Suchergebnisse

Gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse werden mittels Raumproduktionen ebenso wie mittels Kriminalisierungen organisiert und regiert. Beide Strategien basieren auf interessengeleiteten und folgenreichen Abstraktionen. Wo sie zusammenkommen, werden im Namen der Sicherheit vermeintlich gefährliche Räume produziert, um marginalisierte Gruppen zu kontrollieren und zu schikanieren sowie um Gentrifizierung vorzubereiten, Moralpaniken zu entfachen und Gesellschaften zu regieren. Der Band versammelt Beiträge des Autors von 2005 bis heute, die in geographischen, kriminologischen und aktivistischen Kontexten erschienen (und z.T. nicht leicht zugänglich) sind, darunter aus dem Englischen übersetzte, sowie eine neue Einleitung. Thematisiert werden mit Fokus auf Deutschland und die USA räumliche Aspekte des (Polizei-)Rechts (Gefahrenorte, Aufenthaltsverbote, Loitering Laws), Ideologien (Zero Tolerance, Broken Windows, öffentlicher Raum) und Technologien (Kriminalitätskartierung, Videoüberwachung, Predictive Policing) sowie deren Resultate (Racial Profiling, Vertreibung, Versicherheitlichung). Die Beiträge verbinden Radical Geography und Kritische Kriminologie mit Zeitdiagnosen und kritischen Interventionen.

Equality, a concept so central to democratic societies, is being scrutinized in a critical manner in this paper. It argues that the spatial borders of territorial states are also the limits of the validity of the principle of abstract equality, of its ideological productivity as well as its emancipatory potential. The paper discusses the Marxist critique of the limitations of the merely abstract, formal understanding of equality that is inscribed into the structures of democratic states, and the ways in which both the Marxist tradition and current theories of radical democracy find an emancipatory potential in the demand for abstract equality that makes possible going beyond its very abstractions. The focus of these discussions is on how spatiality is integrated into theories of radical democracy on the level of theory. The paper suggests that combining the insights on the productivity of spatial forms from discussions in human geography with the critique of merely abstract equality is a decidedly geographical contribution to the development of theories of the political.

The housing question is back on the agenda in Germany. House rents in urban areas in particular, where the vast majority of habitants are renters, are on the rise since the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis in 2007/08. The first part of the article articles discusses David Harvey's notion of the secondary circuit of capital in order to provide a politico-economic theory for a better understanding of the economic base of these processes. Harvey's central argument is that the flow of money capital in search of investment opportunities is "switched" into the sphere of real estate in times of overaccumulation. The second part of the article provides empirical data on construction activities, buying and selling of built environment and the development of land prices, including speculation, in Germany that all point in the same direction: the secondary circuit is gaining in importance in the past ten years. Further, the data shows the geographical unevenness of these processes, as most activities are located in major cities.

Departing from a discussion of two books that were popular in the German academic left and beyond in 2016, Oliver Nachtwey's "Die Abstiegsgesellschaft" ["Society of Downward Mobility"] and Didier Eribon's "Returning to Reims", both touching on the topic of how changes in class structure are related to the rise of parties of the extreme right in Germany and France respectively, the paper argues that we need to pay more attention to uneven geographic development within and between cities and regions. Following Lefebvre, Harvey and Massey, it insists that it is in everyday life that subjectification and the constitution of classes and other social groups occur, and that the multiple ways in which everyday life is structured and differentiated spatially can play a crucial role in how global political-economic processes are perceived and translated into political positions. It urges radicals who want to understand the ascent of the extreme right to have a closer look at the systematic geography of the society of downward mobility.

Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie und Assemblageforschung in Stadtforschung und Humangeographie beanspruchen für sich, das genau Hinsehen und die Materialität der Dinge stark zu machen. Sie positionieren sich damit gegen Forschung, die große Diskurse ins Zentrum rückt. Im Kommentar schlage ich vor, beide Positionen – die "Diskursphase" und die "Materialismusphase" – im Hinblick auf ihre politischen Einsätze zu kontextualisieren. Ich werfe die Frage auf, ob für diese Politiken die jeweiligen Ontologien tatsächlich notwendig sind, und schlage vor, sich stattdessen darauf zu besinnen, was die beste kritische Stadtforschung schon immer ausgemacht hat, nämlich genau hinzuschauen, die Dinge ernst zu nehmen und nicht schon alles vorher zu wissen.