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This paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka’s dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme (‘System L’ of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through a detailed ethnographic study of the life histories of settlers who came in two waves to this scheme (1980s and post-2009), we show the workings of what we call the ‘lure of land’: first, as the (al)lure that attracts landless families to live out the mythical dream of becoming a paddy farmer; second, this lure of land is intimately tied to a nationalist territorial aspiration that transforms the settler into a patriotic colonizer of the land: due to its strategic location in the frontier zone between Sinhalese and Tamil inhabited territories, settlers became ‘home guards’ who live on and protect the frontier. But the lure of land is not without contradictions: Life in the frontier is dangerous (for the early settlers) and economically precarious (for the early and late settlers), because the state is unable to deliver the promise of land and water. Government officials deploy various tactics of repeatedly deferred promises and subtle threats to discourage settlers to abandon the colonization scheme despite the settlers’ precarious life conditions, disappointments, and frustrations. A ‘cunning state’ thereby betrays its own ‘frontiersmen’, while safeguarding its nationalist territorial agenda.

„German Theory“ is a theory that has not yet been written, but could have been. „Theory“ is here understood as a “territory of thought” that transcends the boundaries of its origins, and travels to other sites. „French Theory“, for example, is the label for the travel of French poststructuralism to Anglophone humanities. In this sense, „German Theory“ does not exist (yet), but as this paper will argue, it exists as a potentiality that has not (yet) actualized. To show this potential, this paper turns to the work of Friedrich A. Kittler. To illustrate why Kittler did not become a cornerstone of „German Theory“, and to discuss how it could have been, this paper proceeds in two steps: first, it traces the recent history of the reception of Foucault in German language geography and the humanities. This analysis shows that Kittler and German language geography morphed Foucault's discourse theory into two distinct thought styles – the „discourse school“ in German language geography into a „textual“ one; Kittler into a „materialist“ one. This incompatibility of thought styles, this paper asserts, obstructed the travel of Kittler to Anglophone geography, although Kittler's notion of „materiality of communication“ resonates with the „material turn“ in Anglophone geography. Nor did the Foucault of the „discourse school“ travel to Anglophone geography. Kittler's „German Foucault“ travelled to Anglophone media studies as „German School“, though. In the last part of the paper, I ask the question how Kittler's „German Foucault“ could have travelled to (anglophone) geography and what could have been gained theoretically through this travel.

Has development critique run out of steam? While a certain impasse can be noted between post-development theorists and development ethnographers, this article suggests to re-start the steam engine of development critique by attending to the “irony of development”, i.e. ironic predicaments that explain the sustenance of the development industry despite its persistent failures to live up to its aspirations. How one reads this “irony of successful failure” amounts to a question of how to practise critique, what position the critic takes and what ironic stances the critic intones. While post-development operates an external critique, development ethnographers practise an internal one. I propose to transform the latter into an immanent critique, which identifies “moral excess” as the constitutive function of the ironic predicaments inside the global development apparatus.

Gewalt verschwindet nicht, auch nicht in der modernen Gesellschaft. Jede politische Ordnung, die Gewalt reguliert, übt selbst Gewalt aus. Dies ist die dialektische Beziehung zwischen Gewalt und Ordnung. Neben der direkten, physischen Gewalt gibt es „leisere“ Formen struktureller und kultureller Gewalt, die Ungleichheit und soziale Ausgrenzung betreiben. Direkte physische Gewalt ist besonders sichtbar in fragilen Staaten und in Formen exzessiver Staatsgewalt; im ersten Fall erscheint Gewalt als unreguliert, im zweiten als überorganisiert. Transformative geographische Bildung setzt an allen Formen und Räumen der Gewalt an, indem sie deren Allgegenwärtigkeit, Legitimität und Totalität infrage stellt.

Wissenschaftliche Kritik verschont sich zunehmend selbst. Sie produziert gerne vorschnelle Generalisierungen und wohlfeile Bewertungen. Reflexionsverweigerung fördert dabei Konformismus und Halbbildung. Diese Schonstellungen ersparen der Kritik die mühselige Arbeit der Selbstkritik – Zwischentöne, Ambivalenzen und Widersprüche werden ausgeblendet. Benedikt Korf analysiert differenziert die sich daraus entwickelnden Schwierigkeiten. Am Beispiel der kritischen Geographie verdeutlicht er die oftmals hegemoniale Stellung des Begriffs »kritisch« in den Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften.

