Publications

Depoliticising Humanitarian Action - Paradigms, Dilemmas, Resistance

Isabelle Desportes , Alice Corbet, Ayesha Siddiqi (Editors)

Link to the book page

Is it ever possible to separate humanitarian action from politics? Drawing on the experience of both practitioners and researchers, this book is an essential guide to the thorny interplay between what are too often considered as separate worlds.

The humanitarian sector aims to separate its work from politics, arguing that independence and neutrality are essential in order to gain entry into disaster and conflict settings. Yet, humanitarian claims of non-involvement in politics have also been dismissed as misleading, naive, or counter-productive. In practice, humanitarians find themselves working within political settings on a daily basis. This book investigates the theory behind depoliticisation, the political background and context behind humanitarian action, and the daily dilemmas faced by practitioners walking that fine line between principles and pragmatism. Finally, this book considers the importance of decolonising mainstream understandings of humanitarianism and politics, and of placing understandings from the Global South at the heart of the discussion.

Balancing theoretical insights with empirical grounding, field examples, and recommendations for policy and practice, this book is perfect for researchers and students in humanitarian studies, political science, international relations, human rights, development studies, disaster studies, and peace and conflict studies, as well as humanitarian practitioners and policy makers.

Routledge Handbook of International Organization

Marieke Louis , Giulia Scalettaris , Marieke Louis (dir.), Bob Reinalda (dir.),

Link to the book page

This completely revised and rewritten handbook gives an overview of international organization (IO) as a dynamic field of research that adds to our understanding of global and regional relations and related domestic politics. Bringing together international scholars from a range of disciplines, it considers both IO as a process and multilateral organizations as institutions. This handbook is divided into five parts:

I.          Documentation, sources and perspectives

II.         International secretariats as bureaucracies

III.       Actors within and beyond international bureaucracies

IV.       Processes within and beyond international bureaucracies

V.        Challenges to international organizations

Containing new chapters on topics such as the anthropological perspective, IO secretariats in several continents outside of Europe, feminization, the digital turn and challenges to IO legitimacy, the contributors reflect on the progression of IO studies from a burgeoning field to a well‑established subfield of international relations and the move away from scholarship based mainly in North‑Western Europe and the United States. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of IOs, global governance, diplomacy and foreign policy, as well as practitioners of multilateral cooperation.

„Local Climate and Energy Politics”

Ulrike Zeigermann , Gilles Lepesant

Neues Sonderheft „Local Climate and Energy Politics” in der ZfVP

Das neue Sonderheft „Local Climate and Energy Politics” widmet sich den Herausforderungen, die sich durch Klimawandel und Energiekrise für Städte, Gemeinden und Regionen ergeben. Es wurde von den beiden assoziierten CMB Forscher:innen Ulrike Zeigermann (JMU) und Gilles Lepesant (CNRS) herausgegeben und in der Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft veröffentlicht.

Städte und Gemeinden stehen heute vor tiefgreifenden Veränderungen, die ihre sozialen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Strukturen in Frage stellen. So gefährdet der Klimawandel mit Rekordtemperaturen und extremen Wetterereignissen die Versorgungssicherheit und soziale Stabilität in Städten und ländlichen Regionen. Das veränderte geopolitische Umfeld seit Februar 2022 führt zudem zu verstärktem Druck, sich von fossilen Abhängigkeiten zu lösen. Die Umsetzung von Klimaschutzmaßnahmen und der Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien auf der lokalen und regionalen Ebene stoßen jedoch oft auf Widerstand. Auch bei Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen stellt sich die Frage, inwiefern diese sozial gerecht gestaltet werden (können). Andererseits zeugen Dynamiken in Bioenergiedörfern oder Energiegemeinschaften von vielversprechenden lokalen Innovationen. In diesem Zusammenhang stellen sich vielfältige Fragen zu neuen Formen der Kooperation und des Konflikts in der lokalen und regionalen Klima- und Energiepolitik. Einige dieser Fragen werden in den Beiträgen des Sonderheftes adressiert:

