C Greiner
Biographic Data
| ID | 47621 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Greiner |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Greiner |
| SIGNATURE | GREINER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cologne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6771-373X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 351 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
The wilderness fetish: The mystification of nature conservation in the age of capital
Recent proposals for large-scale nature conservation, such as Half-Earth (Socialism) or the 30 × 30 agenda, rely on a distorted notion of nature as a pristine realm untouched by human influence. This idea, which we term the ‘wilderness fetish’, builds on the historically produced separation of nature and society central to capitalist modes of accumulation. In upholding a moral and aesthetic ideal of untouched nature, the wilderness fetish conceal…
Governance of future-making: Green hydrogen in Namibia and South Africa
The Aftermath – What Future for African Studies (in Europe?). A View From Behind the Scenes of Ecas9
In the spring of 2023, the ninth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) took place in Cologne. Though not unexpected (or unusual) this event sparked critical comments and questions. As the organisers, we understand and appreciate this criticism. We, therefore, felt the need to respond to at least some of them, partly because we also asked ourselves many of these questions before, during, and after the conference. At the same time, we want …
The political ecology of geothermal development: Green sacrifice zones or energy landscapes of value
This contribution explores the potential of large-scale geothermal projects to benefit local communities, a topic about which little is known. We address this gap in the scholarly literature by focusing on Iceland and Kenya, two countries that have pioneered geothermal power generation infrastructure for many decades. While many large-scale renewable energy schemes have ended up as green sacrifice zones, we inquire into whether there are also pos…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present and Future
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the …
Futuring Africa: An Introduction
Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression
Roads to Change: Livelihoods, Land Disputes, and Anticipation of Future Developments in Rural Kenya
This article examines how rural roads relate to differences in livelihood patterns, attitudes toward social change, and land disputes in Baringo, Kenya. Although their direct use is limited for many residents, roads have a highly differentiating impact. While some households orientate themselves toward roads, those relying more on (agro-)pastoralist livelihoods avoid their proximity. Our findings suggest that better-off households are not the onl…
Export horticulture and labour migration in Kenya: Translocality and transiency in a secondary town
Based on a study of globalized export horticulture at Lake Naivasha, Kenya, this paper explores urban development at the intersections of foreign capital investments and translocal labour mobility. We argue that patterns of translocality largely track the specific requirements and temporalities of the cut flower and vegetable industries, lending an ephemeral and provisional character to the town of Naivasha and the urban sprawl encompassing it. D…
Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya
The ongoing fragmentation of pastoral drylands is a matter of concern throughout Africa. Using the example of rangelands in northern Baringo County, Kenya, that were under uniform pastoral use until the late twentieth century, we trace land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) since the 1980s. Based on ethnographic, historical, and remote sensing data, we show how bush encroachment and dryland farming have led to the increasing modification and co…
Cross-Scale Linkages of Centralized Electricity Generation: Geothermal Development and Investor–Community Relations in Kenya
Based on a study of Kenya’s geothermal-energy development in Baringo-Silali, we explore how and with whom government actors and local communities in rural and peripheral areas interact when planning and implementing large-scale power plants. Starting from a comparison of decentralized and centralized energy systems, we demonstrate that the development of this large-scale infrastructure project and the associated investor-community relations are g…
The translocal villagers. Mining, mobility and stratification in post-apartheid South Africa
Internal labour migration from rural areas to urban centres has been and remains one of the dominant patterns of migration in South Africa. Based on data from ethnographic field research, this paper explores the mobility patterns and translocal relations of miners in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. By considering the tension between mobility and locality in a historical and political perspective, the concept of translocality helps to …
Pastoralism and Land-Tenure Change in Kenya: The Failure of Customary Institutions
