Martin Spies
Biographic Data
| ID | 117106 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin Spies |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin |
| FAMILY NAME | Spies |
| SIGNATURE | SPIES M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4009-0544 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The making and unmaking of the Bacillus thuringiensis cotton assemblage in South Punjab, Pakistan
Agricultural biotechnology, including genetically modified (GM) crop varieties, is being increasingly adopted in the Global South. Academic discussions on GM crops tend to be polarised, but increasing attention is being paid to local social and ecological dynamics. Adding to this scholarship, we investigate the little-researched case of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton in South Punjab, Pakistan, employing assemblage thinking to examine how comp…
Local seed systems and Global China: The spread of Chinese hybrid seeds in Pakistan and Tajikistan
Characterising cropland fragmentation in post-Soviet Central Asia, using Landsat remote-sensing time series data
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, agricultural reforms in Central Asia often translated into the fragmentation of large fields into smaller shares. Most remote-sensing-based land use classification approaches are categorical in nature, and thus they are unable to capture these changes. We have developed an approach to detecting the timing of land fragmentation based on textural information from a time series of Landsat images for fou…
Path Dependencies of (Un-)sustainable Land Use in Central Asia
Across Central Asia, agricultural and agroforestry practices have been shaped by a high-modernist approach since about the 1950s, with the aim of overcoming ecological limitations. Negative repercussions of this approach still affect local developments, but a shift towards resource-conserving production systems faces constraints—many of which relate to so-called ‘path dependencies’, i.e. historically-evolved institutions constraining the current …
Is there a future for smallholder farmers in bioeconomy? The case of ‘improved’ seeds in South Punjab, Pakistan
Smallholder farmers are key players in agrarian value chains, particularly in the Global South. In the planning of technology-oriented agricultural interventions featured prominently in bioeconomy policies they are however often neglected. As global demand for food and biomass is expected to rise, production increase through (bio)technological means is framed as a necessity. Yet its ecological and social sustainability has been debated. We add to…
Coexistence or competition for resources? Transboundary transformations of natural resource use in China’s neighborhood
Over the past three decades, rural places along China's land borders have faced interconnected processes of sociopolitical, economic, and ecological change.These changes, along with an increase in transboundary investment by actors from China in infrastructure on the one hand, and in agriculture and resource extraction on the other, are locally met with a combination of suspicion, fear, and desire for future prosperity.This special issue scrutini…
Pfadabhängigkeiten in der Bioökonomie überwinden? Landwirtschaftliche Intensivierungsprozesse aus sozial-ökologischer Perspektive
Der Wandel zu einer „bio-basierten“ Wirtschaft, wie er in nationalen und internationalen Bioökonomie-Strategien propagiert wird, kann nur mit tiefgreifenden Veränderungen landwirtschaftlicher Systeme zur Steigerung der Agrarproduktion einhergehen. Besonders in Ländern des Globalen Südens gingen solche Prozesse jedoch meist mit unbeabsichtigten – oder in Kauf genommenen – negativen Konsequenzen wie Umweltdegradation oder die Verschärfung gesellsch…
Promises and perils of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: Agriculture and export prospects in northern Pakistan
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a mega-project of primarily infrastructure-related loans and investments in Pakistan. Recently, the official discourse has increasingly shifted to the agricultural sector. For the region of Gilgit-Baltistan bordering China, academic and policy debates highlight the potential boost of fruit exports to China as the most promising opportunity to be leveraged through the CPEC. This paper scrutinizes thes…
High Mountain Agriculture and Changing Socionatures in Nagar, Northern Pakistan
This dissertation focuses on high-mountain farming in Nagar, a rural district in the Karakoram Mountains of northern Pakistan. It deals with the question of how local farming systems have been affected over the last 30–40 years by multiple interacting processes of change, including climate change. More specifically, it investigates how a diversity of actors and factors – or ‘actants’ – have contributed to these changes in manifold ways. This inve…
Female Education and Social Change: Changing Perceptions of Women's Roles in Society in the High Mountains of Northern Pakistan
This article investigates the emergence of female education and its social impacts in a remote and male-dominated mountain community through a case study of Nagar District in northern Pakistan. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 24 women from different educational backgrounds and 15 selected male informants, the study reveals a notable increase in educational opportunities for girls and young women within a relatively short time span, and sho…