In this editorial, we sketch the intellectual agenda for a themed issue on German Theory. We understand German Theory as a creative and dialogical space to engage a multitude of thought styles, common in the Geisteswissenschaften and to bring them into conversations with anglophone, as much as francophone, lusophone, Italian, Spanish and other forms of Theory. This agenda promotes a ‚provincialization‘ of anglophone Geography that is connecting these thought styles rather than confining them to bounded provinces in debate. „German Theory“, thus understood, is ultimately an entangled theory.

Wissenschaftliche Kritik verschont sich zunehmend selbst. Sie produziert gerne vorschnelle Generalisierungen und wohlfeile Bewertungen. Reflexionsverweigerung fördert dabei Konformismus und Halbbildung. Diese Schonstellungen ersparen der Kritik die mühselige Arbeit der Selbstkritik – Zwischentöne, Ambivalenzen und Widersprüche werden ausgeblendet. Benedikt Korf analysiert differenziert die sich daraus entwickelnden Schwierigkeiten. Am Beispiel der kritischen Geographie verdeutlicht er die oftmals hegemoniale Stellung des Begriffs »kritisch« in den Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften.

In this editorial, we introduce the special section on the politics of memory of „Kiel 1969“, the famous German geographers' conference, during which, as the myth narrates, a revolution took place within the discipline of German-language geography. By introducing and contextualizing the three individual statements by Julia Verne, Ulf Strohmayer and Peter Weichhart, who all recount their entanglements with the myth of „Kiel 1969“, we invite the reader to reflect upon the dynamics through which „events“ turn into „myths“ that shape individual careers and strategic struggles within the discipline.

In early summer 1980, radical geography students rallied around the slogan „Geografe nüme schlafe!“ („Geographers, stop sleeping!“) to take part in the radical youth movement that shook the city of Zurichat that time. In turn, these activist students brought these struggles back into the university and the geography department, where they confronted the professorate with their demands for a new curriculum. This paper argues that the antagonistic Stimmung, in which these struggles took place, produced a radical „thought style“ that flourished in a specific constellation of „thought events“: a prominent theory seminar in 1980, the AK WissKri, a network of radical geography students, the „Geoscope“ journal and, finally, a number of diploma theses on feminist, urban and historical geography. In these thought events, a radical geography materialized outside and beyond the mainstream of German language geography. Building on archival material and narrative interviews, this paper documents these student initiatives for a radical geography, and illustrates the precarious conditions of possibility of radical geography, in Zurich, and beyond.

In this paper, I propose the notion of ‘German Theory’ to allude to the processes of translation and circulation of theoretical ideas discussed in the German humanities and German geography across and beyond the linguistic boundaries of its origin. However, these ideas did not travel, at least not to Anglophone geography. This paper investigates why not, and it maps out the lost theoretical potential that has been foregone as a result. ‘German Theory’ is thus read here as a potentiality that has not actualised. More specifically, this paper studies the reception of Foucault, as it emerged in two distinct territories of thought, each with their own interpretation: first, Kittler’s work on the materiality of discourse in German humanities, and second, the ‘discourse school’ in German geography. The latter’s insistence on the textuality of discourse disconnected their Foucault reception not only from Kittler’s, but equally so from ongoing debates in Anglophone geography. By reflecting on why the ‘German Foucault’ did not travel to Anglophone geography, I raise a speculative epistemological question about the im/potentiality of ‘German Theory’: could a more cosmopolitan theory have emerged from a circulation of these ideas had they travelled across linguistic boundaries?

