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B Korf

Biographic Data

ID14089
NAMEB Korf
GIVEN NAMESB
FAMILY NAMEKorf
SIGNATUREKORF B
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Zurich
ORCID0000-0002-4836-9929
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS74
TOTAL CITATIONS639
AUTHOR COUNT73
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2004
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX17
  • Political theology reloaded: Postliberalism and the spectre of Carl Schmitt's eschatology

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2026

    The spectre of Carl Schmitt is haunting global politics after the return of Trump to power. Key concepts of Schmitt's political theology are taken up by postliberal and integralist thinkers close to JD Vance, such as Peter Thiel or Adrian Vermeule. Thiel is fascinated by Schmitt's idea of the struggle between Anti-Christ and kat-echon (restrainer). Vermeule's integralism promulgates a state under the tutelage of the Catholic Church that mirrors S…

  • At the edge of the sword: Toward a spatial theory of the frontier

    Open Access•B Korf, Michael Watts•ARTICLE•Dialogues in Human Geography•2026

    Scholarly research on frontiers has exploded over the last two or three decades. ‘Frontier’ is a word with a long history, and shifting meanings with complex relations to settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. As a geographical keyword, the frontier has been put to work to understand a variety of colonial and postcolonial settings in which new commodity frontiers – land-based, oceanic, outer-space – have arisen. But the explosion of fr…

  • A Postcolonial Schmitt? Ontology, ethnography, and “more-than-liberal” democracy

    Open Access•B Korf, Stephan Hochleithner•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2026

    The ghost of illiberalism is haunting liberal democracy. In the shadow of debates about illiberalism stands - as éminence grise - Carl Schmitt. Schmitt's ontology of the political as antagonism not only inspires illiberal thinkers, but equally informs radical democratic theory as it does postcolonial studies of democracy in South Asia. In this paper, we propose the term “more-than-liberal” democracy to turn attention to political practices and ta…

  • Contested development, entangled governmentalities and the politics of pastoralism in the Upper Awash Valley of Ethiopia

    Tefera Goshu, Asebe Regassa et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Eastern African Studies•2025•References: 31

  • The 'Cultural Life' of Democracy in Sri Lanka (And Beyond)

    Open Access•B Korf, Harshana Rambukwella et al.•ARTICLE•Geopolitics•2025•References: 32

    This forum brings together reflections on Sri Lanka’s recent political struggles (aragalya) that ousted the incumbent president, and yet ended in political stasis. These reflections provide the space to think through what makes up the ‘cultural life’ of democracy in aragalya and beyond. The trope of the ‘cultural life’ of democracy enables these contributions to sketch an alternative way of theorising democracy as ‘actually existing politics’

  • Pauline Geopolitics: Thinking Apocalyptic Politics with Jacob Taubes

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geopolitics•2024•Cited by: 1•References: 18

    Jerry Z Muller (2022) Professor of Apocalypse: The Many Lives of Jacob Taubes. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Ole Jakob Løland (2020) Pauline Ugliness: Jacob Taubes and the Turn to Paul

  • Kiel 1969-2019: Die Zukunft der Geographie liegt auch in ihrer Vergangenheit

    Open Access•B Korf, Nadine Marquardt•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2024•References: 21

    ZORA (Zurich Open Repository and Archive) provides open and worldwide access to the research and scholarly output of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. A focus is on qualified scientific publications. ZORA is operated by the University Library together with the Central IT of the University of Zurich

  • Disziplinhistorische Tauchgänge zur German Theory: Ein Gespräch mit Ute Wardenga über die deutsche Länderkunde und Landschaftsgeographie

    Open Access•B Korf, Eberhard Rothfuß et al.•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2024•References: 5

  • After Critique: Cynicism, Scepticism and the Politics of Laughter

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Theory Culture & Society•2024•Cited by: 2•References: 3

