Occasional Paper Series

Growing Old in the Tanzanian Periphery

2020-10-12T13:45:27Z

Growing Old in the Tanzanian Periphery Deter, Melanie This thesis explores different life situations of elderly people in rural Tanzania. It carves out how the process of ageing impacts these elderlies’ lives, highlights the heterogeneity within Africa’s older populations and thereby calibrates the “dominant narrative of Africa’s older people as homogeneously disadvantaged” (Aboderin 2017: 644). In order to do so, this thesis highlights the disparities in capacity and privilege that exist within this population by taking a relational perspective: it views the elderlies’ lives with regard to their life-courses, in relation to inter-generational aspects as well as in interconnections with social markers, particularly class and gender.
In rural Tanzania, many family structures change due to the out-migration of younger generations to urban centres. Thus, the elderlies “lives and well-being are fundamentally impacted by the emigration of their children” (King et al. 2017: 185). Applying a mobility perspective, this thesis is concerned with translocal (im)mobilities of elderlies’ families, especially with how care work and support are arranged within those translocal networks. The thesis further pays attention to the mobility of the ageing people and their bodies – to how ageing of the bodies impacts the elderlies’ interaction and movements through the environment and how this coins the elderlies’ everyday lives.
Not only in political terms, the elderly in Sub-Saharan Africa seem to be a marginalised group, but also in science, many scholars speak of a lack of research in this field (Maharaj 2013; Hoffman & Pype 2016; Cohen & Menken 2006). This thesis contributes to this research gap by presenting qualitative insights into some elderlies’ perceptions and experiences of ageing. Importantly, the starting point of this thesis is not the interest in the elderlies’ old age security alone but overcomes this vulnerability-oriented perspective on their lives: it highlights what actually matters to the elderlies – not only for their livelihood security but for their individual wellbeing.

Politik internationaler Klimaverhandlungen

2020-10-12T13:15:30Z

Politik internationaler Klimaverhandlungen Dittmann, Johannes; Bauriedel, Teresa; Bock, Thomas; Götz, Johanns; Hellwig, Vera; Schmitt, Daniel; Spitzley, Bennedikt; Vesper, Rene

Zufluchtsorte

2020-10-12T13:15:28Z

Zufluchtsorte Rott, Lena; Gabriel, Roxana In der aktuellen kontroversen Debatte um Flüchtlinge in Deutschland stehen insbesondere Aufnahmelager der Länder sowie Unterkünfte in den einzelnen Kommunen im Mittelpunkt des Interesses von Medien, Politik und Aktivistengruppen. Durch das Aufeinandertreffen divergierender Meinungen werden Flüchtlingsunterkünfte zu konflikthaften Räumen. Die vorliegende Arbeit greift Diskussionen und Aushandlungsprozesse in und um den Raum der Flüchtlingsunterkunft auf und untersucht lokale Prozesse der Migration am Beispiel der Stadt Remscheid. Im Fokus stehen dabei keine einzelne MigrantInnengruppen oder spezifische Aspekte der Migration, sondern der Raum als soziales Produkt. Dieser wird nach Lefebvre durch Bedeutungszuschreibungen und alltägliche Handlungen kontunierlich produziert. Die übergeordnete Fragestellung der Arbeit lautet daher:
Wie wird der Raum der Flüchtlingsunterkunft produziert?
Der Zugang über den Raum ermöglicht es, unterschiedliche Themen und Ansätze, wie bspw. das Konzept des othering, Studien zum Prozess des Wartens oder Abhandlungen zu Sauberkeit und Schmutz in die Untersuchung aufzunehmen und zueinander in Beziehung zu setzen. Um die übergeordnete Forschungsfrage anhand des empirischen Materials beantworten bzw. diskutieren zu können, bedienen wir uns unterschiedlicher theoretischer Ansätze, darunter die Raumkonzepte der Sozialgeographie, der Produktion des Raums nach Lefebvre sowie de Certeaus Theorie der Alltagspraktiken.
Die auf Basis des empirischen Materials herausgearbeiteten diversen Bedeutungsproduktionen werden anhand von fünf Raumkonstruktionen systematisiert. Der Raum der Exklusion, des Übergangs, des Fremden, der Hilfsbedürftigkeit und der Raum des Wartens sind nicht separat zu betrachten, sondern stellen ineinandergreifende Perspektiven auf den Raum der Flüchtlingsunterkunft dar. Dieser wird durch rechtliche Vorgaben konzipiert bzw. eingegrenzt. Die Instrumente der Exklusion, die Grenzziehungen zwischen politisch berechtigten Bürgern und Nicht-Bürgern, werden durch die Unterscheidung zwischen Eigen und Fremd, durch institutionelles als auch gesellschaftliches othering, verstärkt. Andererseits werden die Grenzen des Raums der Flüchtlingsunterkunft versetzt, wenn durch die Bevölkerung Angebote und Handlungsmöglichkeiten für Asylsuchende geschaffen werden. Währenddessen suchen Menschen, die im Raum der Flüchtlingsunterkunft untergebracht sind, ihre Situation zu verbessern. Sie wenden individuelle Taktiken an, die es ihnen ermöglichen, Grenzen zu umgehen und den eigenen Handlungsspielraum zu vergrößern. Die vorliegende Analyse zeigt die Komplexität der ineinandergreifenden Raumkonstruktionen und fördert durch die Untersuchung verschiedenster Perspektiven das Verständnis für das Leben in und um die Remscheider Flüchtlingsunterkünfte.

