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In the last ten years, several uprising organizations such as the so called Islamic State have become a new challenge for civil societies in facing and defeating international terrorism. This paper, as part of a bigger research project, presents theoretical and methodical approaches for analyzing those organizations in the way they operate abroad and how they are connected with foreign fighters, sympathizers and supporters. By using ethnographic tools, we have observed and analyzed 14 Islamic State-related criminal proceedings in front of high-secured regional appeal courts. The paper presents the first results of this study in showing how German islamists are using transnational logistic networks to join or support terrorist organizations (Part 1) and gives insight into the way the logics of jurisdiction in democratic societies constitute them as threatening subjects (Part 2). In this way, it addresses a new approach of court-based research from the perspective of political geography.

In the last ten years, several uprising organizations such as the so called Islamic State have become a new challenge for civil societies in facing and defeating international terrorism. This paper, as part of a bigger research project, presents theoretical and methodical approaches for analyzing those organizations in the way they operate abroad and how they are connected with foreign fighters, sympathizers and supporters. By using ethnographic tools, we have observed and analyzed 14 Islamic State-related criminal proceedings in front of high-secured regional appeal courts. The paper presents the first results of this study in showing how German islamists are using transnational logistic networks to join or support terrorist organizations (Part 1) and gives insight into the way the logics of jurisdiction in democratic societies constitute them as threatening subjects (Part 2). In this way, it addresses a new approach of court-based research from the perspective of political geography.

"Die Stadt Mostar wurde nach den Bürgerkriegen Anfang der 1990er Jahre im Zuge der internationalen Hilfe zu einem Einsatzfeld für aktuelle und zukünftige westeuropäische stadtregionale Stabilisierungs- und Entwicklungskonzepte. Die vorliegenden empirischen Untersuchungen zur Arbeit von Entwicklungsagenturen zeigen, dass die meisten dieser Initiativen nach anfänglichen Starterfolgen mit mehr oder weniger großen Akzeptanz- und Umsetzungsproblemen konfrontiert waren. Die Rekonstruktionen von exemplarischen Projektverläufen (stadtregionale Entwicklungsstrategie, Business Incubator, Flughafenprivatisierung) mit ihren Konflikten und Widerständen machten deutlich, dass daran vor allem die tief liegenden Inkompatibilitäten zwischen den westeuropäischen Rationalitäten und "Entwicklungs"-Strategien der Agenturen und den vor Ort historisch deutlich anders strukturierten Formen und Netzwerken politisch-ökonomischer Macht verantwortlich sind. Auf lokaler Ebene kommen dabei in erster Linie die Selbst- und Fremdblockademechanismen sowie die 'ethno-klientelistisch' ausgerichteten Muster und Praktiken in Politik und Verwaltung zum Tragen. Auf diese Weise finden sich die Entwicklungsagenturen in einem Spagat, in dem vielfältige Brüche und Widersprüche dazu führen, dass ihr Engagement und die damit verbundenen Projektinitiativen in ihrer Wirksamkeit sehr stark eingeschränkt werden oder zum Scheitern verurteilt sind." (Autorenreferat)

When critical geopolitics entered German political geography, its empirical verve helped crank up a discipline which had diminished into an academic backwater. Soon, however, conceptual doubts began to supersede the initial enthusiasm with which critical geopolitics had been welcomed into political geography. Critical voices in German geography highlight the conceptual heterogeneity of critical geopolitics which engenders clashes between different, partly incommensurable epistemologies. Our paper traces the empirical and conceptual trajectory of critical geopolitics and the multifarious critique of it in German geography, before venturing to take a fresh look at poststructuralist, postcolonialist and systems theoretical approaches which, in the German context, are discussed as conceptual avenues that might usefully inform the further development of critical geopolitics. Adapted from the source document.