodied and emotional experiences of floods within the delta city.
Stefania Bonfiglioli
Geogr. Helv., 78, 267–280, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-267-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-267-2023, 2023
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This article aims to provide a reinterpretation of the concept of landscape and to investigate, in some respects, its possible
newrelevance. I argue that the possible
newrelevance of landscape also lies in some forgotten ethical narratives on mobility that it has inherited from its chorographic roots. The final section is dedicated to the theoretical contributions that the chorographic side of landscape can provide to some contemporary debates on mobility and to geographic ideas of ethics.
Juliane Miriam Schumacher
Geogr. Helv., 78, 255–265, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-255-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-255-2023, 2023
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New theoretical approaches like actor–network theory have become influential in human geography, questioning previous approaches to addressing human–environment relations. In this paper, I use the example of a controversial, forest-based climate protection scheme, REDD+, to show how these approaches are changing research foci and practices – from an analysis of the neoliberalization of nature to the making of markets and from the effects on human users to those on non-humans.
Anika Zorn, Susann Schäfer, and Sophie Tzschabran
Geogr. Helv., 78, 241–253, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-241-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-241-2023, 2023
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Adapting to the impacts of climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. How we perceive climate change impacts plays an important role in this. Our study shows that previous research on climate change perceptions predominantly examines affected actors and their individual behavior, neglecting perceptions of decision-makers and perceptions of the collective and institutional level of climate change. This desideratum may contribute to a lack of perspectives on adaptation policies.
Thomas Dörfler and Eberhard Rothfuß
Geogr. Helv., 78, 223–240, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-223-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-223-2023, 2023
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This contribution would like to give an introduction to the anthropologically and phenomenologically founded philosophy of corporeality, which can be connected to human geography, in order to enable a deeper understanding of our human-environment relationship. That is, because Phenomenology and Philosophical Anthropology are still marginal in human geography as a source of knowledge of spatial-social facts.
Maximilian Gregor Hepach and Friederike Hartz
Geogr. Helv., 78, 211–221, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-211-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-211-2023, 2023
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Our paper develops a theoretical framework to help one understand what is lost when changes due to climate change are irreversible. In particular, we focus on the existential aspect of such loss as opposed to, for instance, the economic aspect. We argue that phenomenological theory can help one appreciate the full existential nature of loss from climate change, namely not only the loss of objects or even land but also the loss of whole ways of relating to the world.
Mathias Siedhoff, Birgit Glorius, and Jeannine Wintzer
Geogr. Helv., 78, 199–205, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-199-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-199-2023, 2023
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The authors of this editorial call for a more consistent opening of population geography in epistemological, methodological and theoretical respects. They want to point out possibilities of connection to debates that have already found a firm place in other fields of human geography. At the same time, it is a concern to emphasize the necessity of continuously subjecting the discussion of the phenomenon of population to critical scrutiny, both within (human) geography and outside of it.
Oliver Krause
Geogr. Helv., 78, 183–197, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-183-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-183-2023, 2023
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Halford J. Mackinder's heartland theory became one of the most popular and cited geopolitical concepts in the 20th century. Through a complex process of trans- and international reception and adaption, the theory lost its attachment to its original geographical and historical parameters. Its translation from text into a simplified representation in maps accompanied the process of popularization and made the theory an instrument of legitimizing political actions in the public sphere.
Pascal Goeke
Geogr. Helv., 78, 169–182, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-169-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-169-2023, 2023
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Scientific freedom involves three aspects: Freedom as power and privilege, freedom as a right of defence, and freedom as autonomy for self-regulation. But how to decide in science when science itself has marked all scientific criteria as contingent? At this point, the article proposes to acknowledge the decision-making challenges in science, to engage in theory-theoretical dialogues and thus to preserve autonomy.
Marie-Claire Robic
Geogr. Helv., 78, 157–167, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-157-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-157-2023, 2023
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At the end of XIXth century, French authors shared a posture that mixed admiration and criticism toward German science. Reference to Ratzel was used both for structuring human geography and feeding a struggle between geographers and other social scientists. Divergences with Ratzel’s work deepened during the war and lead geographers to revisit his key notion, Raum, by giving it a pragmatic sense in the light of pangermanism and interpreting it not as mere expanse but as a process of enlargement.
Elena Hubner
Geogr. Helv., 78, 143–155, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-143-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-143-2023, 2023
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The cultural memory of Aleida and Jan Assmann has received little recognition in international geography. However, by focusing on the concerns of a geographical study of places of memory, it is possible to develop a spatially oriented conception of cultural memory spaces based on the assumption that places of memory cannot be a storage, but only an anchor for memories.
Daniel Thorpe
Geogr. Helv., 78, 105–130, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-105-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-105-2023, 2023
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Policymakers and academics primarily discuss the use of data from Earth observation (EO) satellites by developing countries, to promote development, at a theoretical level. Accordingly, based on interviews and other methods, this paper looks at practices and experiences of researchers, who use such data in southwest Nigeria, arguing that we need to develop more collaborative and appreciative perspectives on science in developing countries to address our global challenges.