This paper seeks to understand the conditions of possibility of “sanctuary” – the claiming of a “sacred” space of (humanitarian) exception - in the midst of civil war. Sanctuary codifies an exceptional space where sovereign and pastoral registers of power converge into a form of “pastoral sovereignty” that can temporarily “interrupt” the law of violence of sovereign power. In civil war this can enable civilians to be saved and protected from killings and suffering. However, this pastoral sovereignty is precarious as it depends on the belligerents' good will and tacit authorization: this is what we call the predicament of pastoral sovereignty. Using the case study of Church sanctuary in Sri Lanka's civil war, this paper explores how this predicament of pastoral sovereignty comes into effect in moments of acute crisis. Throughout Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, Catholic priests provided “sanctuary” to Tamil civilians in the form of territorial sanctuary (Church compounds), bodily sanctuary (the priests' bodies providing protection), and numerous other humanitarian activities. Our ethnographic material illustrates the force and fragility of the Church's claims to pastoral sovereignty and its sanctuary practices and provides detailed accounts of numerous constellations. The paper thereby raises fundamental questions about the ontology of sovereignty and its operability in moments of humanitarian crisis.

Dieser Beitrag setzt sich kritisch mit der Kritik linker Theoretiker (v. a. Giorgio Agamben, Byung-Chul Han) an den politischen Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Pandemie auseinander, die in der Pandemie nur noch das Wirken einer dystopischen Biopolitik erkennen können. Ich zeige auf, wie in diesen Formen der Kritik ein Jargon der Eigentlichkeit („Ausnahmezustand“) zum Tragen kommt, der die eigene Theoriesprache bestätigt, ohne sich von empirischen Eigenheiten der Pandemie erschüttern zu lassen. Gegen diese „unkritische“ Kritik plädiere ich für mehr Nachdenklichkeit.

This paper takes Foucault's and Sloterdijk's reception of the Greek cynics as an intellectual resource to critically examine critical geography's moralizing high ground. I analyse how, in 1983, Foucault and Sloterdijk paint the cynical impulse as a political practice of provocative truth-telling against the moral high-grounds of the dogmatic left of the 1970s: For Foucault and Sloterdijk, the cynics are anti-dogmatic, anti-theoretical and anti-scholastic. I will argue, however, that the cynical impulse is itself in danger of speaking from the moral high ground of anti-critique, a disposition that needs the anti-dote of skepticism.

Starting from the presupposition that areas of limited statehood (ALS) are not ungoverned, but ‘differently’ governed, this chapter proposes a spatial grammar that analyses authority and governance as a socio-spatial relationship. This spatial grammar distinguishes four types of dynamic socio-spatial relations—territory, place, scale, and network—and enables us to spatially analyse (a) how political authority is contested, claimed, upheld, and disrupted; (b) how political life is negotiated, regulated, and practised; and (c) how these practices and their effects are spatially situated. We apply this spatial grammar to four case studies, each providing insight into one type of socio-spatial relations. These cases from Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), explain how the negotiation, contestation, and disruption of political authority is spatially situated and embedded in ALS. A spatial grammar focuses on the shifting, overlapping, and contradictory practices of claiming political and regulatory power.

Dieser Beitrag entwickelt eine immanente Kritik an der Arbeit des globalen Entwicklungsapparates, die dessen grundlegende Krisenhaftigkeit analytisch im Begriff der ,,Ironie der Entwicklung" erfasst – als dialektische Widersprüchlichkeit zwischen Moralüberschuss (Absichten) und Scheitern (Handlungsfolgen). Diese Ironie zeigt sich in einer manipulativen Vernunft (Musto), andere auch gegen ihren Willen glücklich zu machen, die in der Form einer Gabenökonomie global institutionalisiert ist. Diese ,,systemische" Ironie kann unterschiedlich gelesen werden: die externe Kritik einer distanzierenden ironischen Haltung, wie sie der Dekonstruktivismus des post-development pflegt, kann darin nur die ,,Bösartigkeit" des Entwicklungsapparates erkennen. Eine immanente Kritik ,,ohne Besserwisserei" (Jaeggi) macht eine empathische ironische Haltung der Kritikerin gegenüber dem Entwicklungsapparat erforderlich und sucht eher eine produktive hermeneutische Spannung zwischen Kritik und moralischem Engagement.

In these afterthoughts to a themed issue on the Geographies of Post-Secularity, I critically interrogate the analytical purchase of the terminology of post-secularism. I suggest that the concept of the post-secular is ill-suited to provide a vocabulary for multi-religious societies in the West as much as elsewhere. Instead, I suggest that the vocabulary of a descriptive political theology (Assmann) better helps us grasp the continuing negotiation of the dialectic relations between the secular and the religious. I illustrate this conceptual vocabulary for the study of religion and politics in the postcolonial world, first, in the political-normative debates on Indian secularism, and second, in the everyday struggles of religious actors in the violent politics of Sri Lanka's civil war, to then return to debates on (post-) secularity. I conclude that, indeed, we have never been secular – that the dialectic relations between the secular and the religious are bound to remain, and to become further complicated in increasingly multi-religious societies.

