Abstract. Ever since the operation of the first civilian Earth observation (EO) satellites gained momentum in the 1970s, potential benefits and disadvantages of transferring space science and technologies, such as remote sensing techniques, have also been discussed in relation to developing countries. However, this debate has so far largely taken place at a macro-comparative level. This paper presents results from moving to the ethnographic micro level in southwest Nigeria. It sets the experiences of researchers from the Global South, who use remote sensing data, in relation to a critical review of (post-)development theory perspectives and corresponding discourses in postcolonial science and technology studies (STS). The paper discusses how researchers construct collective agency towards capacity building as a shared liberatory language in relation to an amalgam of experienced and contested places in the EO community. At the intersection of STS, geography and the arena of development policies, these experiences create their own spatial references to a developing niche that invites scholars and development practitioners to rethink and reorganise knowledge production and technologies in a postcolonial world.
{"title":"Dependent or not? From a daily practice of Earth observation research in the Global South to promoting adequate developmental spaces in science and technology studies","authors":"Daniel Thorpe","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-105-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-105-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. Ever since the operation of the first civilian Earth observation (EO) satellites gained momentum in the 1970s, potential benefits and disadvantages of transferring space science and technologies, such as remote sensing techniques, have also been discussed in relation to developing countries. However, this debate has so far largely taken place at a macro-comparative level. This paper presents results from moving to the ethnographic micro level in southwest Nigeria. It sets the experiences of researchers from the Global South, who use remote sensing data, in relation to a critical review of (post-)development theory perspectives and corresponding discourses in postcolonial science and technology studies (STS). The paper discusses how researchers construct collective agency towards capacity building as a shared liberatory language in relation to an amalgam of experienced and contested places in the EO community. At the intersection of STS, geography and the arena of development policies, these experiences create their own spatial references to a developing niche that invites scholars and development practitioners to rethink and reorganise knowledge production and technologies in a postcolonial world.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45240927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the Black Mediterranean to liberation","authors":"V. Thompson","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-99-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-99-2023","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>\u0000 </jats:p>","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49500308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. Agriculture depends in large part on relations with weather phenomena, such as rain and temperature. Anticipatory knowledge about the atmosphere therefore is vital in agricultural livelihoods. Based on an ethnographic case study of weather forecasting for small-scale farming in western Kenya, in this paper I discuss different ways in which knowledge about the future weather is produced. While development organizations promote expert forecasts that draw on meteorological sensing technologies as a solution to dealing with climate change, I show how knowing the weather is an entangled affair in a sensory assemblage that simultaneously draws on scientific instruments and on other entities such as animals, plants, clouds and embodied sensoria associated with experiential knowledge. Building on concepts related to science and technology studies that address the relations between humans and nonhumans, I suggest to treat scientific and experiential devices symmetrically by looking at their more-than-human sensoria, proxies and imaginations to understand how farmers attune to the weather. In practice, then, navigating the uncertainties of the weather is not enabled by scientific meteorology alone, but by combining different sensory devices and practices of interpretation that together mediate the weather as something to be known and acted upon.
{"title":"Sensing weather: scientific and experiential modes of knowledge production for small-scale farming in western Kenya","authors":"Julian Rochlitz","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-87-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-87-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. Agriculture depends in large part on relations with weather\u0000phenomena, such as rain and temperature. Anticipatory knowledge about the\u0000atmosphere therefore is vital in agricultural livelihoods. Based on an\u0000ethnographic case study of weather forecasting for small-scale farming in\u0000western Kenya, in this paper I discuss different ways in which knowledge\u0000about the future weather is produced. While development organizations\u0000promote expert forecasts that draw on meteorological sensing technologies as\u0000a solution to dealing with climate change, I show how knowing the weather is\u0000an entangled affair in a sensory assemblage that simultaneously draws on\u0000scientific instruments and on other entities such as animals, plants,\u0000clouds and embodied sensoria associated with experiential knowledge.\u0000Building on concepts related to science and technology studies that address\u0000the relations between humans and nonhumans, I suggest to treat scientific\u0000and experiential devices symmetrically by looking at their more-than-human\u0000sensoria, proxies and imaginations to understand how farmers attune to the\u0000weather. In practice, then, navigating the uncertainties of the weather is\u0000not enabled by scientific meteorology alone, but by combining different\u0000sensory devices and practices of interpretation that together mediate the\u0000weather as something to be known and acted upon.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47785249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. Between 1940 and 1943, Nazi jurists such as Reinhard Höhn and Werner Best worked on a political theory of racial-biological rule, which they contoured in a controversy with Carl Schmitt over the basic principles of international law and of a European Großraum. The focus of the contribution is on the entanglement and transformation of geographical, international legal and racial-biological relations between the „peoples“ living in a Großraum. On the one hand, the multiple change in discourse raises the fundamental question of the relevance of geographical knowledge (such as Ratzel's Lebensraumtheorie) for the National Socialist policy of conquest and extermination. At the same time, the focus is on the significant shift from a description of human community and state formation based on supposed natural laws to an action-oriented agenda of racial-biological homogenisation of Europe, which with brutal openness legitimised genocide as an option regarding the „Umvolkung“ that had already been practised in occupied Poland since 1939.
