Articles | Volume 80, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-135-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-135-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Intervention
| 
15 May 2025
Intervention |
| 15 May 2025
| 15 May 2025
Groundwater urgencies: what can geography offer?
Fanny Frick-Trzebitzky
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Research Unit Water and Land Use, Institute for Social-Ecological Research, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Robert Luetkemeier
Research Unit Water and Land Use, Institute for Social-Ecological Research, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt, Altenhöferallee 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Iordanka Guenova Dountcheva-Robles
Hydrogeology Group, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 02006, Albacete, Spain
David Sanz
Hydrogeology Group, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 02006, Albacete, Spain
Dženeta Hodžić
Research Unit Water and Land Use, Institute for Social-Ecological Research, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, Goethe University Frankfurt, 60323 Frankfurt, Germany
David Kuhn
Research Unit Water and Land Use, Institute for Social-Ecological Research, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Amit Kumar Srivastwa
School of Human Ecology, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi, Lothian Road, Delhi, 110006, India
Christina Walter
Institute of Geography, University of Augsburg, 86159 Augsburg, Germany
Linda Söller
Research Unit Water and Land Use, Institute for Social-Ecological Research, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt, Altenhöferallee 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Jakob Kramer
Professur für Forst- und Umweltpolitik, University of Freiburg, 79106 Freiburg, Germany
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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.
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.
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Geogr. Helv., 77, 459–466, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-459-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-77-459-2022, 2022
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In (Anthropo-)Geography, especially in the Anthropocene, the question of what constitutes the human is of utmost interest. In the process, this
humanis often strangely assumed to be self-evident, almost (self-)explanatory. In the sense of a German Theory, we want to encourage to pose these question on the human anew with Helmuth Plessner and to point out new possible answers. Otherwise these questions are in danger of withering away into a
Minimal Anthropology.
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The open society and its life chances – from Karl Popper via Ralf Dahrendorf to a human geography of options and ligatures
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Devran Koray Öcal
Geogr. Helv., 80, 123–134, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-123-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-123-2025, 2025
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This paper addresses the methodological complexities of researching state violence, focusing on the accounts of security bureaucracy in Türkiye. It delves into the challenges of obtaining state permission, navigating discussions on state violence, and addressing self-reflective ethical and embodied questions. The goal is to contribute to scholarly discourse on methodological approaches to challenging geographies and provide guidelines for researchers studying geographies of violence.
Rosa Felicitas Philipp
Geogr. Helv., 80, 109–122, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-109-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-109-2025, 2025
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Using the example of resistance to a mega-project in southern Mexico, this paper explores the emotional connections between bodies and land. The mega-project in question is the Interoceanic Corridor, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, leading to significant territorial reorganisation. Based on interviews with women who identify as defenders of territorio, I investigate how the women use their emotional link strategically in their practices of resistance.
Matthias Naumann, Sören Becker, and Antje Bruns
Geogr. Helv., 80, 99–107, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-99-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-99-2025, 2025
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This introduction presents the fields of peripheries, conflicts and transformations as core topics of critical energy geographies. These fields point to different ways how the provision of energy is interwoven with social inequalities and uneven spatial development. Tackling the relations between energy technology and social power, the contributions to this Theme Issue highlight how power and resistance unfold in different spatial contexts and are linked to various notions of justice.
Elisa Kornherr
Geogr. Helv., 80, 81–94, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-81-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-81-2025, 2025
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Empirical research on pet cemeteries demonstrates that ambivalent attributions to pets as social partners, material objects, and abject cadavers shape the place and related practices. Situated within the frameworks of more-than-human geographies and animal geographies, the article argues (1) that analysing the multidimensional status of dead animals provides a productive lens for understanding human-animal relations and illustrates (2) how loss processing can be read in a more-than-human way.