A critical geography of war encompasses a careful analysis of war and its relation to peace, to politics, to society, and to capitalism. It discusses how and to what extent late-modern war has changed its patterns compared to previous eras of warfare (the “new” wars debate). What seems to characterize many late-modern wars – and unsettles the observers of these wars – is the intricate entanglement of archaic, modern, and futurist objects, technologies, and subjectivities that characterize these wars: a variety of war technologies, fighting practices, and warrior subjectivities, which are attributed to different historical epochs, are coming together in present-day warscapes. This phenomenon is conceptualized as synchronicity of the nonsynchronous in late-modern warfare.

A critical geography of war encompasses a careful analysis of war and its relation to peace, to politics, to society, and to capitalism. It discusses how and to what extent late-modern war has changed its patterns compared to previous eras of warfare (the “new” wars debate). What seems to characterize many late-modern wars – and unsettles the observers of these wars – is the intricate entanglement of archaic, modern, and futurist objects, technologies, and subjectivities that characterize these wars: a variety of war technologies, fighting practices, and warrior subjectivities, which are attributed to different historical epochs, are coming together in present-day warscapes. This phenomenon is conceptualized as synchronicity of the nonsynchronous in late-modern warfare.

Global environmental change and biodiversity loss are closely linked through different feedback mechanisms. The University of Zurich Research Priority Programme on ‘Global Change and Biodiversity’ approach is to work with interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity to integrate mechanisms of interactions, feedback and scale and improve our understanding of the feedbacks between global change and biodiversity effects. Such work across research disciplines is not without its challenges. Here we share some of the questions that arose from our research approach over the last five years and how we addressed these challenges. First, our transdisciplinary approach allows combining different disciplines into a more holistic perspective towards integrative research, but demands collaborative work to establish common terminology, concepts, and metrics. Second, the research theme's common perspective (biodiversity is desirable, global change is not) may also induce a confirmation bias from preconceived ideas. Third, new challenges emerge from scaling mechanisms and feedbacks at different spatial and temporal scales. Fourth, we investigate how to relate biodiversity, global change, ecosystem services and functions using interdisciplinary approaches. Fifth, we identify gaps between existing experiments and data requirements, and propose the definition of new experimental setups by linking processes and performing experiments at typical experimental scales as well as at larger scales. We conclude by emphasising the necessity to integrate theory, experiments, modelling and simulation, high performance computing and big data to understand feedbacks between biodiversity loss and processes of global change.

This editorial provides the intellectual background for a themed issue that argues for a (re)consideration of human geography as a “Geisteswissenschaft”. Engaging with the question of how a geography anchored in the arts and humantities might look like today, it tries to unsettle the kind of “theory-driven”, post-structuralist research that has come to dominate human geography following the “cultural turn”. In proposing a more thorough engagement with the potential of intrepretative, hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches, we conceptualize a “geisteswissenschaftliche” human geography as a much-needed irritation of the social scientific mainstream.

This paper traces the re-spacing of pastoral drylands in Africa. We argue that rendering pastoral resources legible and profitable occurs both within and beyond the state. Through a multi-sited case study from Ethiopia's Somali region, we excavate different mechanisms of sedentarization, whereby processes of state territorialization and indigenous commodification become mutually entangled. Sedentarization is not imposed by the state or corporate capital, but by indigenous merchants who capture the frontier's potential resource dividend. Land appropriation in the drylands is co-produced by political claims to territory, capital investment and new technopolitics through which indigenous (pastoral, Somali) merchants and politicians become complicit with the state's project of territorialization and sedentarization in a self-governing fashion. The irony of this situation is that the (Ethiopian) state has failed to consolidate sedentarization through planned interventions. Instead, capital investment by local and transnational Somali merchants has opened up a neoliberal frontier that re-spaces drylands towards increasing sedentarization., This paper traces the re-spacing of pastoral drylands in Africa. We argue that rendering pastoral resources legible and profitable occurs both within and beyond the state. Through a multi-sited case study from Ethiopia's Somali region, we excavate different mechanisms of sedentarization, whereby processes of state territorialization and indigenous commodification become mutually entangled. Sedentarization is not imposed by the state or corporate capital, but by indigenous merchants who capture the frontier's potential resource dividend. Land appropriation in the drylands is co-produced by political claims to territory, capital investment and new technopolitics through which indigenous (pastoral, Somali) merchants and politicians become complicit with the state's project of territorialization and sedentarization in a self-governing fashion. The irony of this situation is that the (Ethiopian) state has failed to consolidate sedentarization through planned interventions. Instead, capital investment by local and transnational Somali merchants has opened up a neoliberal frontier that re-spaces drylands towards increasing sedentarization.

Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque is based on fieldwork in Sri Lanka’s most religiously diverse and politically troubled region in the closing years of the civil war. It provides a series of new and provocative arguments about the promise of a religiously based civil society, and the strengths and weaknesses of religious organisations and religious leaders in conflict mediation. It argues that for people trapped in long and violent conflicts, religion plays a contradictory role, often acting as a comforting and stabilising force but also, in certain situations, acting as a source of new conflict. Additionally, war itself can lead to profound changes in religious institutions: Catholic priests engage with Buddhist monks and new Muslim leaders, while Hindu temples and Pentecostal churches offer the promise of healing. This book will provoke new debate about the role of religious organisations and leaders in situations of extreme conflict and will be of great interest to students of anthropology, development studies, religious studies and peace/conflict studies.

Klimakriege sind die Kriege der Zukunft. Klimawandel macht die Erde heißer und trockener, dadurch steigt der Druck auf die Ressourcen in den „Trockenräumen“ der Erde. Dies gefährdet die Nahrungsmittelproduktion. Und wo Ressourcen und Nahrungsmittel knapp sind, steigt die Gefahr gewalttätiger Konflikte. Der Wissenschaftliche Beirat der deutschen Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU) schreibt in seinem Bericht Klima als Sicherheitsrisiko (WBGU 2007: 2): „Klimawandel verstärkt Mechanismen, die zu Unsicherheit und Gewalt führen.“ Und für den regionalen Brennpunkt „Sahelzone“ präzisiert er: „Klimawandel verursacht zusätzlichen Umweltstress und Gesellschaftskrisen in einer heute durch schwache Staaten, Bürgerkriege und große Flüchtlingsströme charakterisierten Region“ (WBGU 2007: 3).

Klimakriege sind die Kriege der Zukunft. Klimawandel macht die Erde heißer und trockener, dadurch steigt der Druck auf die Ressourcen in den „Trockenräumen“ der Erde. Dies gefährdet die Nahrungsmittelproduktion. Und wo Ressourcen und Nahrungsmittel knapp sind, steigt die Gefahr gewalttätiger Konflikte. Der Wissenschaftliche Beirat der deutschen Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU) schreibt in seinem Bericht Klima als Sicherheitsrisiko (WBGU 2007: 2): „Klimawandel verstärkt Mechanismen, die zu Unsicherheit und Gewalt führen.“ Und für den regionalen Brennpunkt „Sahelzone“ präzisiert er: „Klimawandel verursacht zusätzlichen Umweltstress und Gesellschaftskrisen in einer heute durch schwache Staaten, Bürgerkriege und große Flüchtlingsströme charakterisierten Region“ (WBGU 2007: 3).

Seit einiger Zeit taucht der Begriff von „Neuen Kriegen“ in den Medien auf, etwa in Zusammenhang mit Bürgerkriegen in Somalia, im Kongo, in Afghanistan oder in Westafrika. Diese „Neuen Kriege“ seien geprägt vom Zusammenbruch sozialer Ordnung. Die geographische Konfliktforschung zeigt jedoch, dass sich auch in Räumen kriegerischer Auseinandersetzungen soziale Ordnungen im alltäglichen Leben im und mit dem Bürgerkrieg ausbilden, wenngleich sie räumlich und zeitlich fragil sind, da sie stetig neu ausgehandelt werden müssen. Diese Strukturen sozialer Ordnung(en) in gewaltoffenen Räumen werden hier als „Geographie der Gewalt“ bezeichnet.