    In 1983, two philosophers, Michel Foucault and Peter Sloterdijk, engaged with ancient Cynicism and the outspokenness and laughter of Diogenes as a critical practice. Foucault and Sloterdijk did so to position themselves 'after' critique: 'after' a period of and 'beyond' a certain style of dogmatism and theoretical deadlocks that troubled left thinking in the early 1980s (and continue to do so today). I show how Foucault and Sloterdijk, while diff…

  • German Theory als Geographie im Konjunktiv, oder: „Was nie geschrieben wurde, lesen“

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2023

    „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 (ye…

  • The lure of land: Peasant politics, frontier colonization and the cunning state in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•Thiruni Kelegama, B Korf•ARTICLE•Modern Asian Studies•2023•Cited by: 3•References: 28

    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 lan…

  • The irony of development: Critique, complicity, cynicism

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Anthropological Theory•2023•Cited by: 2•References: 55

    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 f…

  • Schwierigkeiten mit der kritischen Geographie: Studien zu einer reflexiven Theorie der Gesellschaft

    Open Access•B Korf•BOOK•Schwierigkeiten Mit der…•2022

    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 de…

  • Tauchgänge zur German Theory

    Open Access•B Korf, Eberhard Rothfuß et al.•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2022

    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 t…

  • Die List der Verantwortung: Corona, Kritik und Krise (der Theorie)

    Open Access•B Korf•CHAPTER•Die Verantwortung der Geographie•2021

  • Kiel 1969: Ein Erinnerungsort der Geographie

    Open Access•B Korf, Ute Wardenga•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2021

    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 re…

  • Geografe, nüme schlafe!“: Radikale Geographie in Zürich (1980–1990)

    Open Access•B Korf, Maxie Bernhard et al.•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2021

    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 Zurich at 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…

  • The predicament of pastoral sovereignty

    Open Access•Deborah Johnson, B Korf•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2021•Cited by: 1•References: 37

    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 kill…

  • German Theory: Cosmopolitan geographies, counterfactual histories and the (non)travel of a 'German Foucault

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning D…•2021•Cited by: 6•References: 73

    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 Th…

  • Corona: Kritik in der Krise

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•ZEP – Zeitschrift für international…•2020

    Bewaffnete Konflikte führen zu Vertreibung einer großen Anzahl von Menschen. Die Sicherstellung von Bildungsmöglichkeiten in humanitären Notsituationen und für flüchtende Menschen hat in den letzten Jahren große Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Dabei wurde eine spezifische Gruppe vernachlässigt: Binnenvertriebene. Dieser Artikel zeigt, dass diese mangelnde Berücksichtigung problematisch ist, da Binnenvertriebene die größte Anzahl aller Vertriebenen darst…

  • Arcane geopolitics: Heidegger, Schmitt and the political theology of Gnosticism

    Open Access•B Korf, Rory Rowan•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2020•Cited by: 3•References: 27

  • Civilizing' the pastoral frontier: Land grabbing, dispossession and coercive agrarian development in Ethiopia

    Asebe Regassa, Yetebarek Hizekiel et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Peasant Studies•2019•Cited by: 36•References: 51

    This paper analyzes frontier dynamics of land dispossessions in Ethiopia's pastoral lowland regions. Through a case study of two sedentarization schemes in South Omo Valley, we illustrate how politics of coercive sedentarization are legitimated in the 'civilizing' impetus of 'improvement schemes' for 'backward' pastoralists. We study sedentarization schemes that are implemented to evict pastoralist communities from grazing land to be appropriated…

  • Wir sind nie säkular gewesen“: Politische Theologie und die Geographien des Religiösen

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2018

    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 negotiati…

  • Geographies of Limited Statehood

    B Korf, Timothy Raeymaekers et al.•CHAPTER•Oxford Handbook of Governance and…•2018•Cited by: 2

    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 di…

  • Post-imperial statecraft: High modernism and the politics of land dispossession in Ethiopia's pastoral frontier

