M Schnegg
Biographic Data
| ID | 23666 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Schnegg |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Schnegg |
| SIGNATURE | SCHNEGG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universität Hamburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9240-8836 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 128 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Phenomenology, by comparison
Both phenomenology and anthropology study lived experience, but they have traditionally done so in different ways. Phenomenology aims to identify universal structures of experience via the epoché, reduction and eidetic variation. Anthropology, by contrast, foregrounds cultural diversity as documented through ethnography. Ethnographic accounts provide thousands of cases of lived experience, far more varied than any single mind could generate throu…
How to Be Hopeful About Climate Change
Why do people in climate‐vulnerable regions of Kenya and Namibia express more hope for the future than many in Germany, despite facing greater environmental threats? Drawing on ethnographic research and the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, we make two arguments. First, in contrast to structural theories, we see hope as tied not to economic security but to experiences of “captivity” or constraint. In Germany, the second half of the 20th century was m…
Atmospheres
Atmospheres are the overall feeling of a situation that people experience individually and collectively. They are created by the affective relationships between the human and non-human, material and immaterial bodies that comprise a situation. Yet an atmosphere is at the same time more than the sum of its parts. People often experience atmospheres as something that cannot be put into words easily; nevertheless, atmospheres enable or disable certa…
Collective Loneliness
Damara pastoralists experience January as !Ūke-ai (collective loneliness). This is also how they experience the time after a drought. To explore this feeling, I draw on the phenomenology of Hermann Schmitz, who suggests that we take emotions out of the “box” of the psyche and theorize them as atmospheres. In this view, every situation is a constellation of human and nonhuman bodies, and atmospheres are the felt space in between that connects and …
Social Constructions of Climate Futures
Climate research has established a cultural authority in modelling our future with climate change, and often uses a harmful impacts frame to communicate about climate change and climate futures. This paper investigates the social constructions of climate futures by analyzing how the harmful impacts frame resonates and is reframed in three social arenas – news media, climate movements, and local communities. Data for this study stems from a larger…
Culture as response
To explain cultural diversity, many theories refer to the social construction of reality. In this telling, we frame the world to make it meaningful. In my analysis of what people in Namibia and Germany know about “SARS‐Cov‐2” and “climate change,” I propose an anti‐constructivist alternative. Drawing on the work of the phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels, I argue that experience comes first and exceeds language and the conceptual and symbolic ord…
Empathy Beyond the Human. The Social Construction of a Multispecies World
In Namibia, Damara pastoralists share the environment with many beings including elephants, tricksters, and winds. While the importance of other-than-human subjectivity is well established, its methodological, epistemological, and ontological challenges are less settled. To address them, we combine expertise from anthropology and philosophy to ask how this world becomes what it is, using Edith Steins's notion of empathy (Einfühlung) as a theoreti…
World organisations, world events and world objects
Societies are becoming increasingly aware that they owe their emergence, wealth and industrialisation to their influence as a geophysical force. Social and environmental scientists have analysed the genesis of this self-reflection and pointed to past failures that have led to this predicament. Following the gradually beginning research on differing temporalities, temporal practices and time regimes in the climate change discourse, this article sh…
Eleven Namibian rains
The Damara pastoralists ( ǂnūkhoen) in Namibia distinguish a diverse range of rains. Some rains kill livestock, others care for insects and still others wash away the footprints of the deceased, allowing the person to exist in the spirit realm. While anthropologists have documented cultural classifications like the Namibian rains for decades, we still lack a convincing theory to explain how they come to exist. To address this, I develop a phenome…
It’s Our Fault
International surveys suggest people increasingly agree the climate is changing and humans are the cause. One reading of this is that people have adopted the scientific point of view. Based on a sample of 28 ethnographic cases we argue that this conclusion might be premature. Communities merge scientific explanations with local knowledge in hybrid ways. This is possible because both discourses blame humans as the cause of the changes they observe…
What Does the Situation Say? Theorizing Multiple Understandings of Climate Change
Our ways of knowing the weather are transforming. Climate change modifies weather patterns, and the globalization of scientific knowledge promotes new ways of making the weather intelligible. Following both transformations, I explore how Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) in Namibia entertain various Indigenous, religious, political, and scientific explanations for the most distressing weather-related phenomenon they experience-the lack of rain. Inte…
Ontologies of climate change
In Namibia, both Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) and scientists agree that it rains less frequently than before. To explain their observations, however, scientists refer to carbon dioxide molecules, while the pastoralists point to social tensions, neoliberalism, and failures of the postcolonial state. To understand this discrepancy, I ask whether what scientists call precipitation and what Damara call ǀnanus are really the same thing. Engaging wit…