Ola Söderström, Tania Zittoun, Fabienne Gfeller, Aurora Ruggeri, and Isabelle Kloepper
Geogr. Helv., 80, 67–79, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-67-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-67-2025, 2025
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This article contributes to studies on and interventions in the quality of old persons' everyday environments. First, it draws on work in geography and psychology to develop an innovative theoretical and methodological framework for interventions aiming to improve the quality of this environment. Second, it shows, step by step, how this framework was used in the context of a project in Switzerland targeting the prevention of old people's social isolation.
Zoya Masoud
Geogr. Helv., 80, 57–65, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-57-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-57-2025, 2025
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The loss was commonplace in Aleppo during the recent war. This paper explores how various groups at the front lines in East Aleppo sought to preserve heritage to reconstruct it after the war. I argue that these individuals were exposed to existential fear. Their efforts to localize grief and loss imagined the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the old city of Aleppo as an eternal object that preceded their human life span. In exile, their attitudes diverted toward this legacy.
Katharina Schmidt and Iris Veronica Restrepo Lopez
Geogr. Helv., 80, 39–55, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-39-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-39-2025, 2025
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Using memes, maps, and audio collages, we discuss the politics of giving and its impact on urban development in the city of Heilbronn. Focusing on the activities of one powerful philanthropist, the perspectives of local residents reveal ambivalent interpretations of recent urban developments. While acknowledging the new opportunities and dynamics offered by philanthropy, they also raise concerns about its effects on local democratic decision-making processes and unequal urban power relations.
Hanna Hilbrandt and Julie Ren
Geogr. Helv., 80, 23–29, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-23-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-80-23-2025, 2025
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The forum
Urban geography in times of crisisdiscusses the transformation of urban geography in the entanglement of epistemological and worldly crises. In our introductory reflections, we highlight some of its contributions' crosscutting insights, weave a common thread through this dialogue, and discuss obstacles to as well as critical resources necessary when rethinking and possibly changing practices of knowledge production.
Lea Bauer and Sarah Ruth Sippel
Geogr. Helv., 79, 373–389, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-373-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-373-2024, 2024
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Drawing on auto-ethnographically documented experimental visualization practices and in conversation with critical cartography and the debates on diagrammatic reasoning in the arts, this paper argues that visualization should be considered more systematically as a method that bears self-reflexive and epistemic potential within qualitative research processes.
Hendrik Sander
Geogr. Helv., 79, 357–371, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-357-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-357-2024, 2024
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In the struggles on the decarbonization of the mainly fossil-based heat supply in German cities competing actors and corporations try to achieve their strategies. Especially in Berlin these debates are fierce. Those disputes crystallize in the question whether the corporate gas-based infrastructure will be adjusted by means of green gases resp. hydrogen or whether it will be transformed to a new system based on renewable energies resp. heatpumps.
Carlotta Reh and Sara Landolt
Geogr. Helv., 79, 343–356, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-343-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-343-2024, 2024
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Focusing on Gymnasia, Zurich's selective public secondary schools, this article analyzes how Gymnasium staff and education policies address students and how students perceive the Gymnasia. Students learn to see Gymnasia as stellar schools for hard-working and intelligent students who earned their privileges and coproduce and legitimize their privileged status by drawing on their merit. These processes contribute to a hierarchization of Zurich's schooling landscape.
Nora Mariella Küttel
Geogr. Helv., 79, 325–339, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-325-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-325-2024, 2024
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This article explores people's narratives about changing shipyard work in East Germany since 1989. The shipyard serves as a central place where loss, emotions and memory condense. Using oral history interviews with former workers, it delves into their experiences and emotions about (the fear of) losing their jobs. This sheds light on how transformations affect people emotionally, highlighting oral history's role in capturing personal experiences in geographic research.
Boris Michel and Finn Dammann
Geogr. Helv., 79, 311–323, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-311-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-311-2024, 2024
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Critical geographers in recent years became interested incidents of failure, disruption and glitches in digital technologies. While we sympathize with the basic assumptions of this discussion this paper proposes an opposing perspective. Using the example of Internet infrastructures, we focus on the work of preventing glitches and maintanance. We are particularly interested in the production of resilience the rationalities of redundancy and addressing latency.