(Inter-)nationale Klimapolitik und die Produktion des Raumes

2020-10-12T14:46:51Z

(Inter-)nationale Klimapolitik und die Produktion des Raumes von Werder, Saskia Antonia The present master thesis analyzes REDD+, a market-based climate mitigation instrument designed by the UNFCCC to reduce and prevent carbon dioxide emissions from tropical regions. The analysis presented hereafter aims at both understanding the preconditions for REDD+ to be implemented globally, and at examining the impacts of REDD+ on peoples’ everyday lives in rural Indonesia. While scientific research about advantages, limitations and impacts of REDD+ is diverse and abundant, this thesis presents a novel approach to analyze REDD+ by using Henri Lefebvre’s theory on “the production of space” as theoretical background. Bringing in Lefebvre’s conceptualization of “space” as being actively produced by various actors across various scales, allows for an encompassing analysis of REDD+ from global to local scale, linking politicoeconomic dynamics with everyday micro-social processes.
Literature review was chosen as a method to analyze processes at the global scale. To assess micro-social processes at the local scale, an ethnographic three-month field research was conducted at a REDD+ project site “Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership” in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Open participative observation, ethnographic interviews and focused interviews represent the pillars of the empirical data collection.
Analysis of literature shows that tropical forest and peatland regions to be successfully inserted into a global carbon market, must at first undergo a discursive, scientific and technological transformation which turns them into abstract space: UNFCCC politics discursively evokes a spatial imagination of tropical regions of being exposed to a win-win-win-situation (local development, cost efficient climate protection, and nature conservation). Carbon arithmetic and remote sensing technology create quantifiable representations of tropical landscapes, marking them as so-called carbon sinks. These produced spaces then are given an exchange value by being converted into the fictitious commodity “CO2e”. Hence tropical regions become tradable on the international carbon market which, in turn, justifies the international control of local peoples’ daily use of these very same regions.
Results from empirical data analysis show that REDD+ project implementation strongly impacts the way villagers produce their social space locally. Practical use, conception and perception of space are influenced and altered. While before, spatial practice was focused on cultivation and resource exploitation for daily income, it then was turned into project-compliant performance engaging all available local workforce for REDD+ ends. New concepts of space, propelled by both (inter)national carbon sequestration proponents and their opponents defending customary land rights, enter the local scene. In consequence, new discourses, new land use maps as well as new laws on customary land rights are imposed, giving power to those ones who introduced them. Prior to REDD+, (physical) space was primarily used and not conceived of, and hence ideas about space and its (customary) use were strictly bound to the body, thus remaining fluid and uncodified. Spatial perception changed insofar as villagers now hope for the restoration of the village’s degraded forests. Those ones actively involved in the REDD+ project hope for convergence with “city culture” due to increased wealth and the village’s internationalization. Still, there is distrust amongst local citizens and a major perception that REDD+ will not change the living conditions on the ground, just as any other project hasn’t done before. The depicted changes in the local production of space eventually lead to accelerated rural class formation, an increased recurrence on local adat identity in a multiethnic village, and the marginalization of local people in the carbon trade profit, conceding them, if ever at all, an extremely small amount of carbon rights (400ha in a project region of 120.000ha).
On a meta-level, the afore-mentioned results lead to the conclusion that REDD+ changes the relationship between man and nature at selective locations in rural tropical regions whereas global economic structures, and hence the societal relationship with nature, remain unchanged. Nature is turned into an abstract sign and prohibition of resource use is imposed. Responsibilities for climate protection are shifted from global North to global South, justifying the subordination of people’s everyday life at REDD+ project sites to a carbon sequestration rationale. Nature itself is being fetishized, becoming a tradable good only if untouched, voided by human use and submitted to highly technologized and scientifically elaborate quantification. This all serving the goal to achieve a “frenetic mobilization of space” (Lefebvre) which now is extended from the city to nature, serving to buffer worldwide overaccumulation of capital.
To conclude, this research has shown that i) REDD+ is a very powerful instrument both in the international arena by evoking hope for easy and cost-efficient climate protection to feed the global carbon economy with cheap CO2e-certificates, and in places of project implementation where it causes domination of peoples’ daily land and resource use; ii) Despite of the REDD+ project’s failure, Indonesia with its vast territory of tropical forests and peatlands will probably adhere to its REDD+ policy. Given the unclear situation of customary land rights throughout the country and the strong pressure of REDD+ projects on the codification of land rights, there is a real danger that local peoples’ access to resources will be strongly limited, while at the same time giving them no secure access to carbon rights; iii) Lefebvre’s theory of the “production of space” has proven to be fruitful for the analysis of socio-economic processes across scales. Theory use can be developed by further elaborating on Lefebvre’s concept of “nature” and by applying additional concepts/theories to look at micro-social interaction from different viewpoints.