Subsidized elephants
After independence, and in accordance with global environmental policies, the government of Namibia partly transferred the responsibility for managing wildlife and water to local communities. In this article, we use the concept of environmental justice as a theoretical guide to explore the combined effects that these new policies have had for pastoralists in arid, rural Namibia. We find, firstly, that partly due to conservation efforts, the eleph…
Institutional multiplexity
Natural resource management has changed profoundly in recent decades emphasizing new legislation that transfers responsibilities to local user groups. In this article, I follow changing water policies to Namibia and show that the enactment of policy in local institutions deviates from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) blueprints and design. To understand why, I examine the theoretical premises of CBNRM. CBNRM is informed by rati…
Travelling models of participation
In recent decades, water management in Namibia has profoundly changed. Beginning in the 1990s the Namibian state has incrementally turned ownership of and the responsibility for its rural water supply to local user groups. While the state withdrew from managing resources directly, it continued to circumscribe the ways in which local communities should govern them. In so doing, a “new commons” was created. Inclusive participation became the leitmo…
Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia
In the course of decentralization, pastoral communities in Namibia have had to find new ways to share their most salient resource, water, and the costs involved in providing it. Using data from sixty communities, we examine (1) whether and to what extent different sharing rules emerge, (2) how variations can be explained, (3) how rules are perceived and influence success, and (4) what economic consequences they have. Our results reveal that eithe…
The Value of Landscapes in Northern Namibia
It is increasingly recognized that ecosystems provide varied services that should be considered in land management decisions. One of the challenges in the valuation of landscapes is that they often provide multiple services that combine into one social–ecological system. In this article we show how overlaps of those services can be measured, visualized, and explained. The results from a case study conducted in a rural community in northern Namibi…
Living Institutions
Sanctions are often considered an important component of successful resource management. To govern water usage, pastoral communities in Namibia have specific sanctions at their disposal and yet these are almost never applied. Interestingly, this does not lead to a breakdown in water supply. To understand collective action in small communities it is important to take into account that people share multiple resources. Combining ethnography and netw…
Living Institutions
Sanctions are often considered an important component of successful resource management. To govern water usage, pastoral communities in Namibia have specific sanctions at their disposal and yet these are almost never applied. Interestingly, this does not lead to a breakdown in water supply. To understand collective action in small communities it is important to take into account that people share multiple resources. Combining ethnography and netw…
Subsidized elephants
After independence, and in accordance with global environmental policies, the government of Namibia partly transferred the responsibility for managing wildlife and water to local communities. In this article, we use the concept of environmental justice as a theoretical guide to explore the combined effects that these new policies have had for pastoralists in arid, rural Namibia. We find, firstly, that partly due to conservation efforts, the eleph…
Institutional multiplexity
Natural resource management has changed profoundly in recent decades emphasizing new legislation that transfers responsibilities to local user groups. In this article, I follow changing water policies to Namibia and show that the enactment of policy in local institutions deviates from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) blueprints and design. To understand why, I examine the theoretical premises of CBNRM. CBNRM is informed by rati…
Ontologies of climate change
In Namibia, both Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) and scientists agree that it rains less frequently than before. To explain their observations, however, scientists refer to carbon dioxide molecules, while the pastoralists point to social tensions, neoliberalism, and failures of the postcolonial state. To understand this discrepancy, I ask whether what scientists call precipitation and what Damara call ǀnanus are really the same thing. Engaging wit…
Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia
In the course of decentralization, pastoral communities in Namibia have had to find new ways to share their most salient resource, water, and the costs involved in providing it. Using data from sixty communities, we examine (1) whether and to what extent different sharing rules emerge, (2) how variations can be explained, (3) how rules are perceived and influence success, and (4) what economic consequences they have. Our results reveal that eithe…
Eleven Namibian rains
The Damara pastoralists ( ǂnūkhoen) in Namibia distinguish a diverse range of rains. Some rains kill livestock, others care for insects and still others wash away the footprints of the deceased, allowing the person to exist in the spirit realm. While anthropologists have documented cultural classifications like the Namibian rains for decades, we still lack a convincing theory to explain how they come to exist. To address this, I develop a phenome…
What Does the Situation Say? Theorizing Multiple Understandings of Climate Change