Jeroen Royer and Tim Leibert
Geogr. Helv., 79, 221–237, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-221-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-221-2024, 2024
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The terms
left behind, Abgehängte (suspended), and
structurally weakhave gained popularity to describe regions with increased support for right-wing populist parties in Germany and elsewhere. These concepts are not clearly defined. We give meaning to
left behind placesin Germany both by identifying the dimensions and varieties of
left-behindnessand by framing it as an outcome of peripheralisation processes.
Lotte J. Hiller
Geogr. Helv., 79, 205–220, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-205-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-79-205-2024, 2024
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This article explores how LGBT organizations in Germany create safer spaces for queer asylum seekers and refugees. With the help of interviews with experts and an analysis of their websites, different constructions of space are identified. Although the organizations use different concepts of safer spaces, they mainly fall back on essentialist notions of space. The assumption of an essentialist safer space bears the risk of oversimplification, which does not meet the needs of the target group.
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.
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Huggins, X., Gleeson, T., Villholth, K., Rocha, J., and Famiglietti, J.: Groundwaterscapes: A global classification and mapping of groundwater's large-scale socioeconomic, ecological, and Earth system functions, Water Resour. Res., 60, e2023WR036287, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR036287, 2024.
Hummel, D., Jahn, T., Kramm, J., and Stieß, I.: Gesellschaftliche Naturverhältnisse – Grundbegriff und Denkraum für die Gestaltung von sozial-ökologischen Transformationen, in: Handbuch Umweltsoziologie, edited by: Sonnberger, M., Bleicher, A., and Groß, M., Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, 1–15, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37222-4_1-1, 2023.
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Kanesu, R. and Bruns, A.: Durchlässige Grenzen im Anthropozän, Über multiple Grenzverschiebungen und Wasser als räumliches, zeitliches und ontologisches Grenzobjekt, in: B/ordering the Anthropocene: Inter- and Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Nature-Culture Relations, edited by: Bruns, A. and Kanesu, R., UniGR-CBS Thematic Issue, 5, UniGR-Center for Border Studies, 24–41, 2020.
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Krueger, T. and Alba, R.: Ontological and epistemological commitments in interdisciplinary water research: Uncertainty as an entry point for reflexion, Front. Water, 4, 1038322, https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.1038322, 2022.
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Lazurko, A., Schweizer, V., Pintér, L., and Ferguson, D.: Boundaries of the future: A framework for reflexive scenario practice in sustainability science, One Earth, 6, 1703–1725, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.10.027, 2023.
Linton, J. and Budds, J.: The hydrosocial cycle: Defining and mobilizing a relational-dialectical approach to water, Geoforum, 57, 170–180, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.10.008, 2014.
Linton, J. and Krueger, T.: The Ontological Fallacy of the Water Framework Directive: Implications and Alternatives, Water Altern., 3, 513–533, 2020.
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Luetkemeier, R., Frick-Trzebitzky, F., Hodžić, D., Jäger, A., Kuhn, D., and Söller, L.: Telecoupled Groundwaters: New Ways to Investigate Increasingly De-Localized Resources, Water, 13, 2906, https://doi.org/10.3390/w13202906, 2021.
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Melo Zurita, M. d. L. and Munro, P. G.: Voluminous territorialisation: Historical contestations over the Yucatan Peninsula's subterranean waterscape, Geoforum, 102, 38–47, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.03.019, 2019.
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Short summary
Groundwater is key to the survival of people and ecosystems. Due to global change impacts, conflicts around groundwater thrive and knowledge gaps exist. In the assessment of five case studies we find that groundwater research is in tension between the rapid production of knowledge to solve existential crises and the slow production of knowledge to challenge injustices. Geographic research that combines different perspectives can play an important role in addressing this tension.
Groundwater is key to the survival of people and ecosystems. Due to global change impacts,...
