Kasper Hoffmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 208577 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kasper Hoffmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kasper |
| FAMILY NAME | Hoffmann |
| SIGNATURE | HOFFMANN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Roskilde University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5654-3870 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 85 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
On Violent Conflict, Land Scarcity, and Power in an urban Frontier in Congo
The relationship between land and violent conflict in Africa has long been a focal point for scholarly inquiry and development policy. According to an influential neo-Malthusian narrative, violent land conflicts erupt when land scarcity, population pressure, and state failure combine. In this paper we join a growing corpus of researchers arguing that the links between violent conflict and land scarcity are not linear, but embedded in complex and …
Everyday property-making: Negotiating land rights, precarity and public authority in urban Congo
Property rights are a major issue in cities marked by armed conflict in the global South. This article draws on research conducted in Bukavu, a city situated in the conflict-affected eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using a relational theory of property and mixed methods, including 150 semi-structured interviews, surveys with 568 heads of households, case studies of land conflicts, and participant observation, we demonstrate that…
Dangerous environments: Environmental Peacebuilding's Technomoral Imaginary and Its Power-Knowledge Effects
In this article we critically analyze the emerging academic field and practice of environmental peacebuilding. We claim that both are saturated by a particular “technomoral imaginary” or a set of beliefs, normative assumptions, and views on desirable futures that betray unwavering faith in the power of science and technology to bring peace and development to the Global South by transforming environmental governance. This imaginary informs particu…
The making of ethnic territories: Governmentality and counter-conducts
Ethnic territories” were a central political technology of colonial rule, which also shaped strategies of anti-colonial resistance in diverse contexts. Today, in former colonies, the making of ethnic territories remains a key site of both governmentality and political struggle. This Special Issue brings together six ethnographic case studies (from Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia, DR Congo, Paraguay and Peru) to explore how discourses of ethnicity an…
Violent conflict and ethnicity in the Congo: Beyond Materialism, Primordialism and Symbolism
In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo’s politics and violent conflicts, which we call ‘ethnic capital’. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate t…
Courses au pouvoir: The struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DR Congo, through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has gone through two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving a plethora of local, national and regional actors. During this period of uncertainty and upheaval, the institution of traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient. We arg…
Ethnogovernmentality: The making of ethnic territories and subjects in Eastern DR Congo
Rebel rule: A governmentality perspective
Much of the recent literature on rebel governance and violent political orders works with 'centred' and instrumental understandings of power. In this view, power is seen as exercised over subjects, and as situated in rebel rulers, governance institutions, or ruling networks. Drawing on the study of the armed groups known as 'Mai-Mai' in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article instead adopts a governmentality perspective on rebel go…
Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo
This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a multitude of authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection rackets, to the material reciprocation of the recognition of rights. Focusing on the taxation practices of armed groups, the article argues that taxati…
Z aire (The C ongo)
Ethnicity and nationalism are formative social and political identities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The colonial state solidified hitherto ambiguous boundaries between social and political identities by deploying firm ethnic categories to classify the native peoples and by confining them in ethnic territories. Although unitary nationalism emerged at the end of colonization, intra‐ and interethnic competition has dominated politics in…
Armed groups and the exercise of public authority: The cases of the Mayi-Mayi and Raya Mutomboki in Kalehe, South Kivu
The state of the Congolese state has been subject to a heated debate, with some arguing that it remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend that there is no lack of state order in Congo, but that this order is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised) extortion. This paper wants to put both claims into perspective and to assess how different actors re-deploy various rationaliti…
Anna Maerker, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775-1815
Model Experts is a welcome addition to scholarship on the history of the wax anatomical collection of ‘La Specola’ in Florence (Museo di Storia Naturale, Sezione Zoologica). Studying the emerging role of the expert in state service through archival records, reports, gazettes, letters and ephemera from 1775 to 1815, Model Experts opens perspectives on the social and political conditions of the Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, relationships am…
The ethics of child-soldiering in the Congo
In cutting-edge conflict theory, ‘young men’ are framed as a potential source of violence and insecurity in underdeveloped countries, especially in the so-called ‘failed states’. Supposedly, ‘young men’ bereft of socio-economic opportunities constitute a dangerous sub-population which can easily be recruited by ‘Spoilers’, or warlords when the pursuit of personal gain through the use of violence is rational; that is, in situations where the state…
The making of ethnic territories: Governmentality and counter-conducts
Ethnic territories” were a central political technology of colonial rule, which also shaped strategies of anti-colonial resistance in diverse contexts. Today, in former colonies, the making of ethnic territories remains a key site of both governmentality and political struggle. This Special Issue brings together six ethnographic case studies (from Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia, DR Congo, Paraguay and Peru) to explore how discourses of ethnicity an…
Rebel rule: A governmentality perspective
Much of the recent literature on rebel governance and violent political orders works with 'centred' and instrumental understandings of power. In this view, power is seen as exercised over subjects, and as situated in rebel rulers, governance institutions, or ruling networks. Drawing on the study of the armed groups known as 'Mai-Mai' in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article instead adopts a governmentality perspective on rebel go…
Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo
This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a multitude of authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection rackets, to the material reciprocation of the recognition of rights. Focusing on the taxation practices of armed groups, the article argues that taxati…
Ethnogovernmentality: The making of ethnic territories and subjects in Eastern DR Congo
Armed groups and the exercise of public authority: The cases of the Mayi-Mayi and Raya Mutomboki in Kalehe, South Kivu