Our ways of knowing the weather are transforming. Climate change modifies weather patterns, and the globalization of scientific knowledge promotes new ways of making the weather intelligible. Following both transformations, I explore how Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) in Namibia entertain various Indigenous, religious, political, and scientific explanations for the most distressing weather-related phenomenon they experience-the lack of rain. Inte…
Empathy Beyond the Human. The Social Construction of a Multispecies World
In Namibia, Damara pastoralists share the environment with many beings including elephants, tricksters, and winds. While the importance of other-than-human subjectivity is well established, its methodological, epistemological, and ontological challenges are less settled. To address them, we combine expertise from anthropology and philosophy to ask how this world becomes what it is, using Edith Steins's notion of empathy (Einfühlung) as a theoreti…
Travelling models of participation
In recent decades, water management in Namibia has profoundly changed. Beginning in the 1990s the Namibian state has incrementally turned ownership of and the responsibility for its rural water supply to local user groups. While the state withdrew from managing resources directly, it continued to circumscribe the ways in which local communities should govern them. In so doing, a “new commons” was created. Inclusive participation became the leitmo…
Collective Loneliness
Damara pastoralists experience January as !Ūke-ai (collective loneliness). This is also how they experience the time after a drought. To explore this feeling, I draw on the phenomenology of Hermann Schmitz, who suggests that we take emotions out of the “box” of the psyche and theorize them as atmospheres. In this view, every situation is a constellation of human and nonhuman bodies, and atmospheres are the felt space in between that connects and …
The Value of Landscapes in Northern Namibia
It is increasingly recognized that ecosystems provide varied services that should be considered in land management decisions. One of the challenges in the valuation of landscapes is that they often provide multiple services that combine into one social–ecological system. In this article we show how overlaps of those services can be measured, visualized, and explained. The results from a case study conducted in a rural community in northern Namibi…
Culture as response
To explain cultural diversity, many theories refer to the social construction of reality. In this telling, we frame the world to make it meaningful. In my analysis of what people in Namibia and Germany know about “SARS‐Cov‐2” and “climate change,” I propose an anti‐constructivist alternative. Drawing on the work of the phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels, I argue that experience comes first and exceeds language and the conceptual and symbolic ord…
World organisations, world events and world objects
Societies are becoming increasingly aware that they owe their emergence, wealth and industrialisation to their influence as a geophysical force. Social and environmental scientists have analysed the genesis of this self-reflection and pointed to past failures that have led to this predicament. Following the gradually beginning research on differing temporalities, temporal practices and time regimes in the climate change discourse, this article sh…
Living Institutions
Sanctions are often considered an important component of successful resource management. To govern water usage, pastoral communities in Namibia have specific sanctions at their disposal and yet these are almost never applied. Interestingly, this does not lead to a breakdown in water supply. To understand collective action in small communities it is important to take into account that people share multiple resources. Combining ethnography and netw…
The Value of Landscapes in Northern Namibia
It is increasingly recognized that ecosystems provide varied services that should be considered in land management decisions. One of the challenges in the valuation of landscapes is that they often provide multiple services that combine into one social–ecological system. In this article we show how overlaps of those services can be measured, visualized, and explained. The results from a case study conducted in a rural community in northern Namibi…
Travelling models of participation
In recent decades, water management in Namibia has profoundly changed. Beginning in the 1990s the Namibian state has incrementally turned ownership of and the responsibility for its rural water supply to local user groups. While the state withdrew from managing resources directly, it continued to circumscribe the ways in which local communities should govern them. In so doing, a “new commons” was created. Inclusive participation became the leitmo…
Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia
In the course of decentralization, pastoral communities in Namibia have had to find new ways to share their most salient resource, water, and the costs involved in providing it. Using data from sixty communities, we examine (1) whether and to what extent different sharing rules emerge, (2) how variations can be explained, (3) how rules are perceived and influence success, and (4) what economic consequences they have. Our results reveal that eithe…
Subsidized elephants
After independence, and in accordance with global environmental policies, the government of Namibia partly transferred the responsibility for managing wildlife and water to local communities. In this article, we use the concept of environmental justice as a theoretical guide to explore the combined effects that these new policies have had for pastoralists in arid, rural Namibia. We find, firstly, that partly due to conservation efforts, the eleph…
Institutional multiplexity
Natural resource management has changed profoundly in recent decades emphasizing new legislation that transfers responsibilities to local user groups. In this article, I follow changing water policies to Namibia and show that the enactment of policy in local institutions deviates from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) blueprints and design. To understand why, I examine the theoretical premises of CBNRM. CBNRM is informed by rati…