    Asebe Regassa, B Korf•ARTICLE•Journal of Eastern African Studies•2018•Cited by: 17•References: 39

    This paper argues that the current EPRDF/TPLF government emulates the imperial ambition of high-modernist development in Ethiopia’s “last” frontier – the pastoral lowlands. We show that two pillars of imperial state expansion continue to haunt Ethiopia’s post-imperial statecraft in the pastoral lowlands: the frontier rush and a high-modernist ambition. The frontier rush is characterized by emptying land for private and state appropriation. The mo…

Next
  • Re-spacing African drylands: Territorialization, sedentarization and indigenous commodification in the Ethiopian pastoral frontier

    B Korf, Tobias Hagmann et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Peasant Studies•2015•Cited by: 55•References: 64

    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 …

  • Antinomies of generosity

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geoforum•2006•Cited by: 52•References: 13

  • Making Concessions: Extractive Enclaves, Entangled Capitalism and Regulative Pluralism at the Gold Mining Frontier in Burkina Faso

    Open Access•Muriel Côte, B Korf•ARTICLE•World Development•2016•Cited by: 49•References: 25

  • Agamben in the Ogaden: Violence and sovereignty in the Ethiopian-Somali frontier

    Open Access•Tobias Hagmann, B Korf•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2012•Cited by: 38•References: 31

  • Civilizing' the pastoral frontier: Land grabbing, dispossession and coercive agrarian development in Ethiopia

    Asebe Regassa, Yetebarek Hizekiel et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Peasant Studies•2019•Cited by: 36•References: 51

    This paper analyzes frontier dynamics of land dispossessions in Ethiopia's pastoral lowland regions. Through a case study of two sedentarization schemes in South Omo Valley, we illustrate how politics of coercive sedentarization are legitimated in the 'civilizing' impetus of 'improvement schemes' for 'backward' pastoralists. We study sedentarization schemes that are implemented to evict pastoralist communities from grazing land to be appropriated…

  • Introduction: Space, contestation and the political

    Open Access•David Featherstone, B Korf•ARTICLE•Geoforum•2012•Cited by: 31•References: 19

  • War and the commons: Assessing the changing politics of violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf, Hartmut Fünfgeld•ARTICLE•Geoforum•2006•Cited by: 28•References: 29

  • Rethinking the Greed-Grievance Nexus: Property Rights and the Political Economy of War in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Journal of Peace Research•2005•Cited by: 28•References: 39

    The literature on civil wars tends to understand greed and grievances in antagonistic terms of 'either-or'. This article suggests that in the political economy of conflict, greed and grievances may be causally linked and reinforce each other: war (or shadow) economies of combatants and the survival economies of civilians are intertwined. Gains made by conflict entrepreneurs and war profiteers feed grievances about identity, economic inequality, a…

  • Resources, violence and the telluric geographies of small wars

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Progress in Human Geography•2011•Cited by: 25•References: 37

    A growing literature debates the proposition that insurgency in 'small wars' is primarily driven by opportunities to exploit or loot abundant natural resource and by feasibility factors. While recent studies on the geography of opportunity, feasibility and predation have qualified some of these broad claims, the literature is still in need of a better understanding of the micro-geographies of small wars. Through a critical discussion of this lite…

  • Muslim geographies, violence and the antinomies of community in eastern Sri Lanka

    Open Access•Shahul Hasbullah, B Korf•ARTICLE•Geographical Journal•2013•Cited by: 23•References: 43

    This paper studies the intricate relations between violence and the politics of community in a Muslim enclave in the east coast of Sri Lanka. The enclave will not only be studied as a war-ridden place, but more so in order to explore the antinomies of community that stem from an inherent governmentality that was triggered by the territorial prisonhood of the enclave situation. Violence, as we will show, is not an interruption, but an intensified …