Assemblages and complex adaptive systems: A conceptual crossroads for integrative research
In human geography and beyond, assemblage thinking has increasingly gained attention as a perspective from which to investigate the emergence and dynamics of more-than-human entanglements. Similarly, in the interdisciplinary field of social-ecological systems analysis, theories of complex adaptive systems have been employed to investigate how social and ecological dynamics and actors interact with each other on different scales. Nonetheless, desp…
Changing Food Systems and Their Resilience in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan: A Case Study of Nagar
Mountain communities are considered particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, and their vulnerability is sometimes assumed to be increasing because of a loss of food self-sufficiency. Based on a case study of Nagar District in the Karakoram of northern Pakistan, the present article challenges this assumption by taking a broader perspective on food systems and their changes in recent decades. Defining food security as the outcome of a resilient …
Obstacles to understanding the emergence and significance of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons
This article examines the emergence of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons from a critical perspective, including how and to what degree efforts to alter states’ framing of nuclear weapons was a factor in the treaty's emergence and negotiation. It examines the so-called humanitarian initiative on the consequences of nuclear weapons, the activities of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the roles played by tra…
Glacier thinning and adaptation assemblages in Nagar, northern Pakistan
Late Victorian aristocrats and the racial other: The Devonshire House ball of 1897
The Devonshire House ball of 1897 was the last and most spectacular fancy dress ball held in the Victorian era. So far, discussions of the ball have almost exclusively focused on the list of illustrious guests and the costumes they wore. This article investigates for the first time the significance of those disguised as black servants or slaves who attended the ball not as guests in their own right but as attendants of three aristocratic ladies. …
Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security: New Perspectives, Old Challenges, and Some Solutions
This article presents the Event Data on Conflict and Security (EDACS) dataset, discusses the inherent problems of georeferenced conflict data, and shows how these challenges are met within EDACS. Based on an event data approach, EDACS contributes to the growing number of novel georeferenced datasets that allow researchers to identify causal pathways of violence and the dynamics of (transboundary) violence through spatiotemporal disaggregation. Ho…
A Selection Model for Panel Data: The Prospects of Green Party Support
Although sample selection bias is a frequent problem of applied research, there has been no generalization of sample selection models with binary dependent variables of interest to data with temporal error correlations. We suggest a generalized estimating equation approach to panel data selection models, considering binary responses in both equations. We demonstrate the utility of this model by a simulation study and by analyzing highly unbalance…
Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security: New Perspectives, Old Challenges, and Some Solutions
This article presents the Event Data on Conflict and Security (EDACS) dataset, discusses the inherent problems of georeferenced conflict data, and shows how these challenges are met within EDACS. Based on an event data approach, EDACS contributes to the growing number of novel georeferenced datasets that allow researchers to identify causal pathways of violence and the dynamics of (transboundary) violence through spatiotemporal disaggregation. Ho…
Assemblages and complex adaptive systems: A conceptual crossroads for integrative research
In human geography and beyond, assemblage thinking has increasingly gained attention as a perspective from which to investigate the emergence and dynamics of more-than-human entanglements. Similarly, in the interdisciplinary field of social-ecological systems analysis, theories of complex adaptive systems have been employed to investigate how social and ecological dynamics and actors interact with each other on different scales. Nonetheless, desp…
Coexistence or competition for resources? Transboundary transformations of natural resource use in China’s neighborhood
Over the past three decades, rural places along China's land borders have faced interconnected processes of sociopolitical, economic, and ecological change.These changes, along with an increase in transboundary investment by actors from China in infrastructure on the one hand, and in agriculture and resource extraction on the other, are locally met with a combination of suspicion, fear, and desire for future prosperity.This special issue scrutini…
A Selection Model for Panel Data: The Prospects of Green Party Support