{"title":"Großraum versus Lebensraum. Die Interdependenzen geographischer, juristischer und rassenbiologischer Ordnungsvorstellungen","authors":"Ulrike Jureit","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-75-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-75-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. Between 1940 and 1943, Nazi jurists such as Reinhard Höhn and Werner Best worked on a political theory of racial-biological rule, which they contoured in a controversy with Carl Schmitt over the basic principles of international law and of a European Großraum. The focus of the contribution is on the entanglement and transformation of geographical, international legal and racial-biological relations between the „peoples“ living in a Großraum. On the one hand, the multiple change in discourse raises the fundamental question of the relevance of geographical knowledge (such as Ratzel's Lebensraumtheorie) for the National Socialist policy of conquest and extermination. At the same time, the focus is on the significant shift from a description of human community and state formation based on supposed natural laws to an action-oriented agenda of racial-biological homogenisation of Europe, which with brutal openness legitimised genocide as an option regarding the „Umvolkung“ that had already been practised in occupied Poland since 1939.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46560688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. The study of the receptions, uses and transformations of the figure of Friedrich Ratzel in the French geography of the inter-war period considers here the double heritage of Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache, the consequences of the Great War on international relations and the emergence of new schools of thought, in particular of Geopolitik. Between admiration, criticism and attempts to go beyond his ideas, even to use them against his German heirs, some geographers persist in thinking with (sometimes against) him, throughout the crises and world wars that give him a persistent image of relevance. On the one hand a precursor and eminent scholar, on the other hand a «bad teacher» of geopolitics for the Wilhelmian and then Nazi regime making him responsible for its excesses and territorial ambitions, his theories were then used to understand the troubled evolution of the world until 1945.
{"title":"Ratzel contre la géopolitique ? Référence allemande et géographie politique dans la géographie française de l'entre-deux-guerres","authors":"Nicolas Ginsburger","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-65-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-65-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. The study of the receptions, uses and transformations of the figure of Friedrich Ratzel in the French geography of the inter-war period considers here the double heritage of Ratzel and Vidal de la Blache, the consequences of the Great War on international relations and the emergence of new schools of thought, in particular of Geopolitik. Between admiration, criticism and attempts to go beyond his ideas, even to use them\u0000against his German heirs, some geographers persist in thinking with (sometimes against) him, throughout the crises and world wars that give him a persistent image of relevance. On the one hand a precursor and eminent scholar, on the other hand a «bad teacher» of geopolitics for the Wilhelmian and then Nazi regime making him responsible for its excesses and territorial ambitions, his theories were then used to understand the troubled evolution of the world until 1945.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48712642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. The text explains the main themes and conceptual arguments of the thematic issue on the reception of Ratzel's spatial theories in Italy, France, Germany and the USA. The work and impact of Friedrich Ratzel between 1880 and 1945 are examined in the perspective of a history of transformation based on the history of knowledge. As a result, the case studies demonstrate that Ratzel's work had an international impact on the object constitution of the academic subject of geography, firstly through the later widespread geopolitical theorising, secondly with regard to the conceptualisation of anthropogeography and thirdly in the relationship of the discipline to the formation of nation states, territorial rule and colonial expansion. Equally decisive is that some interpretations of Ratzel's writings turn out to be rather appropriations of already existing receptions of his work. This reception of reception is undoubtedly a key element of a differentiated impact analysis.