  • The Geography of Warscape

    B Korf, Michelle Engeler et al.•ARTICLE•Third World Quarterly•2010•Cited by: 23

    This article elaborates a heuristic approach to understanding the geography of warscape from a theoretically informed perspective. It argues that agency in protracted civil war emerges at the ambiguous interface of different, competing systems of power and authority. In order to account for the multiple trajectories of threat and opportunity that warscapes offer to different social actors and at different times and places, the article proposes th…

  • Who is the rogue? Discourse, power and spatial politics in post-war Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2006•Cited by: 23•References: 21

  • Tamil diaspora and the political spaces of second-generation activism in Switzerland

    Open Access•Monika He, Monika Hess et al.•ARTICLE•Global Networks•2014•Cited by: 21•References: 36

    In this article, we study the emergence of the political spaces of activism of second-generation Swiss Tamils resulting from a critical event - the suffering of Tamils during and after the final battle in early 2009 of a civil war in northern Sri Lanka that had lasted for decades. We contend that we can explain the geographies of newly emerging second-generation activism committed to achieving Tamil Eelam through two factors. These are first, thi…

  • War, Livelihoods and Vulnerability in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Development and Change•2004•Cited by: 20•References: 14

    As the number of de-stabilized regions of warfare or post-war conditions worldwide continues to grow, this article investigates how civilians survive in the context of a civil war. It analyses livelihood strategies of farmers in the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka, using an analytical framework based on a revised form of DFID's sustainable rural livelihoods approach, placing particular attention on the institutional reproduction of household capital …

  • Muslim geographies and the politics of purification in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami

    Open Access•Shahul Hasbullah, B Korf•ARTICLE•Singapore Journal of Tropical…•2009•Cited by: 19•References: 17

    In this paper, we argue that the politics of aid in Sri Lanka 'after' the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami accentuated what we call the 'politics of purification'- the fragmented ethnic politics of territoriality - in Sri Lanka's east. The politics of purification entail geographical imaginations of a nation as 'the same people living in the same place'. We illustrate this with a case study on Muslim geographies in Kalmunai Divisional Secretariat divisi…

  • Ethiopia: Reforming Land Tenure

    Open Access•Wibke Crewett, B Korf•ARTICLE•Review of African Political Economy•2008•Cited by: 19•References: 6

    Land policy in Ethiopia has been controversial since the fall of the military socialist derg regime in 1991. While the current Ethiopian government has implemented a land policy that is based on state ownership of land (where only usufruct rights are given to land holders), many agricultural economists and international donor agencies have propagated some form of privatized land ownership. This article traces the antagonistic arguments of the two…

  • Post-imperial statecraft: High modernism and the politics of land dispossession in Ethiopia's pastoral frontier

    Asebe Regassa, B Korf•ARTICLE•Journal of Eastern African Studies•2018•Cited by: 17•References: 39

    This paper argues that the current EPRDF/TPLF government emulates the imperial ambition of high-modernist development in Ethiopia’s “last” frontier – the pastoral lowlands. We show that two pillars of imperial state expansion continue to haunt Ethiopia’s post-imperial statecraft in the pastoral lowlands: the frontier rush and a high-modernist ambition. The frontier rush is characterized by emptying land for private and state appropriation. The mo…

  • Religion, Conflict and Boundary Politics in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•J Goodhand, B Klem et al.•ARTICLE•European Journal of Development…•2009•Cited by: 16•References: 22

  • Making Territory: War, Post-war and the Entangled Scales of Contested Forest Governance in Mid-Western Nepal

    Open Access•Sarah Byrne, Andrea J Nightingale et al.•ARTICLE•Development and Change•2016•Cited by: 15•References: 43

    Ruptures that constitute exceptional events in national politics intersect in different ways with local politics, where more ongoing, continuous processes of both contestation and conservation around natural resource use may persist amidst a turbulent political landscape on other scales. Nepal, with its series of unfinished revolutions, civil war (1996-2006), and recurrently contested process of state (trans-)formation, is a case in point. Throug…

