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Die innerstädtischen Favelas sind aus den brasilianischen Metropolen nicht mehr wegzudenken und stellen das kulturelle Rückgrat der Städte dar. Ihre Existenz verdanken sie dem Sieg über die alltägliche Demütigung und verweigerte Vollbürgerschaft. Eberhard Rothfuß legt seiner Studie eine anerkennungstheoretische Perspektive nach Honneth (1992) zugrunde und thematisiert Alltagspraktiken in Favelas am empirischen Beispiel des »Calabar«-Viertels in Salvador da Bahia. Er zeigt: Es sind einerseits Praktiken 'unproduktiver Verausgabung' und andererseits Praktiken der Widerständigkeit, mit denen sich

Dominant electricity systems are inevitably transitioning into new forms in terms of power generation mix, mode of energy system governance and vested interests, the extent of state and consumer/citizen participation in the energy system, and energy justice expectations in different geographies in the Global North and Global South. In this editorial to the thematic issue entitled Politics and (Self-)Organisation of Electricity System Transitions in a Global North–South Perspective, we discuss politics and (self)-organisation of (just) energy transitions to expose how messy, convoluted, and fluid future electricity system transitions can be in both the Global North and Global South.

Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt sich kritisch mit dem akademischen Feld der Interkulturellen Managementforschung auseinander, indem das zentrale, dieser "Schule" zugrundeliegende Denkparadigma in seiner Kontingenz und Unreflektiertheit offengelegt wird. Hierbei dienen Anleihen an Pierre Bourdieus Reflexive Anthropologie dazu, die sozialen Ursprünge der Wissensproduktion in der Interkulturellen Managementforschung zu enthüllen. Anhand des Kulturstandardkonzeptes nach Alexander Thomas werden diese theoretischen Überlegungen exemplarisch systematisiert, um herauszuarbeiten, welche unbewussten Vorbedingungen in dieser noch jungen Disziplin existieren und in welchem historischen Kontext ihre typischen Fragestellungen, Methoden und Begrifflichkeiten entstanden sind, da diese mitunter nachhaltig die zeitgenössischen Debatten innerhalb der Interkulturalitätsforschung beeinflussen oder gar bestimmen. Als Ergebnis dieser Analyse zeigt sich, dass die im Kontext des Zweiten Weltkriegs in den USA entstandenen Prämissen unter stetigem Praxisdruck und zunehmender ökonomischer Zielorientierung bis heute weitgehend unkritisch verwendet werden und es daher erforderlich ist, diese im Sinne einer kritischen Reflexivität nach Bourdieu zu überdenken.

Current political sociology scholarship suggests that limited state autonomy from societal organisations undermines state enforcement capacity throughout the national territory, and therefore does superficial separation of the state from civil society (or formal from informal institutions) in the conceptualisation of what effective state system ought to be. These conceptions contradict realities in post-colonial Africa where societal organisations have evolved to bear 'state-like' qualities in resource governance, especially in remote locations where the state has no promising alternative to accommodating inputs from revered institutions or charismatic actors to complement its functions. Colonial experiences in Africa have produced institutional pluralism and a consequential split loyalty to the state in the post-independence era. Apparently, limited state autonomy sometimes refract or obstruct state visions; the resultant co-governance regime does not imply 'wishy-washy' state leadership. This is because state formation processes have produced an intermeshed governance of people, places, and resources through a complicated interplay between entities which have become indistinct in terms of functions, and hence cannot be simplistically categorised as either formal or informal, state or non-state. In this sense, the activity of regulating affairs in the post-colonial regime is characterised by relational governance – a form of governance sutured via reciprocal relation(s) between multiple actors across differentspatial scales and milieus. Drawing on an empirical study of biofuel projects in Ghana, we believe a relational governance approach provides an analytic framework to challenge this orthodoxy in governance studies and refresh discussions on the nature of state-society relations required for effective governance of territorial resources in postcolonial regimes characterised by institutional pluralism.

The arena of locally embedded and engendered responses to climate change offers a particularly fruitful and challenging space in which to scrutinise the encounters between established forms of governance and knowledge as they become entwined with locally generated forms of self-organisation. The issue of climate change offers a particularly fertile case for study because to date it has largely been dominated by state and market-based responses and associated forms of governance selectively articulated with knowledge generated through scientific and expert modes of knowledge. The central focus of the article is on identifying the variegated forms of understanding associated with the groups we researched and how they drew upon/utilised knowledge (knowledge-in-action) vis-à-vis the governance of ecological politics and environmental governance. The article draws on case studies of self-organising locally based groups in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that are addressing climate change, in a broad sense, within their locality. These groups represent a range of responses to the issue and associated modes of action, exhibit different levels and forms of 'organisation' and may challenge more established forms of governance and knowledge in different ways.