Until recently, the Pokot in the highlands of the Baringo area in Kenya have practised semi-nomadic pastoralism. Today they are rapidly sedentarizing and in many areas suitable for farming, they are adopting rain-fed agriculture. As a result of these dynamics, claims to individual property on de facto communal rangelands have arisen, and to such an extent that they seriously threaten the peace of the community. This article explores the conflicts…
Land-use change, territorial restructuring, and economies of anticipation in dryland Kenya
Land-use patterns in the Eastern African drylands have changed greatly in recent decades. Ethnographic data from East Pokot, in Kenya's Baringo area, illustrate some of the major dynamics of change and point to relevant drivers. While the pastoral Pokot people managed an open, unfragmented rangeland until the 1990s, wildlife conservation, sedentarization, and land-use intensification, together with increasing contestation of borderlands, have led…
Agricultural change at the margins: Adaptation and intensification in a Kenyan dryland
Land-use and livelihood patterns among Eastern African pastoralists have undergone dramatic change in recent decades. The dynamics in East Pokot effectively illustrate these changes. We focus on the spread and intensification of honey production and crop cultivation, describing the patterns of adaptation and diffusion and the current techniques of production. These processes must be understood as dynamics of agricultural intensification, and not …
Inscribing Identity and Agency on the Landscape: Of Pathways, Places, and the Transition of the Public Sphere in East Pokot, Kenya
Drawing upon the dynamic interrelationship between human agency and space, this article sheds light on the constitution of and relation between "place" and "path" among the pastoral Pokot of East Pokot District in the Kenyan North Rift Valley. It discusses the transformation from a more mobile pastoralist model of spatialization, which relies on a flexible network approach combining paths and places, toward a more "place-making," postpastoralist …
Rural–urban migration, agrarian change, and the environment in Kenya: A critical review of the literature
From Cattle to Corn: Attributes of Emerging Farming Systems of Former Pastoral Nomads in East Pokot, Kenya
Crop cultivation under rain-fed conditions is a recent innovation among the formerly pastoral-nomadic Pokot in north-central Kenya. We have examined the socioecological dynamics of land-use change from an interdisciplinary perspective. The patterns of transition to agropastoralism are closely related to both the biogeophysical attributes of the area and the economic characteristics of the households. While the use of advanced agronomic practices …
Guns, land, and votes: Cattle rustling and the politics of boundary (re)making in Northern Kenya
Livestock raiding among northern Kenya’s pastoralists has changed profoundly in the last decades. Fought with modern weaponry and often extreme violence, raiding is increasingly enmeshed in politicized claims over administrative boundaries, struggles for exclusive access to land, and attempts to establish or safeguard an ethnically homogeneous electoral base. These conflicts are part of Kenya’s troubled politics of decentralization and as such th…
Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Perspectives
The employment of translocality as a research perspective is currently gaining momentum. A growing number of scholars from different research traditions concerned with the dynamics of mobility, migration and socio-spatial interconnectedness have developed conceptual approaches to the term. They usually build on insights from transnationalism while attempting to overcome some of the limitations of this long-established research perspective. As suc…
Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial Conflict in Northern Kenya
Notes on Land-based Conflicts in Kenya's Arid Areas
is a post-doctoral researcher within the research unit “Resil-ience, Collapse and Reorganisation” in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne. His current research focuses on land-use change, conflicts, and the transformation of social-ecological systems in East Pokot, Kenya. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg with a multi-sited ethnography on rural–urban migration in Namibia
Migration, Translocal Networks and Socio-Economic Stratification in Namibia
Rural-urban migration and networks are fundamental for many livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Remittances in cash and kind provide additional income, enhance food security and offer access to viable resources in both rural and urban areas. Migration allows the involved households to benefit from price differences between rural and urban areas. In this contribution, I demonstrate that rural-urban networks not only contribute to poverty alleviatio…
Patterns of Translocality: Migration, Livelihoods and Identities in Northwest Namibia