  • A Neural Turn? On the Ontology of the Geographical Subject

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning A…•2008•Cited by: 14•References: 34

    The modernist conception of the autonomous 'subject' as centred, sovereign, and coherently rational, acting intentionally, knowledgeably, and volitionally, has been challenged from a variety of sources, including poststructuralism, feminism, and posthumanism. A different kind of attack on the modernist subject has recently been staged by neurobiologists who have started to decentre the subject from within-to 'naturalise' (and materialise) the sub…

  • Dining with Devils? Ethnographic Enquiries into the Conflict–Development Nexus in Sri Lanka

    B Korf•ARTICLE•Oxford Development Studies•2006•Cited by: 14•References: 14

    This paper traces the ethnographies of conflict and development in Sri Lanka on two levels of analysis. First, it examines two related discourses in the policy arena of Sri Lanka, one looking at the peace–development nexus, the other at the paradox of welfarism and clientelism in Sri Lanka's polity. Second, it analyses the political field of relief and development practice—its order and disjuncture—as it presented itself during times of ongoing w…

  • The gift of disaster: The commodification of good intentions in post-tsunami Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf, Shahul Habullah et al.•ARTICLE•Disasters•2010•Cited by: 13•References: 31

    This paper analyses the commodification of post-tsunami aid in Sri Lanka, a process that 'contaminated' the 'purity' of good intentions with the politics of patronage and international aid. It argues that gifts are not just material transfers of 'aid', but also embodiments of cultural symbolism, social power, and political affiliations. The tsunami gift re-enforced and reconfigured exchange relationships among different patrons and clients in Sri…

  • The Geography of Participation

    B Korf•ARTICLE•Third World Quarterly•2010•Cited by: 9

    Revisiting the critique of participatory development and one of its core political technologies, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), this paper suggests that participation in the form of PRA creates ‘provided spaces’ that dislocate ‘development’ from politics and from political institutions of the postcolonial state. PRA thereby becomes what Chantal Mouffe calls a post-political aspiration through its celebration of deliberative democracy (altho…

  • Rethinking the European countryside—can we learn from the South

    Open Access•B Korf, Elizabeth Oughton•ARTICLE•Journal of Rural Studies•2005•Cited by: 7•References: 6

  • German Theory: Cosmopolitan geographies, counterfactual histories and the (non)travel of a 'German Foucault

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning D…•2021•Cited by: 6•References: 73

    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 Th…

  • War, Livelihoods and Vulnerability in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Development and Change•2004•Cited by: 20•References: 14

    As the number of de-stabilized regions of warfare or post-war conditions worldwide continues to grow, this article investigates how civilians survive in the context of a civil war. It analyses livelihood strategies of farmers in the war-torn areas of Sri Lanka, using an analytical framework based on a revised form of DFID's sustainable rural livelihoods approach, placing particular attention on the institutional reproduction of household capital …

  • Wer hat Angst vorm Schurkenstaat: Macht/Raum-Diskurse in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2005

    Dieser Artikel analysiert den Gebrauch geopolitischer Diskurse zur Legitimierung politischer Machtansprüche an Raum und Territorien, wie sie in Sri Lanka seit dem Ende des ethnischen Bürgerkrieges zum Tragen kommen. Die Analogie der «Schurken»-Metapher dient als analytischer Rahmen zur Untersuchung nationalistischer Diskurse innerhalb der drei ethnischen Gruppen in Sri Lanka, den Singhalesen.Tamilen und Muslimen. In diesen Diskursen geht es um ko…

  • Partizipation als Tyrannei? Reaktion auf zwei Beiträge zum Thema "Partizipation" in Gaia 14/1 (2005) Partizipation als Tyrannei? Reaktion auf zwei Beiträge zum Thema "Partizipation" in Gaia 14/1 (2005…

