For a long time, the globalization of economics, politics, and other social fields was seen as an unstoppable development. In recent years, however, the global geopolitical landscape has witnessed a resurgence of spatial conflicts, particularly over issues of borders, national territories, and sovereignty. The emergence of new spatial conflicts, not only in Europe but around the world, signifies the ongoing refiguration of power and agency, often converging at the intersection of culture, politics, and economics. Among the most far-reaching challenges are the conflict between authoritarian and liberal scripts, between globalizing and de-globalizing economic tendencies, between integration and demarcational cleavages in global social structures and mobilities, or between cosmopolitan and geopolitical strategies. These conflicts of space reflect the incessant interplay between human aspirations and geographical limits.
This conference therefore brings together researchers from different contexts, disciplines and theoretical orientations to advance our understanding of conflict in and about space. We look at conflict at all scales (from interactions to states) and in the most diverse spatial settings (city, region) and figurations (territories, networks, places, and trajectories) in order to address the still unresolved research gap of whether and how we can understand current social conflicts as phenomena driven by the spatiality of the social. In doing so, we draw on the notion of refiguration, which challenges both the globalization thesis and the recently resurgent notions of de-globalization. While emphasizing the empirical analysis of conflicts in space, the conference seeks to identify general principles of the spatial dynamics of social conflicts.
12:30 Registration
13:00 Welcome and Opening
Barbara Pfetsch & Hubert Knoblauch (CRC 1265)
13:15 Keynote Lecture
Arjun Appadurai (NYC)
The Territory of Affect: Polymorphous Populism and National Boundaries
14:30 Coffee Break
15:00 — Panel I
Spatial Conflicts and Physical Violence
moderated by Nina Baur & Frederike Brandt
René Tuma & Mina Godarzani-Bakhtiari (CRC 1265)
The Spatial (Re-)Organisation of Microinteractional Violence
Barbara Kavemann (Freiburg)
Domestic and Sexual Violence: The Role of Private Spaces
Agatha Mutio Nthenge (Chuka)
Violence between Pastoralist Groups in Northern Kenya
Abram de Swaan (Amsterdam)
Compartments of Annihilation: Screening off the Places of Barbarity
15:00 — Panel II
Spatial Politics of Economic Activity
moderated by Johanna Hoerning
Ursula Mense-Petermann (Bielefeld)
The Transnational Labor Market in Meat Packing: Spatial Impacts – Political Conflicts
Maria Backhouse (Augsburg)
Transformation through Compensation? Conflicts surrounding Voluntary Carbon Offsetting in the Amazon Basin
Simon Pohl (CRC 1265)
Taming Airbnb: Regular and Algorithmic Regulation across Cities and Time
17:30 Coffee Break
18:00 Evening Keynote Lecture
Teresa Koloma Beck (Hamburg)
Scaling Violent Conflict
19:30 Reception
9:30 — Panel III
Spaces of Climate Conflicts
moderated by Ignacio Farías
Daniela Stoltenberg (CRC 1265)
Picturing Amazônia: Digital Contestation between Local and Translocal Perspectives on Rainforest Preservation
Anna Roosvall (Stockholm)
The Material, Mental and Mediated Spaces of Climate Activism and Artivism
Elisabeth Luggauer (Berlin)
Soils and Trees, Conflicts and Frictions – Greening the Modernist City?
Margherita Tess (CRC 1265)
Insulation as a Conflictual Space
9:30 — Panel IV
Culture, Language, Law, and Religion
moderated by Silke Steets, Hubert Knoblauch & Willi Pröbrock
Martijn Oosterbaan (Utrecht)
Religio-Criminal Governance and the Pentecostalization of Urban Culture in Rio de Janeiro
Anne Storch (Cologne)
Sound as Weapon, Voice as Territory
Bettina Rentsch (Berlin)
Conflicts over Spatial Justice
Jochen Kibel (CRC 1265) and Makau Kitata (Nairobi)
Notions of Land – Figurations of Conflict: Conflictual Production of Urban Spaces in Kaloleni and Makongeni, Nairobi
12:00 Lunch Break
13:00 — Panel V
Intersections and Sociospatial Conflicts
moderated by Anna Steigemann
Noa K. Ha (Berlin)
Representations of Place and Contestations of Space: Politics of Public Space and the European City of Berlin in New Germany
Sung Un Gang (CRC 1265)
Conflict Prevention and Queer Placelessness: An Intersectional Analysis of LGBTQIA+ Lives
Iryna Ignatieva (Odesa)
Escaping Territories of Terror: Protective Strategies against Intersectional Violence at Checkpoints
13:00 — Panel VI
Migration and Circulation
moderated by Elettra Griesi & Qusay Amer
Rebecca Enobong Roberts (CRC 1265)
IDP’s (Re)settlement in Nigeria‘s Urban Landscapes: Everyday Practices, Spatial Transformation and Conflicts in Lagos
Cathrine Talleraas (Bergen)
Local Implications of Externally Driven Migration Governance: Challenges for Border Controllers and Border Crossers in West Africa
Bernd Kasparek (Berlin)
After the Nation. Government and Democracy in the Space of Migration
Oroub El-Abed (Birzeit)
Analyzing the Impact of Global North‘s Containment Policy on Refugee Solutions
15:30 Get-together and Farewell
The exhibition “The Polenmarkt is Back” invites visitors to engage with the social, political, and cultural significance of German-Polish border markets—through objects, photographs, and personal stories collected as part of an art-based research project. In summer 2023, artist Paula Kaniewska and sociologist Vivien Sommer opened a pop-up research residency at the Polenmarkt Hohenwutzen, a border bazaar located in Poland, but catering mostly […]