Although sample selection bias is a frequent problem of applied research, there has been no generalization of sample selection models with binary dependent variables of interest to data with temporal error correlations. We suggest a generalized estimating equation approach to panel data selection models, considering binary responses in both equations. We demonstrate the utility of this model by a simulation study and by analyzing highly unbalance…
Local seed systems and Global China: The spread of Chinese hybrid seeds in Pakistan and Tajikistan
Is there a future for smallholder farmers in bioeconomy? The case of ‘improved’ seeds in South Punjab, Pakistan
Smallholder farmers are key players in agrarian value chains, particularly in the Global South. In the planning of technology-oriented agricultural interventions featured prominently in bioeconomy policies they are however often neglected. As global demand for food and biomass is expected to rise, production increase through (bio)technological means is framed as a necessity. Yet its ecological and social sustainability has been debated. We add to…
Promises and perils of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: Agriculture and export prospects in northern Pakistan
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a mega-project of primarily infrastructure-related loans and investments in Pakistan. Recently, the official discourse has increasingly shifted to the agricultural sector. For the region of Gilgit-Baltistan bordering China, academic and policy debates highlight the potential boost of fruit exports to China as the most promising opportunity to be leveraged through the CPEC. This paper scrutinizes thes…
Obstacles to understanding the emergence and significance of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons
This article examines the emergence of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons from a critical perspective, including how and to what degree efforts to alter states’ framing of nuclear weapons was a factor in the treaty's emergence and negotiation. It examines the so-called humanitarian initiative on the consequences of nuclear weapons, the activities of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the roles played by tra…
A Selection Model for Panel Data: The Prospects of Green Party Support
Although sample selection bias is a frequent problem of applied research, there has been no generalization of sample selection models with binary dependent variables of interest to data with temporal error correlations. We suggest a generalized estimating equation approach to panel data selection models, considering binary responses in both equations. We demonstrate the utility of this model by a simulation study and by analyzing highly unbalance…
Event Data on Armed Conflict and Security: New Perspectives, Old Challenges, and Some Solutions
This article presents the Event Data on Conflict and Security (EDACS) dataset, discusses the inherent problems of georeferenced conflict data, and shows how these challenges are met within EDACS. Based on an event data approach, EDACS contributes to the growing number of novel georeferenced datasets that allow researchers to identify causal pathways of violence and the dynamics of (transboundary) violence through spatiotemporal disaggregation. Ho…
Glacier thinning and adaptation assemblages in Nagar, northern Pakistan
Late Victorian aristocrats and the racial other: The Devonshire House ball of 1897
The Devonshire House ball of 1897 was the last and most spectacular fancy dress ball held in the Victorian era. So far, discussions of the ball have almost exclusively focused on the list of illustrious guests and the costumes they wore. This article investigates for the first time the significance of those disguised as black servants or slaves who attended the ball not as guests in their own right but as attendants of three aristocratic ladies. …
Changing Food Systems and Their Resilience in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan: A Case Study of Nagar
Mountain communities are considered particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, and their vulnerability is sometimes assumed to be increasing because of a loss of food self-sufficiency. Based on a case study of Nagar District in the Karakoram of northern Pakistan, the present article challenges this assumption by taking a broader perspective on food systems and their changes in recent decades. Defining food security as the outcome of a resilient …
Obstacles to understanding the emergence and significance of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons
This article examines the emergence of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons from a critical perspective, including how and to what degree efforts to alter states’ framing of nuclear weapons was a factor in the treaty's emergence and negotiation. It examines the so-called humanitarian initiative on the consequences of nuclear weapons, the activities of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the roles played by tra…
High Mountain Agriculture and Changing Socionatures in Nagar, Northern Pakistan
This dissertation focuses on high-mountain farming in Nagar, a rural district in the Karakoram Mountains of northern Pakistan. It deals with the question of how local farming systems have been affected over the last 30–40 years by multiple interacting processes of change, including climate change. More specifically, it investigates how a diversity of actors and factors – or ‘actants’ – have contributed to these changes in manifold ways. This inve…