    B Korf•ARTICLE•GAIA - Ecological Perspectives…•2005

  • Viewpoint: Sri Lanka: the tsunami after the tsunami

    B Korf•ARTICLE•International Development…•2005•Cited by: 4

  • Rethinking the European countryside—can we learn from the South

    Open Access•B Korf, Elizabeth Oughton•ARTICLE•Journal of Rural Studies•2005•Cited by: 7•References: 6

  • Rethinking the Greed-Grievance Nexus: Property Rights and the Political Economy of War in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Journal of Peace Research•2005•Cited by: 28•References: 39

    The literature on civil wars tends to understand greed and grievances in antagonistic terms of 'either-or'. This article suggests that in the political economy of conflict, greed and grievances may be causally linked and reinforce each other: war (or shadow) economies of combatants and the survival economies of civilians are intertwined. Gains made by conflict entrepreneurs and war profiteers feed grievances about identity, economic inequality, a…

  • Commentary on the Special Section on the Indian Ocean Tsunami: Disasters, generosity and the other

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geographical Journal•2006•Cited by: 4•References: 1

  • Cargo cult science, armchair empiricism and the idea of violent conflict

    B Korf•ARTICLE•Third World Quarterly•2006•Cited by: 6•References: 43

    In this paper I develop a philosophical and methodological critique of 'rationalist'—or 'social scientific'—approaches to the study of civil war and violent conflict, especially the work of Paul Collier and David Laitin. Rationalist scholars purport to develop universal explanations for the outbreak and the protracted duration of violent conflict using econometric techniques and rational choice reasoning. My critique of their 'scientific method' …

  • War and the commons: Assessing the changing politics of violence, access and entitlements in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf, Hartmut Fünfgeld•ARTICLE•Geoforum•2006•Cited by: 28•References: 29

  • Antinomies of generosity

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geoforum•2006•Cited by: 52•References: 13

  • Geography and Benedict XVI

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Area•2006•References: 8

    Love is indeed ‘ecstasy’, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward‐looking self towards its liberation through self‐giving, and thus towards authentic self‐discovery and indeed the discovery of God. (Benedict XVI, Encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est )

  • Functions of violence revisited: Greed, pride and grievance in Sri Lanka’s civil war

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Progress in Development Studies•2006•Cited by: 4•References: 18

    This paper revisits the rationalist conceptions of warlordism in civil wars, which has amounted into the greed hypothesis as opposed to grievance. This argument states that rebels are not motivated to generate public goods - the betterment of society - but seek private gain. Violence becomes a function to generate wealth. While initial studies focused on explaining why civil war breaks out in the first instance, there is now increasing interest i…

  • Dining with Devils? Ethnographic Enquiries into the Conflict–Development Nexus in Sri Lanka

    B Korf•ARTICLE•Oxford Development Studies•2006•Cited by: 14•References: 14

    This paper traces the ethnographies of conflict and development in Sri Lanka on two levels of analysis. First, it examines two related discourses in the policy arena of Sri Lanka, one looking at the peace–development nexus, the other at the paradox of welfarism and clientelism in Sri Lanka's polity. Second, it analyses the political field of relief and development practice—its order and disjuncture—as it presented itself during times of ongoing w…

  • Who is the rogue? Discourse, power and spatial politics in post-war Sri Lanka

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Political Geography•2006•Cited by: 23•References: 21

  • To share or not to share? (non-)violence, scarcity and resource access in Somali Region, Ethiopia

    Ayalneh Bogale, B Korf•ARTICLE•The Journal of Development Studies•2007

    Scholars in the environmental security tradition have sought to explicate the links between environmental scarcity (or degradation) and the onset of different forms of political violence and how these are mediated by institutional mechanisms. The Malthusian trap here is not a direct deterministic relationship, but rather a possibility, where environmental scarcity when it coincides with socio-economic processes of rent-seeking and exclusion trigg…

  • Ethiopia: Reforming Land Tenure

    Open Access•Wibke Crewett, B Korf•ARTICLE•Review of African Political Economy•2008•Cited by: 19•References: 6