Social relations in Namibia's southern Kunene region are shaped by translocal patterns of migration, exchange and identity. Young people move to urban areas for schooling and work, older family members return to the countryside upon retirement to take care of the livestock and the rural homesteads. These movements are accompanied by remittances and resource transfers, critical for securing livelihoods in rural as well as in urban contexts. People…
Politikberatung in Deutschland
Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Perspectives
The employment of translocality as a research perspective is currently gaining momentum. A growing number of scholars from different research traditions concerned with the dynamics of mobility, migration and socio-spatial interconnectedness have developed conceptual approaches to the term. They usually build on insights from transnationalism while attempting to overcome some of the limitations of this long-established research perspective. As suc…
Guns, land, and votes: Cattle rustling and the politics of boundary (re)making in Northern Kenya
Livestock raiding among northern Kenya’s pastoralists has changed profoundly in the last decades. Fought with modern weaponry and often extreme violence, raiding is increasingly enmeshed in politicized claims over administrative boundaries, struggles for exclusive access to land, and attempts to establish or safeguard an ethnically homogeneous electoral base. These conflicts are part of Kenya’s troubled politics of decentralization and as such th…
Land-use change, territorial restructuring, and economies of anticipation in dryland Kenya
Land-use patterns in the Eastern African drylands have changed greatly in recent decades. Ethnographic data from East Pokot, in Kenya's Baringo area, illustrate some of the major dynamics of change and point to relevant drivers. While the pastoral Pokot people managed an open, unfragmented rangeland until the 1990s, wildlife conservation, sedentarization, and land-use intensification, together with increasing contestation of borderlands, have led…
Migration, Translocal Networks and Socio-Economic Stratification in Namibia
Rural-urban migration and networks are fundamental for many livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Remittances in cash and kind provide additional income, enhance food security and offer access to viable resources in both rural and urban areas. Migration allows the involved households to benefit from price differences between rural and urban areas. In this contribution, I demonstrate that rural-urban networks not only contribute to poverty alleviatio…
Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial Conflict in Northern Kenya
From Cattle to Corn: Attributes of Emerging Farming Systems of Former Pastoral Nomads in East Pokot, Kenya
Crop cultivation under rain-fed conditions is a recent innovation among the formerly pastoral-nomadic Pokot in north-central Kenya. We have examined the socioecological dynamics of land-use change from an interdisciplinary perspective. The patterns of transition to agropastoralism are closely related to both the biogeophysical attributes of the area and the economic characteristics of the households. While the use of advanced agronomic practices …
The translocal villagers. Mining, mobility and stratification in post-apartheid South Africa
Internal labour migration from rural areas to urban centres has been and remains one of the dominant patterns of migration in South Africa. Based on data from ethnographic field research, this paper explores the mobility patterns and translocal relations of miners in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. By considering the tension between mobility and locality in a historical and political perspective, the concept of translocality helps to …
Pastoralism and Land-Tenure Change in Kenya: The Failure of Customary Institutions
Until recently, the Pokot in the highlands of the Baringo area in Kenya have practised semi-nomadic pastoralism. Today they are rapidly sedentarizing and in many areas suitable for farming, they are adopting rain-fed agriculture. As a result of these dynamics, claims to individual property on de facto communal rangelands have arisen, and to such an extent that they seriously threaten the peace of the community. This article explores the conflicts…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
Agricultural change at the margins: Adaptation and intensification in a Kenyan dryland
Land-use and livelihood patterns among Eastern African pastoralists have undergone dramatic change in recent decades. The dynamics in East Pokot effectively illustrate these changes. We focus on the spread and intensification of honey production and crop cultivation, describing the patterns of adaptation and diffusion and the current techniques of production. These processes must be understood as dynamics of agricultural intensification, and not …
Inscribing Identity and Agency on the Landscape: Of Pathways, Places, and the Transition of the Public Sphere in East Pokot, Kenya
Drawing upon the dynamic interrelationship between human agency and space, this article sheds light on the constitution of and relation between "place" and "path" among the pastoral Pokot of East Pokot District in the Kenyan North Rift Valley. It discusses the transformation from a more mobile pastoralist model of spatialization, which relies on a flexible network approach combining paths and places, toward a more "place-making," postpastoralist …