Female Education and Social Change: Changing Perceptions of Women's Roles in Society in the High Mountains of Northern Pakistan
This article investigates the emergence of female education and its social impacts in a remote and male-dominated mountain community through a case study of Nagar District in northern Pakistan. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 24 women from different educational backgrounds and 15 selected male informants, the study reveals a notable increase in educational opportunities for girls and young women within a relatively short time span, and sho…
Assemblages and complex adaptive systems: A conceptual crossroads for integrative research
In human geography and beyond, assemblage thinking has increasingly gained attention as a perspective from which to investigate the emergence and dynamics of more-than-human entanglements. Similarly, in the interdisciplinary field of social-ecological systems analysis, theories of complex adaptive systems have been employed to investigate how social and ecological dynamics and actors interact with each other on different scales. Nonetheless, desp…
Pfadabhängigkeiten in der Bioökonomie überwinden? Landwirtschaftliche Intensivierungsprozesse aus sozial-ökologischer Perspektive
Der Wandel zu einer „bio-basierten“ Wirtschaft, wie er in nationalen und internationalen Bioökonomie-Strategien propagiert wird, kann nur mit tiefgreifenden Veränderungen landwirtschaftlicher Systeme zur Steigerung der Agrarproduktion einhergehen. Besonders in Ländern des Globalen Südens gingen solche Prozesse jedoch meist mit unbeabsichtigten – oder in Kauf genommenen – negativen Konsequenzen wie Umweltdegradation oder die Verschärfung gesellsch…
Promises and perils of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor: Agriculture and export prospects in northern Pakistan
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a mega-project of primarily infrastructure-related loans and investments in Pakistan. Recently, the official discourse has increasingly shifted to the agricultural sector. For the region of Gilgit-Baltistan bordering China, academic and policy debates highlight the potential boost of fruit exports to China as the most promising opportunity to be leveraged through the CPEC. This paper scrutinizes thes…
Characterising cropland fragmentation in post-Soviet Central Asia, using Landsat remote-sensing time series data
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, agricultural reforms in Central Asia often translated into the fragmentation of large fields into smaller shares. Most remote-sensing-based land use classification approaches are categorical in nature, and thus they are unable to capture these changes. We have developed an approach to detecting the timing of land fragmentation based on textural information from a time series of Landsat images for fou…
Path Dependencies of (Un-)sustainable Land Use in Central Asia
Across Central Asia, agricultural and agroforestry practices have been shaped by a high-modernist approach since about the 1950s, with the aim of overcoming ecological limitations. Negative repercussions of this approach still affect local developments, but a shift towards resource-conserving production systems faces constraints—many of which relate to so-called ‘path dependencies’, i.e. historically-evolved institutions constraining the current …
Is there a future for smallholder farmers in bioeconomy? The case of ‘improved’ seeds in South Punjab, Pakistan
Smallholder farmers are key players in agrarian value chains, particularly in the Global South. In the planning of technology-oriented agricultural interventions featured prominently in bioeconomy policies they are however often neglected. As global demand for food and biomass is expected to rise, production increase through (bio)technological means is framed as a necessity. Yet its ecological and social sustainability has been debated. We add to…
Coexistence or competition for resources? Transboundary transformations of natural resource use in China’s neighborhood
Over the past three decades, rural places along China's land borders have faced interconnected processes of sociopolitical, economic, and ecological change.These changes, along with an increase in transboundary investment by actors from China in infrastructure on the one hand, and in agriculture and resource extraction on the other, are locally met with a combination of suspicion, fear, and desire for future prosperity.This special issue scrutini…
Local seed systems and Global China: The spread of Chinese hybrid seeds in Pakistan and Tajikistan
The making and unmaking of the Bacillus thuringiensis cotton assemblage in South Punjab, Pakistan
Agricultural biotechnology, including genetically modified (GM) crop varieties, is being increasingly adopted in the Global South. Academic discussions on GM crops tend to be polarised, but increasing attention is being paid to local social and ecological dynamics. Adding to this scholarship, we investigate the little-researched case of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton in South Punjab, Pakistan, employing assemblage thinking to examine how comp…
Geography (12 works) · Political science (8 works) · Agriculture (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · China (4 works) · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (3 works) · Agroforestry (3 works)