    Land policy in Ethiopia has been controversial since the fall of the military socialist derg regime in 1991. While the current Ethiopian government has implemented a land policy that is based on state ownership of land (where only usufruct rights are given to land holders), many agricultural economists and international donor agencies have propagated some form of privatized land ownership. This article traces the antagonistic arguments of the two…

  • A Neural Turn? On the Ontology of the Geographical Subject

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Environment and Planning A…•2008•Cited by: 14•References: 34

    The modernist conception of the autonomous 'subject' as centred, sovereign, and coherently rational, acting intentionally, knowledgeably, and volitionally, has been challenged from a variety of sources, including poststructuralism, feminism, and posthumanism. A different kind of attack on the modernist subject has recently been staged by neurobiologists who have started to decentre the subject from within-to 'naturalise' (and materialise) the sub…

  • Partizipation als Ausnahmezustand

    Open Access•B Korf•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2009

    In «Die Erfindung des Politischen» (1993) beschreibt Ulrich Beck Subpolitik als den Ort, an dem die Grenze zwischen Politik und Nichtpolitik verschwindet. Aus der zunehmenden Wirkkraft von Subpolitik erwächst die grundlegende Frage, mit welcher Legitimation diese Art von Subpolitik in die Sphäre der institutionalisierten Politik eindringt. Beck’s Subpolitik soll im Anschluss an theoretische Arbeiten von Chantal Mouffe und Giorgio Agamben als post…

  • Muslim geographies and the politics of purification in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami

    Open Access•Shahul Hasbullah, B Korf•ARTICLE•Singapore Journal of Tropical…•2009•Cited by: 19•References: 17

    In this paper, we argue that the politics of aid in Sri Lanka 'after' the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami accentuated what we call the 'politics of purification'- the fragmented ethnic politics of territoriality - in Sri Lanka's east. The politics of purification entail geographical imaginations of a nation as 'the same people living in the same place'. We illustrate this with a case study on Muslim geographies in Kalmunai Divisional Secretariat divisi…

  • Religion, Conflict and Boundary Politics in Sri Lanka

    Open Access•J Goodhand, B Klem et al.•ARTICLE•European Journal of Development…•2009•Cited by: 16•References: 22

  • Resource Entitlement and Mobility of Pastoralists in the Yerer and Daketa Valleys, Eastern Ethiopia

    Open Access•Ayalneh Bogale, B Korf•ARTICLE•Human Ecology•2009•Cited by: 2•References: 19

  • Geographie der (Un-) Sicherheit: Einführung zum Themenheft

    Open Access•B Korf, J Oßenbrügge•ARTICLE•Geographica Helvetica•2010

  • Viewpoint: Sri Lanka: the third wave

    B Korf•ARTICLE•International Development…•2010•References: 7

  • The Geography of Warscape

    B Korf, Michelle Engeler et al.•ARTICLE•Third World Quarterly•2010•Cited by: 23

    This article elaborates a heuristic approach to understanding the geography of warscape from a theoretically informed perspective. It argues that agency in protracted civil war emerges at the ambiguous interface of different, competing systems of power and authority. In order to account for the multiple trajectories of threat and opportunity that warscapes offer to different social actors and at different times and places, the article proposes th…

  • The Geography of Participation

    B Korf•ARTICLE•Third World Quarterly•2010•Cited by: 9

    Revisiting the critique of participatory development and one of its core political technologies, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), this paper suggests that participation in the form of PRA creates ‘provided spaces’ that dislocate ‘development’ from politics and from political institutions of the postcolonial state. PRA thereby becomes what Chantal Mouffe calls a post-political aspiration through its celebration of deliberative democracy (altho…

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Ethnos_APP • Open Source Project • MIT License • Frontend v2.0.0 • Privacy and Cookies • API Documentation: api.ethnos.app/docs • API Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17049435 • Frontend Source Code: GitHub • DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17050053 • cruz.rio.br • Expectantes Misericordiae