It’s Our Fault
International surveys suggest people increasingly agree the climate is changing and humans are the cause. One reading of this is that people have adopted the scientific point of view. Based on a sample of 28 ethnographic cases we argue that this conclusion might be premature. Communities merge scientific explanations with local knowledge in hybrid ways. This is possible because both discourses blame humans as the cause of the changes they observe…
What Does the Situation Say? Theorizing Multiple Understandings of Climate Change
Our ways of knowing the weather are transforming. Climate change modifies weather patterns, and the globalization of scientific knowledge promotes new ways of making the weather intelligible. Following both transformations, I explore how Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) in Namibia entertain various Indigenous, religious, political, and scientific explanations for the most distressing weather-related phenomenon they experience-the lack of rain. Inte…
Ontologies of climate change
In Namibia, both Damara pastoralists (ǂNūkhoen) and scientists agree that it rains less frequently than before. To explain their observations, however, scientists refer to carbon dioxide molecules, while the pastoralists point to social tensions, neoliberalism, and failures of the postcolonial state. To understand this discrepancy, I ask whether what scientists call precipitation and what Damara call ǀnanus are really the same thing. Engaging wit…
World organisations, world events and world objects
Societies are becoming increasingly aware that they owe their emergence, wealth and industrialisation to their influence as a geophysical force. Social and environmental scientists have analysed the genesis of this self-reflection and pointed to past failures that have led to this predicament. Following the gradually beginning research on differing temporalities, temporal practices and time regimes in the climate change discourse, this article sh…
Eleven Namibian rains
The Damara pastoralists ( ǂnūkhoen) in Namibia distinguish a diverse range of rains. Some rains kill livestock, others care for insects and still others wash away the footprints of the deceased, allowing the person to exist in the spirit realm. While anthropologists have documented cultural classifications like the Namibian rains for decades, we still lack a convincing theory to explain how they come to exist. To address this, I develop a phenome…
Social Constructions of Climate Futures
Climate research has established a cultural authority in modelling our future with climate change, and often uses a harmful impacts frame to communicate about climate change and climate futures. This paper investigates the social constructions of climate futures by analyzing how the harmful impacts frame resonates and is reframed in three social arenas – news media, climate movements, and local communities. Data for this study stems from a larger…
Culture as response
To explain cultural diversity, many theories refer to the social construction of reality. In this telling, we frame the world to make it meaningful. In my analysis of what people in Namibia and Germany know about “SARS‐Cov‐2” and “climate change,” I propose an anti‐constructivist alternative. Drawing on the work of the phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels, I argue that experience comes first and exceeds language and the conceptual and symbolic ord…
Empathy Beyond the Human. The Social Construction of a Multispecies World
In Namibia, Damara pastoralists share the environment with many beings including elephants, tricksters, and winds. While the importance of other-than-human subjectivity is well established, its methodological, epistemological, and ontological challenges are less settled. To address them, we combine expertise from anthropology and philosophy to ask how this world becomes what it is, using Edith Steins's notion of empathy (Einfühlung) as a theoreti…
Atmospheres
Atmospheres are the overall feeling of a situation that people experience individually and collectively. They are created by the affective relationships between the human and non-human, material and immaterial bodies that comprise a situation. Yet an atmosphere is at the same time more than the sum of its parts. People often experience atmospheres as something that cannot be put into words easily; nevertheless, atmospheres enable or disable certa…
Collective Loneliness
Damara pastoralists experience January as !Ūke-ai (collective loneliness). This is also how they experience the time after a drought. To explore this feeling, I draw on the phenomenology of Hermann Schmitz, who suggests that we take emotions out of the “box” of the psyche and theorize them as atmospheres. In this view, every situation is a constellation of human and nonhuman bodies, and atmospheres are the felt space in between that connects and …
Phenomenology, by comparison
Both phenomenology and anthropology study lived experience, but they have traditionally done so in different ways. Phenomenology aims to identify universal structures of experience via the epoché, reduction and eidetic variation. Anthropology, by contrast, foregrounds cultural diversity as documented through ethnography. Ethnographic accounts provide thousands of cases of lived experience, far more varied than any single mind could generate throu…
How to Be Hopeful About Climate Change
Why do people in climate‐vulnerable regions of Kenya and Namibia express more hope for the future than many in Germany, despite facing greater environmental threats? Drawing on ethnographic research and the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, we make two arguments. First, in contrast to structural theories, we see hope as tied not to economic security but to experiences of “captivity” or constraint. In Germany, the second half of the 20th century was m…
Sociology (10 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (5 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (5 works) · Pastoralism (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (4 works) · Economics (4 works) · Environmental ethics (4 works)