Abstract The arena of locally embedded and engendered responses to climate change offers a particularly fruitful and challenging space in which to scrutinise the encounters between established forms of governance and knowledge as they become entwined with locally generated forms of self- organisation. The issue of climate change offers a particularly fertile case for study because to date it has largely been dominated by state and market- based responses and associated forms of governance selectively articulated with knowledge generated through scientific and expert modes of knowledge. The central focus of the article is on identifying the variegated forms of understanding associated with the groups we researched and how they drew upon/utilised knowledge (knowledge-in-action) vis-à-vis the governance of ecological politics and environmental governance. The article draws on case studies of self-organising locally based groups in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that are addressing climate change, in a broad sense, within their locality. These groups represent a range of responses to the issue and associated modes of action, exhibit different levels and forms of 'organisation' and may challenge more established forms of governance and knowledge in different ways.

The arena of locally embedded and engendered responses to climate change offers a particularly fruitful and challenging space in which to scrutinise the encounters between established forms of governance and knowledge as they become entwined with locally generated forms of self-organisation. The issue of climate change offers a particularly fertile case for study because to date it has largely been dominated by state and market-based responses and associated forms of governance selectively articulated with knowledge generated through scientific and expert modes of knowledge. The central focus of the article is on identifying the variegated forms of understanding associated with the groups we researched and how they drew upon/utilised knowledge (knowledge-in-action) vis-à-vis the governance of ecological politics and environmental governance. The article draws on case studies of self-organising locally based groups in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that are addressing climate change, in a broad sense, within their locality. These groups represent a range of responses to the issue and associated modes of action, exhibit different levels and forms of 'organisation' and may challenge more established forms of governance and knowledge in different ways.

This thematic issue addresses the relationship between local self-governance and the state. Self-governance is understood as the rules that emerge in the local social and spatial context. Local self-governance of individual local groups, actors, communities, and their social and institutional arrangements are considered. From this situated collective entanglement, the interactions and relations with state authorities are analysed in the various contributions embedded in local contexts of different world regions and based on empirical social science research containing mostly interdisciplinary approaches. The nine case studies of this thematic issue reflect a variety of statehoods (weak to restrained), divers "intentionalities" of local self-governance (emancipatory and democratic, socio-economically, and socio-culturally oriented, security-driven or ecological), and their state-locality entanglements range between four forms of relationships: mutually supportive, conflictual, ambivalent, and avoiding.

The nucleus of statehood is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community, beyond the level of the family, first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. But usually this is not the only level of governance at play. Above it, there are supralocal formations of power, varying in scope from regional networks to empires, which supplement the local orders or compete with them. The premise of this Research Unit is that local forms of self-governance are especially heterogeneous and prominent, wherever supralocal statehood exists in the mode of weak permeation. The central question of our approach is how local forms of self-governance work in this context. We will examine the relations to the state level as well as to other local groups as they develop over time; the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; their legitimization and the interdependency with the organization and collective identity of those groups which carry them out; finally, we will turn our attention to the significance of self-governance for the configuration of weak statehood. The empirical focus will be at the local level, which has so far been largely neglected in the research on governance beyond the state. In order to achieve this, we will work with case studies that are structured by categories and situated in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of modern Europe with its particular development of statehood since the Late Middle Ages: in Antiquity, and in the Global South of the present. By incorporating these different time frames, we hope to contribute to overcoming the dichotomy between the modern and pre-modern era, which is often given canonical status. Our goal is to create a comparative analysis of different configurations of order as well as the development of a typology of patterns of local governance. The structure of the empirical comparison itself promises methodological insights, since it will entail recognizing, dealing with, and overcoming disciplinary limitations. Starting with the identification of typical patterns and processes, we hope to gain a better grasp of the mechanisms by which local configurations of order succeed, while at the same time advancing the theoretical debate. This will allow us to make an interdisciplinary contribution to the understanding of fundamental elements of statehood and local governance that are of central importance, especially in the context of weak statehood. The insights we hope to gain by adopting this historical perspective will contribute to understanding a present that is not based exclusively on its own, seemingly completely new preconditions, and will thus significantly sharpen the political analysis of various forms of governance.