Governance of future-making: Green hydrogen in Namibia and South Africa
Patterns of Translocality: Migration, Livelihoods and Identities in Northwest Namibia
Social relations in Namibia's southern Kunene region are shaped by translocal patterns of migration, exchange and identity. Young people move to urban areas for schooling and work, older family members return to the countryside upon retirement to take care of the livestock and the rural homesteads. These movements are accompanied by remittances and resource transfers, critical for securing livelihoods in rural as well as in urban contexts. People…
Roads to Change: Livelihoods, Land Disputes, and Anticipation of Future Developments in Rural Kenya
This article examines how rural roads relate to differences in livelihood patterns, attitudes toward social change, and land disputes in Baringo, Kenya. Although their direct use is limited for many residents, roads have a highly differentiating impact. While some households orientate themselves toward roads, those relying more on (agro-)pastoralist livelihoods avoid their proximity. Our findings suggest that better-off households are not the onl…
Notes on Land-based Conflicts in Kenya's Arid Areas
is a post-doctoral researcher within the research unit “Resil-ience, Collapse and Reorganisation” in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne. His current research focuses on land-use change, conflicts, and the transformation of social-ecological systems in East Pokot, Kenya. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg with a multi-sited ethnography on rural–urban migration in Namibia
Cross-Scale Linkages of Centralized Electricity Generation: Geothermal Development and Investor–Community Relations in Kenya
Based on a study of Kenya’s geothermal-energy development in Baringo-Silali, we explore how and with whom government actors and local communities in rural and peripheral areas interact when planning and implementing large-scale power plants. Starting from a comparison of decentralized and centralized energy systems, we demonstrate that the development of this large-scale infrastructure project and the associated investor-community relations are g…
The political ecology of geothermal development: Green sacrifice zones or energy landscapes of value
This contribution explores the potential of large-scale geothermal projects to benefit local communities, a topic about which little is known. We address this gap in the scholarly literature by focusing on Iceland and Kenya, two countries that have pioneered geothermal power generation infrastructure for many decades. While many large-scale renewable energy schemes have ended up as green sacrifice zones, we inquire into whether there are also pos…
Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya
The ongoing fragmentation of pastoral drylands is a matter of concern throughout Africa. Using the example of rangelands in northern Baringo County, Kenya, that were under uniform pastoral use until the late twentieth century, we trace land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) since the 1980s. Based on ethnographic, historical, and remote sensing data, we show how bush encroachment and dryland farming have led to the increasing modification and co…
Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present and Future
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the …
Export horticulture and labour migration in Kenya: Translocality and transiency in a secondary town
Based on a study of globalized export horticulture at Lake Naivasha, Kenya, this paper explores urban development at the intersections of foreign capital investments and translocal labour mobility. We argue that patterns of translocality largely track the specific requirements and temporalities of the cut flower and vegetable industries, lending an ephemeral and provisional character to the town of Naivasha and the urban sprawl encompassing it. D…
Politikberatung in Deutschland
Patterns of Translocality: Migration, Livelihoods and Identities in Northwest Namibia
Social relations in Namibia's southern Kunene region are shaped by translocal patterns of migration, exchange and identity. Young people move to urban areas for schooling and work, older family members return to the countryside upon retirement to take care of the livestock and the rural homesteads. These movements are accompanied by remittances and resource transfers, critical for securing livelihoods in rural as well as in urban contexts. People…
Notes on Land-based Conflicts in Kenya's Arid Areas
is a post-doctoral researcher within the research unit “Resil-ience, Collapse and Reorganisation” in the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Cologne. His current research focuses on land-use change, conflicts, and the transformation of social-ecological systems in East Pokot, Kenya. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg with a multi-sited ethnography on rural–urban migration in Namibia
Migration, Translocal Networks and Socio-Economic Stratification in Namibia