{"title":"Resonanz und Rezeption. Werk und Wirkung Friedrich Ratzels im internationalen Vergleich","authors":"Ulrike Jureit, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-59-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-59-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. The text explains the main themes and conceptual arguments of the thematic\u0000issue on the reception of Ratzel's spatial theories in Italy, France,\u0000Germany and the USA. The work and impact of Friedrich Ratzel between 1880\u0000and 1945 are examined in the perspective of a history of transformation\u0000based on the history of knowledge. As a result, the case studies demonstrate that Ratzel's work had an international impact on the object constitution of the academic subject of geography, firstly through the later widespread geopolitical theorising, secondly with regard to the conceptualisation of anthropogeography and thirdly in the relationship of the discipline to the formation of nation states, territorial rule and colonial expansion. Equally decisive is that some interpretations of Ratzel's writings turn out to be rather appropriations of already existing receptions of his work. This reception of reception is undoubtedly a key element of a differentiated impact analysis.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45451499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. This paper examines the contribution of Italian academic geography to the processes of nation-building between ca. 1880–1920. With reference to Friedrich Ratzel's works, it explores the ways in which biological and vitalist theories shaped political processes. In the decades between Italy's national unification until the first post-war period, Italian academic geographers helped to consolidate the nation-state by means of theoretical reflection, applied research, and education. The main focus of geographers was in defining the national space and its boundaries, especially by developing a scientific analysis that could establish the exact position of the terrestrial border along the Alpine chain. The scientific topic was strongly connected with the nationalist question of irredenta, which garnered growing consideration in the last 2 decades of the 19th century. The epistemological turn in Italian geography was particularly influenced by new approaches in German geography introduced by scholars such as Oscar Peschel and Friedrich Ratzel and aimed to formulate a general understanding of biogeography in its relationship with the earth's physical space. The reception of this theoretical model in the political debate and the way it was applied in the following decades proved highly significant.
{"title":"Applying Friedrich Ratzel's political and biogeography to the debate on natural borders in the Italian context (1880–1920)","authors":"Matteo Proto","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-41-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-41-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. This paper examines the contribution of Italian academic geography to the processes of nation-building between ca. 1880–1920. With reference to Friedrich Ratzel's works, it explores the ways in which biological and vitalist theories shaped political processes. In the decades between Italy's national unification until the first post-war period, Italian academic geographers helped to consolidate the nation-state by means of theoretical reflection, applied research, and education. The main focus of geographers was in defining the national space and its boundaries, especially by developing a scientific analysis that could establish the\u0000exact position of the terrestrial border along the Alpine chain. The\u0000scientific topic was strongly connected with the nationalist question of\u0000irredenta, which garnered growing consideration in the last 2 decades of\u0000the 19th century. The epistemological turn in Italian geography was\u0000particularly influenced by new approaches in German geography introduced by\u0000scholars such as Oscar Peschel and Friedrich Ratzel and aimed to formulate a general understanding of biogeography in its relationship with the earth's physical space. The reception of this theoretical model in the political debate and the way it was applied in the following decades proved highly significant.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41688285","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract. My contribution explores the meaning of war and the role of Germany, which was seen as representing a Mittellage, before the First and the Second World Wars, through the eyes of two main authors who radically reinterpreted and appropriated geographical political thinking, particularly the work of Ratzel. I am referring to the Swedish political scholar Rudolf Kjellen and the “crown jurist” of the Third Reich, Carl Schmitt. The consideration of the triple relation between space, Ratzel and war casts light on Kjellen's and Schmitt's use of Ratzel as a lever in order to promote their idea of politics and political science. Ratzel's concepts offered Kjellen and, in a different way, Schmitt, a means of justifying their way of overcoming and stretching the “limits” of their disciplines and, at the same time, of introducing a new idea of political and geographical organization, which de facto legitimized German expansion, in two crucial periods of German political life – the First and the Second World Wars. As a consequence, their Ratzel was oriented toward militant aims. Moreover, their scientific and political ideas were clearly intertwined – they explicitly rejected the idea of separating their roles as political activists and as members of a scientific community.
{"title":"The State as a “form of life” and the space as Leistungsraum: the reception of Ratzel in the First and Second World Wars","authors":"Patricia Chiantera-Stutte","doi":"10.5194/gh-78-29-2023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-29-2023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract. My contribution explores the meaning of war and the role of Germany, which\u0000was seen as representing a Mittellage, before the First and the Second World Wars, through the eyes of two main authors who radically reinterpreted and appropriated geographical political thinking, particularly the work of Ratzel. I am referring to the Swedish political scholar Rudolf Kjellen and the “crown jurist” of the Third Reich, Carl Schmitt. The consideration of the triple relation between space, Ratzel and war casts light on Kjellen's and Schmitt's use of Ratzel as a lever in order to promote their idea of politics and political science. Ratzel's concepts offered Kjellen and, in a different way, Schmitt, a means of justifying their way of overcoming and stretching the “limits” of their disciplines and, at the same time, of introducing a new idea of political and geographical organization, which de facto legitimized German expansion, in two crucial periods of German political life – the First and the Second World Wars. As a consequence, their Ratzel was oriented toward militant aims. Moreover, their scientific and political ideas were clearly intertwined – they explicitly rejected the idea of separating their roles as political activists and as members of a\u0000scientific community.\u0000","PeriodicalId":35649,"journal":{"name":"Geographica Helvetica","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42291418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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