• Zeigermann, U., Lepesant, G. Local climate and energy politics: an introduction. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 131–140 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00613-y
• Lepesant, G. Between hard protection measures, nature-based solutions, and managed retreat: Adapting coastal areas to sea level rise in the Netherlands and France. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 141–156 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00591-1
• Dreyfus, M. Litigation as an obstacle to renewable energy development in France—tilting at windmills?. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 181–205 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00598-8
• Töller, A.E., Garske, B., Rasch, D. et al. Failing successfully? Local referendums and ENGOs’ lawsuits as challenges to wind energy expansion in Germany. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 273–301 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00610-1
• Thomeczek, J.P. Die (geringe) Beteiligung am Berliner Klimaentscheid 2023: Empirische Erklärungsversuche. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 303–322 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00609-8
• Beuerle, B. The Sakhalin Climate Experiment. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 251–272 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00606-x
• Guhl, F., Zeigermann, U. Local heat transitions—a comparative case study of five bioenergy villages in Northern and Southern Germany. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 157–179 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00596-w
• Dudka, A., Magnani, N. Do energy communities need to be local? A comparative study of two energy cooperatives in Europe. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 227–249 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00601-2
• Kochskämper, E. Just transformations through resilience experiments? Comparing policy rationales and narratives of the Global South and North in the Resilient Cities Network. Z Vgl Polit Wiss 18, 207–226 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12286-024-00599-7

Das Special Issue geht aus einer internationalen Fachtagung hervor, die im Oktober 2022 am Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin im Rahmen des Forschungsschwerpunktes zu „Umwelt, Klima, Energie: Gesellschaften und ihre ökologischen Herausforderungen“ unter der Leitung von Gilles Lepesant und Ulrike Zeigermann veranstaltet wurde.

Les Enfants de Georg Simmel

Denis Thouard

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) fut un des inventeurs de la sociologie, mais aussi un philosophe original, un véritable personnage du Berlin 1900, ouvert aux arts et à toutes les manifestations de la modernité. Enseignant (sans solde) à l’Université de Berlin pendant des décennies, il exerça une influence diffuse considérable. Un public varié se pressait à ses cours, venu de toute part. On considérait être admis dans ses privatissimi comme un rare privilège. Solitaire, sans ancrage fort dans l’institution, sans « école », il sombra dans l’oubli après sa mort et ne fut redécouvert que tardivement.

Mais ses idées continuaient d’inspirer une quantité de ses « enfants » spirituels. Le présent ouvrage en rassemble une large palette sous forme d’une photo de groupe qui réservera bien des surprises.

D’Union soviétique aux Etats-Unis, des rangs de la philosophie à ceux de la sociologie, des historiens de l’art aux écrivains, journalistes, à plusieurs personnages inclassables, une histoire souterraine de la vie intellectuelle du XXe siècle se dessine à partir de Simmel.

Sous la direction de Denis Thouard

Les auteurs : Olivier Agard (Paris) ; Matthieu Amat (Lausanne) ; Wolfgang Asholt (Berlin) ; Jacques-Olivier Bйgot (Rennes) ; Dominique Bourel (Jérusalem) ; Veronica Ciantelli (Paris) ; Daniel Cefai (Paris) ; Franck Fischbach (Paris) ; Gregor Fitzi (Florence) ; Mildred Galland-Szymkowiak (Paris) ; Jean-Claude Gens (Dijon) ; Gerald Hartung (Wuppertal) ; Servanne Jollivet (Paris) ; Nicole C. Karafyllis (Brunswick) ; Sarah Kiani (Bвle) ; Rainer Maria Kiesow (Paris) ; Christoph Kцnig (OsnabrÑŒck) ; Camille Laclau Saint Guily (Paris) ; Françoise Lartillot (Metz) ; Jacques Le Rider (Paris) ; Alessia J. Magliacane (Paris) ; Christian Papilloud (Halle) ; Nadia Podzemskaia (Paris) ; Gérard Raulet (Paris) ; Philipp Redl (Freiburg-in-Breisgau) ; Silvia Richter (Berlin) ; Davide Ruggieri (Bologne) ; Laure Schapper (Paris) ; Maria Stavrinaki (Paris) ; Denis Thouard (Berlin) ; Serguei Tchougonnikov (Dijon) ; Monika Tokarzewska (Torun) ; Caterina Zanfi (Paris).