Rural-urban migration and networks are fundamental for many livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Remittances in cash and kind provide additional income, enhance food security and offer access to viable resources in both rural and urban areas. Migration allows the involved households to benefit from price differences between rural and urban areas. In this contribution, I demonstrate that rural-urban networks not only contribute to poverty alleviatio…
Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial Conflict in Northern Kenya
Rural–urban migration, agrarian change, and the environment in Kenya: A critical review of the literature
From Cattle to Corn: Attributes of Emerging Farming Systems of Former Pastoral Nomads in East Pokot, Kenya
Crop cultivation under rain-fed conditions is a recent innovation among the formerly pastoral-nomadic Pokot in north-central Kenya. We have examined the socioecological dynamics of land-use change from an interdisciplinary perspective. The patterns of transition to agropastoralism are closely related to both the biogeophysical attributes of the area and the economic characteristics of the households. While the use of advanced agronomic practices …
Guns, land, and votes: Cattle rustling and the politics of boundary (re)making in Northern Kenya
Livestock raiding among northern Kenya’s pastoralists has changed profoundly in the last decades. Fought with modern weaponry and often extreme violence, raiding is increasingly enmeshed in politicized claims over administrative boundaries, struggles for exclusive access to land, and attempts to establish or safeguard an ethnically homogeneous electoral base. These conflicts are part of Kenya’s troubled politics of decentralization and as such th…
Translocality: Concepts, Applications and Emerging Research Perspectives
The employment of translocality as a research perspective is currently gaining momentum. A growing number of scholars from different research traditions concerned with the dynamics of mobility, migration and socio-spatial interconnectedness have developed conceptual approaches to the term. They usually build on insights from transnationalism while attempting to overcome some of the limitations of this long-established research perspective. As suc…
Inscribing Identity and Agency on the Landscape: Of Pathways, Places, and the Transition of the Public Sphere in East Pokot, Kenya
Drawing upon the dynamic interrelationship between human agency and space, this article sheds light on the constitution of and relation between "place" and "path" among the pastoral Pokot of East Pokot District in the Kenyan North Rift Valley. It discusses the transformation from a more mobile pastoralist model of spatialization, which relies on a flexible network approach combining paths and places, toward a more "place-making," postpastoralist …
Land-use change, territorial restructuring, and economies of anticipation in dryland Kenya
Land-use patterns in the Eastern African drylands have changed greatly in recent decades. Ethnographic data from East Pokot, in Kenya's Baringo area, illustrate some of the major dynamics of change and point to relevant drivers. While the pastoral Pokot people managed an open, unfragmented rangeland until the 1990s, wildlife conservation, sedentarization, and land-use intensification, together with increasing contestation of borderlands, have led…
Agricultural change at the margins: Adaptation and intensification in a Kenyan dryland
Land-use and livelihood patterns among Eastern African pastoralists have undergone dramatic change in recent decades. The dynamics in East Pokot effectively illustrate these changes. We focus on the spread and intensification of honey production and crop cultivation, describing the patterns of adaptation and diffusion and the current techniques of production. These processes must be understood as dynamics of agricultural intensification, and not …
The translocal villagers. Mining, mobility and stratification in post-apartheid South Africa
Internal labour migration from rural areas to urban centres has been and remains one of the dominant patterns of migration in South Africa. Based on data from ethnographic field research, this paper explores the mobility patterns and translocal relations of miners in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. By considering the tension between mobility and locality in a historical and political perspective, the concept of translocality helps to …
Pastoralism and Land-Tenure Change in Kenya: The Failure of Customary Institutions
Until recently, the Pokot in the highlands of the Baringo area in Kenya have practised semi-nomadic pastoralism. Today they are rapidly sedentarizing and in many areas suitable for farming, they are adopting rain-fed agriculture. As a result of these dynamics, claims to individual property on de facto communal rangelands have arisen, and to such an extent that they seriously threaten the peace of the community. This article explores the conflicts…
Cross-Scale Linkages of Centralized Electricity Generation: Geothermal Development and Investor–Community Relations in Kenya
