Publications

Dieter Boris hat die deutschsprachige Entwicklungssozio­logie sowie Debatten um globale Wirtschafts- und Krisenprozesse und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen in Lateinamerika geprägt. Der Jubiläumsband zu seinem 75. Geburtstag versammelt Texte aus mehreren Jahrzehnten, die jeweils von WeggefährtInnen und FreundInnen kommentiert und eingeordnet werden. Ein Wesenszug seines empirisch orientierten Marxismus ist, dass er sich den konjunkturellen Moden des Wissenschaftsbetriebs entzieht.

Drawing on a rich body of multimethod field research, this book examines the ways in which Indonesian and Philippine religious actors have fostered conflict resolution and under what conditions these efforts have been met with success or limited success.

In Mexico, protests against large scale infrastructure and resource projects have increased over the last decade (Andrews et al. 2017).

The variety in climate, vegetation, and population density in Central Africa is enormous, but some of the main features of policymaking and informal rules of politics—at first sight at least—appear quite similar between N’Djaména and Kinshasa, between Libreville and Bangui, in a vast territory bigger than the European Union: clientelism, personalization of power, politicized ethnicity, the impact of external intervention, and a legacy of repeated political violence establish some constant features.

There is an increasing consensus that, across the globe, austerity policies have often relegated fiscal pressures from the state to the urban scale. These are sometimes discussed under the label ‘austerity urbanism’. This article explores urban authoritarian neoliberalism through an examination of spatial and scalar manifestations of neoliberal restructuring. It asks how austerity urbanism’s rescaling takes effect in spatially variegated ways in the intermediate city of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico.

For the past four years, the Fund for Peace has ranked the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan as the ‘most fragile states’ in the world, in its annual Fragile States Index (FSI). The three countries’ almost identical scores suggest comparability; however, critics raise concerns about the FSI's data aggregation methods, and its conflation of causes and consequences. This article treads the uncharted path of unpacking the empirical realities that hide behind FSI indicators.

Gegenwärtig können im ‚globalen Norden‘ Trends beobachtet werden, die strukturell rassistische, teils nationalistische Abschottungen unter anderem der Europäischen Union verstärken. Liberale Demokratien werden autoritär restrukturiert, während Solidarität erodiert. Mit der eigenen imperialen Lebensweise verbundene gesellschaftliche und ökologische Probleme werden externalisiert, Grenzzäune und Abschottungstechnologien sichern den Fortbestand globaler sozialer Ungleichheit.

In December 2016, Gambian dictator Jammeh was surprisingly ousted through the ballot box by a democratically motivated opposition. With this remarkable change, tables also turned for Gambian migrants. Gambians abroad were called upon to return and help rebuild the nation, while political interests in host states increased to return “irregular” migrants. In what ways can migrant return be politically influential, especially after a critical juncture as in the Gambia?

This paper aims to discuss the issue of the judicial protection of human rights in post-conflict Burundi. In doing so, it provides some insights into Burundi’s legal and institutional framework. It further assesses this framework through the prism of the efficiency of institutional safeguards provided for by this framework, particularly the judiciary, as the cornerstone, both of human rights protection and of rule of law.

D’influents travaux de stature classique portant sur l’Etat africain avancent, en généralisant sur le continent entier, que le néopatrimonialisme « marche » pour les élites africaines, qui usent du système étatique formel à des fins privées et, dans l’ensemble, à leur propre profit. Cependant, cette approche est, dans une large mesure, une abstraction faite à partir de conditions fort variables.

Unpacking the common stereotypical descriptions of the “criminal male sub-Saharan African refugee” in contrast to the “helpless trafficked women” in the European media, this paper questions contemporary European perspectives on migration, with references to gender. The research is based on a critical exploration of the representation of male and female refugees in German and British media outlets. It links predominant gender regimes to the gendered presentation of refugees within the migration-security nexus in the media.

La région du nord-est de la République Centrafricaine est sous le contrôle des rebelles du Front populaire pour la renaissance de la Centrafrique. Ouvertement opposés au pouvoir de Bangui, ils surveillent militairement l’accès à leur territoire et ont chassé plusieurs représentants de l’Etat. Pourtant, la présence des fonctionnaires de l’éducation nationale est tolérée. Les professeurs qui enseignent dans l’unique lycée de la région, celui de la ville de Ndélé, sont envoyés par le ministère central.

Between 1914 and 1918, both the Ottoman Empire and Germany engaged in a propaganda campaign to foster jihad amongst the world’s Muslims. While the Ottomans – concentrating more on Muslims on the home front than beyond Ottoman boundaries – fared rather well, German efforts to raise Muslims to anti-colonial revolts failed rather miserably.

After a series of steps towards liberalization between 2002 and 2012, Turkey’s AKP government showed its teeth in 2013: it announced plans to build a shopping mall on Gezi Park – one of the last green parts of the inner city of Istanbul. Widespread protests ensued, which were not just about the environment but also a culture change: Many rejected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s bid to impose a mix of neo-liberal economics and Islamic morality on the country. The protests soon became violent and were crushed with considerable brutality by the security forces.

Comparative area studies (CAS) endeavours to create a bridge between classic area studies and what is called systematic disciplines – perhaps foremost one between area studies and comparative politics. The constitutive elements of CAS are (a) context sensitivity/expertise that entails giving attention to history, culture, and regional factors, and (b) an explicitly systematic and empirical comparative approach (e.g. Lijphart 1971; Sartori 1994). CAS requires cognisance of the issues associated with using the concept ‘area’.

Jordan currently ranks among the highest recipients of US foreign aid worldwide, both in absolute terms and particularly so on a per capita basis. Besides military and economic support, Jordan has over the past years also been the target of a whole plethora of US democracy-promotion interventions. As a result, there are probably only a few Jordanian state institutions that have not in one way or another been the target of external attempts at some form of capacity building and institutional engineering.

The Jordanian parliament is widely recognised as a patronage provider and means for authoritarian upgrading. Despite, or precisely because of this, it has over the past years become a linchpin of US and European attempts at parliamentary strengthening. The parliament’s highly marginalised position notwithstanding, this article suggests that such efforts provide us with an insightful opportunity to better understand the reconfiguration of authoritarian power via external intervention in the name of democracy.