Energy Security in Eastern Europe since Decoupling from Russia: The Fragile Balance between Geopolitics, National Politics and Vernacular Perceptions, KonKoop In:Security Report 2/2024

Sophie Lambroschini , Nadja Douglas, Michael LaBelle, Vineta Kleinberga, Ana Otilia Nuțu, Andrian Prokip

Sound Archives From the Margins of the Soviet: Recording Gypsy Tales and Songs in the Late Soviet Union

Nathalie Moine

Link to the chapter

The chapter recounts how two Muscovites, writer and poet Efim Druts (1937–2018) and bard Aleksei Gessler (1945–1998), decided to record Romani tales, songs and oral memories in the Brezhnevian USSR, at a time when Gypsy folklore was rediscovered and reintegrated into official culture. Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union made it possible to clarify the sociological context of these sound archives, notably through the use of black literature characteristic of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s. Druts and Gessler thus belong to the very small circle of specialists in the Gypsy world, which developed on the bangs of the academic world in the Soviet Union and, more broadly, in Eastern Europe, and documented the complex sociological universe of populations forced into sedentarization and constituted as objects of cultural promotion while in reality retaining a specific way of life.

Nazan Maksudyan & Hilal Alkan (2024): Exile and fieldwork as liminal conditions: Leonore Kosswig’s life and research in Turkey, 1937–1973

Nazan Maksudyan , Hilal Alkan

https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2024.2406599

This paper looks into the life and ethnographic work of Leonore Kosswig (1904–1973), who lived in Turkey as a German exile from 1937 until her death in 1973. While her husband, Curt Kosswig was invited to Istanbul University as a full professor, Leonore had no institutional affiliation. However, she traveled with her husband around Anatolia and joined his fieldwork, during which she developed an interest in local customs and the daily life of villagers and nomadic tribes. Leonore decided to stay in Turkey after Curt’s return to Germany in 1955. Her excellent command of Turkish and former experience in fieldwork allowed her to become one of the first women to conduct ethnographic research in Turkey. Until her death, she pursued several pioneering research projects on wedding customs, tablet weaving, nomadic life, and ownership signs. Relying on her research publications and ego-documents, we employ a biographical approach to articulate upon her liminal existence in exile. In dialogue with research on twentieth century forced migrations that engage with the concepts of in-betweenness and liminality, we address Leonore’s liminal existences on the edge of two worlds on numerous planes. In particular, we argue that Kosswig’s liminality was reflected on her exilic existence in Istanbul as a foreign woman; her ethnographic research agenda into liminal geographic locations, marginalized communities, and disappearing cultural artifacts; and her gendered navigation of foreignness and nativeness.

Geographische Zeitschrift Band 112, September 2024, Heft 3-4 Erscheinungsdatum: 26.09.2024

Yann Calbérac , Mélina Germes

A Radical Concern: Advocacy for an Ingenious Anthropology of Music

Denis Laborde

https://newdiversities.mmg.mpg.de/?page_id=22776

https://hal.science/hal-04708375

In three steps, this paper suggests erecting ingenuity as a tool of investigation: Ethnomusicology in migration contexts, Strategies and tactics, Categorical assignments. Ingenuity is not to be understood as a gap in epistemic devices but as an instrument that unleashes the gaze, as a tool that aims to ensure the accuracy of observation reports, and especially as a generator of indignation that may take us out of our “comfort zone.” A comfort zone is to be understood here as a knowledge configuration that encourages us to think from established categories that assign people to the place provided for them by existing devices, forgetting to take into account the ways these categories are instituted. This leads us to pay attention to the “categorical service” that ethnomusicology’s conceptual frameworks provide to our ways of thinking.