Julian Rochlitz
Geogr. Helv., 78, 87–98, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-87-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-87-2023, 2023
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Drawing on qualitative research on the production and use of weather information for small-scale farmers in western Kenya in the context of a changing climate, this paper shows how navigating the uncertainties of the weather is enabled by a combination of scientific and experiential knowledge. Inspired by work in science and technology studies, I argue that these different forms of knowing should not be treated in opposition but as connected resources through which farmers relate to their world.
Ulrike Jureit
Geogr. Helv., 78, 75–85, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-75-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-75-2023, 2023
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This article analyses the transformation of geographic, international legal and racial-biological relations within large-scale theories. The change in discourse implies the question of the extent to which geographical knowledge was relevant for the Nazi extermination policy; at the same time, the focus is on the shift from a description of human communities based on natural laws to an action-based programme of racial-biological homogenization.
Nicolas Ginsburger
Geogr. Helv., 78, 65–74, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-65-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-65-2023, 2023
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The French geographers of the inter-war period considered the figure of Ratzel with admiration and criticism and tried to go beyond his work, and even to use it against his heirs, in particular the supporters of Geopolitik. Throughout the crises and world wars that gave him a persistent relevance, his image oscillated between that of a precursor scholar and a
bad teacherof geography, largely responsible for Germany's excesses and territorial ambitions.
Ulrike Jureit and Patricia Chiantera-Stutte
Geogr. Helv., 78, 59–63, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-59-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-59-2023, 2023
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The text explains the main topics and conceptual arguments of the theme issue on the diverse reception of Ratzel's spatial theories in Italy, France, Germany and the USA. The focus is both on the different national academic traditions and on an interdisciplinary approach. The work and impact of Friedrich Ratzel between 1880 and 1945 are examined in the perspective of a history of transformation based on the history of knowledge.
Matteo Proto
Geogr. Helv., 78, 41–52, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-41-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-41-2023, 2023
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The paper examines the contribution of Italian academic geography to the processes of nation-building between ca. 1880–1920, especially in defining the national space and its boundaries. Italian geographers were particularly influenced by new approaches introduced by German scholars such as Friedrich Ratzel. Scientific theories and representations proved highly significant in influencing the political debate.
Lilith Kuhn
Geogr. Helv., 78, 15–27, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-15-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-15-2023, 2023
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This article examines a collaborative theatre project on the climate crisis from an autoethnographic perspective. The collaboration of scientists and artists created affective atmospheres that opened up spaces for reflection on scientific practice in the context of posthumanist theories: To what extend do we perceive our material environment as powerful? How are bodies and affects entangled in knowledge production? In what ways we still reproduce dualisms and fixed identities?
Philip Boos and Gesa Jessen
Geogr. Helv., 78, 1–13, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-1-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-1-2023, 2023
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Wir untersuchen wie BürgerInneninitiativen im Kontext emotionalisierter Umweltwahrnehmungen Rhetoriken von Nähe nutzen, um sichere Fahrradinfrastruktur einzufordern. Wir zeigen durch Bild- und Sprachanalysen wie Anliegen von Sicherheit und Lebensqualität in einer Sprache der Nähe artikuliert werden. Nahes wird so zum Eigenen und Selbstbestimmten. Diese Raumaneignungen markieren Fahrraddemonstrationen als relevante Protestform, die Emotionen transformieren und Umweltwahrnehmungen intensivieren.
Nicola Bassoni
Geogr. Helv., 77, 547–558, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-547-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-547-2022, 2022
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The paper explores the reception and re-elaboration of Friedrich Ratzel's political geography in Italy from the beginning of the 20th century to the Second World War, by focusing on the concept of
spazio vitale(living space) and its use by fascist intellectuals and propagandists, who promoted expansionism and the trilateral collaboration with Germany and Japan.
Stephan Bosch and Dominik Kienmoser
Geogr. Helv., 77, 523–546, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-523-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-523-2022, 2022
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We modelled potential regional energy landscapes that can be derived from the two-degree target and visualised them based on Geographical Information Systems by using five scenarios involving changes to the planning guidelines. The analyses reveal that the development of a carbon-neutral energy system is possible. Yet the potential spatial patterns of renewable energies differ considerably.
Helmut J. Geist
Geogr. Helv., 77, 511–522, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-511-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-511-2022, 2022
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Political ecology emerged half a century ago and was introduced in German speaking countries twenty years later. The article evaluates perspectives (views, arguments, positions) of the first generation of research and compares them with second generation research. It is argued that old and new approaches are to be blamed for their ambivalence towards policy. With a focus on emancipatory perspectives, a repositioning is suggested on radical geography roots.
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