The state of the Congolese state has been subject to a heated debate, with some arguing that it remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend that there is no lack of state order in Congo, but that this order is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised) extortion. This paper wants to put both claims into perspective and to assess how different actors re-deploy various rationaliti…
Courses au pouvoir: The struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DR Congo, through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has gone through two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving a plethora of local, national and regional actors. During this period of uncertainty and upheaval, the institution of traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient. We arg…
Violent conflict and ethnicity in the Congo: Beyond Materialism, Primordialism and Symbolism
In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo’s politics and violent conflicts, which we call ‘ethnic capital’. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate t…
Everyday property-making: Negotiating land rights, precarity and public authority in urban Congo
Property rights are a major issue in cities marked by armed conflict in the global South. This article draws on research conducted in Bukavu, a city situated in the conflict-affected eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using a relational theory of property and mixed methods, including 150 semi-structured interviews, surveys with 568 heads of households, case studies of land conflicts, and participant observation, we demonstrate that…
The ethics of child-soldiering in the Congo
In cutting-edge conflict theory, ‘young men’ are framed as a potential source of violence and insecurity in underdeveloped countries, especially in the so-called ‘failed states’. Supposedly, ‘young men’ bereft of socio-economic opportunities constitute a dangerous sub-population which can easily be recruited by ‘Spoilers’, or warlords when the pursuit of personal gain through the use of violence is rational; that is, in situations where the state…
Anna Maerker, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775-1815
Model Experts is a welcome addition to scholarship on the history of the wax anatomical collection of ‘La Specola’ in Florence (Museo di Storia Naturale, Sezione Zoologica). Studying the emerging role of the expert in state service through archival records, reports, gazettes, letters and ephemera from 1775 to 1815, Model Experts opens perspectives on the social and political conditions of the Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, relationships am…
Armed groups and the exercise of public authority: The cases of the Mayi-Mayi and Raya Mutomboki in Kalehe, South Kivu
The state of the Congolese state has been subject to a heated debate, with some arguing that it remains mostly irrelevant outside its capital or even that there is no such thing as Congo. Others contend that there is no lack of state order in Congo, but that this order is characterised by predatory rule and (privatised) extortion. This paper wants to put both claims into perspective and to assess how different actors re-deploy various rationaliti…
Z aire (The C ongo)
Ethnicity and nationalism are formative social and political identities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The colonial state solidified hitherto ambiguous boundaries between social and political identities by deploying firm ethnic categories to classify the native peoples and by confining them in ethnic territories. Although unitary nationalism emerged at the end of colonization, intra‐ and interethnic competition has dominated politics in…
Taxation, Stateness and Armed Groups: Public Authority and Resource Extraction in Eastern Congo
This contribution analyses the role of taxation in the constitution of authority in the conflict-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a multitude of authorities alternately compete and collude over the right to extract resources. Taxation ranges from simple plunder, to protection rackets, to the material reciprocation of the recognition of rights. Focusing on the taxation practices of armed groups, the article argues that taxati…
Ethnogovernmentality: The making of ethnic territories and subjects in Eastern DR Congo
Rebel rule: A governmentality perspective
Much of the recent literature on rebel governance and violent political orders works with 'centred' and instrumental understandings of power. In this view, power is seen as exercised over subjects, and as situated in rebel rulers, governance institutions, or ruling networks. Drawing on the study of the armed groups known as 'Mai-Mai' in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, this article instead adopts a governmentality perspective on rebel go…
The making of ethnic territories: Governmentality and counter-conducts
Ethnic territories” were a central political technology of colonial rule, which also shaped strategies of anti-colonial resistance in diverse contexts. Today, in former colonies, the making of ethnic territories remains a key site of both governmentality and political struggle. This Special Issue brings together six ethnographic case studies (from Argentina, Bolivia, Cambodia, DR Congo, Paraguay and Peru) to explore how discourses of ethnicity an…
Violent conflict and ethnicity in the Congo: Beyond Materialism, Primordialism and Symbolism
In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo’s politics and violent conflicts, which we call ‘ethnic capital’. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate t…
Courses au pouvoir: The struggle over customary capital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DR Congo, through the case of a succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has gone through two decades of political instability and violent conflict involving a plethora of local, national and regional actors. During this period of uncertainty and upheaval, the institution of traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient. We arg…
Dangerous environments: Environmental Peacebuilding's Technomoral Imaginary and Its Power-Knowledge Effects
In this article we critically analyze the emerging academic field and practice of environmental peacebuilding. We claim that both are saturated by a particular “technomoral imaginary” or a set of beliefs, normative assumptions, and views on desirable futures that betray unwavering faith in the power of science and technology to bring peace and development to the Global South by transforming environmental governance. This imaginary informs particu…
Everyday property-making: Negotiating land rights, precarity and public authority in urban Congo
Property rights are a major issue in cities marked by armed conflict in the global South. This article draws on research conducted in Bukavu, a city situated in the conflict-affected eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using a relational theory of property and mixed methods, including 150 semi-structured interviews, surveys with 568 heads of households, case studies of land conflicts, and participant observation, we demonstrate that…
On Violent Conflict, Land Scarcity, and Power in an urban Frontier in Congo
The relationship between land and violent conflict in Africa has long been a focal point for scholarly inquiry and development policy. According to an influential neo-Malthusian narrative, violent land conflicts erupt when land scarcity, population pressure, and state failure combine. In this paper we join a growing corpus of researchers arguing that the links between violent conflict and land scarcity are not linear, but embedded in complex and …
Political science (11 works) · Law (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · African history and culture studies (3 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (3 works) · Development economics (3 works)