Based on a study of Kenya’s geothermal-energy development in Baringo-Silali, we explore how and with whom government actors and local communities in rural and peripheral areas interact when planning and implementing large-scale power plants. Starting from a comparison of decentralized and centralized energy systems, we demonstrate that the development of this large-scale infrastructure project and the associated investor-community relations are g…
Roads to Change: Livelihoods, Land Disputes, and Anticipation of Future Developments in Rural Kenya
This article examines how rural roads relate to differences in livelihood patterns, attitudes toward social change, and land disputes in Baringo, Kenya. Although their direct use is limited for many residents, roads have a highly differentiating impact. While some households orientate themselves toward roads, those relying more on (agro-)pastoralist livelihoods avoid their proximity. Our findings suggest that better-off households are not the onl…
Export horticulture and labour migration in Kenya: Translocality and transiency in a secondary town
Based on a study of globalized export horticulture at Lake Naivasha, Kenya, this paper explores urban development at the intersections of foreign capital investments and translocal labour mobility. We argue that patterns of translocality largely track the specific requirements and temporalities of the cut flower and vegetable industries, lending an ephemeral and provisional character to the town of Naivasha and the urban sprawl encompassing it. D…
Land-use and Land-cover Changes in Pastoral Drylands: Long-term Dynamics, Economic Change, and Shifting Socioecological Frontiers in Baringo, Kenya
The ongoing fragmentation of pastoral drylands is a matter of concern throughout Africa. Using the example of rangelands in northern Baringo County, Kenya, that were under uniform pastoral use until the late twentieth century, we trace land-use and land-cover changes (LULCCs) since the 1980s. Based on ethnographic, historical, and remote sensing data, we show how bush encroachment and dryland farming have led to the increasing modification and co…
Pastoralism in Africa: Past, Present and Future
Pastoralism has shaped livelihoods and landscapes on the African continent for millennia. Mobile livestock husbandry has generally been portrayed as an economic strategy that successfully met the challenges of low biomass productivity and environmental variability in arid and semi-arid environments. This volume focuses on the emergence, diversity, and inherent dynamics of pastoralism in Africa based on research during a twelve-year period on the …
Futuring Africa: An Introduction
Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression
The political ecology of geothermal development: Green sacrifice zones or energy landscapes of value
This contribution explores the potential of large-scale geothermal projects to benefit local communities, a topic about which little is known. We address this gap in the scholarly literature by focusing on Iceland and Kenya, two countries that have pioneered geothermal power generation infrastructure for many decades. While many large-scale renewable energy schemes have ended up as green sacrifice zones, we inquire into whether there are also pos…
Making heterogeneous infrastructure futures in and beyond the global south
Infrastructure has never been a single thing, understood in a universal way. Yet, there has long been a broad overarching orthodox approach in which ‘experts’ create replicable, stable, large, networked systems to control nature and ensure regular, predictable flows of people, materials and information. Within this orthodoxy, infrastructure is narrated as good, contributing to economic and social development. In this paper, we identify environmen…
The Aftermath – What Future for African Studies (in Europe?). A View From Behind the Scenes of Ecas9
In the spring of 2023, the ninth European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) took place in Cologne. Though not unexpected (or unusual) this event sparked critical comments and questions. As the organisers, we understand and appreciate this criticism. We, therefore, felt the need to respond to at least some of them, partly because we also asked ourselves many of these questions before, during, and after the conference. At the same time, we want …
Governance of future-making: Green hydrogen in Namibia and South Africa
The wilderness fetish: The mystification of nature conservation in the age of capital
Recent proposals for large-scale nature conservation, such as Half-Earth (Socialism) or the 30 × 30 agenda, rely on a distorted notion of nature as a pristine realm untouched by human influence. This idea, which we term the ‘wilderness fetish’, builds on the historically produced separation of nature and society central to capitalist modes of accumulation. In upholding a moral and aesthetic ideal of untouched nature, the wilderness fetish conceal…
Geography (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Economics (11 works) · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology (11 works) · Agriculture (10 works) · Ecology (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Economic growth (7 works) · Livelihood (6 works) · Pastoralism (6 works)