Recent articles

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This study retraces the production, loss, and defence of a self-built urban settlement in the ecological peripheries of São Paulo. This study explores how such self-built marginalized communities build and defend their territory in the face of environmental laws and urban expansion. It shows how everyday relations with land and the ecologies – what the work calls grounded relationalities – are both the basis of home and the target of oppression and potential resistance for the evicted families. 

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This qualitative study researches light art festivals in Germany. Over the past 25 years, 25 light art festivals have been implemented by various actors, mostly in small- and medium-sized cities across Germany. The analysis indicates that public authorities do not adopt this format solely for the purpose of promoting the city's brand and attracting tourists. Instead, these events are also founded with the aim of defamiliarising routines and addressing multiples challenges in city centres.

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This paper deals with Cairo's contemporary urbanization through one of its main building materials: red brick. Although the Egyptian capital has been expanding for the last few decades, the production of this building material is being challenged. The modernization policies implemented by al-Sisi's government have led to a technical standardization of red brick and an economic marginalization of its factories, with concrete block emerging as a competing material.

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The article analyses the production of spatialised communities in the Sants district of Barcelona from a historical-materialist perspective. The case study outlines how rising rents, displacement and forced evictions threaten existing social structures, while at the same time new spatialised communities are produced in struggles against neoliberal urban development. The composition of these struggles reflects an international, heavily feminized, and precarious working class.

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This paper examines how young people are enrolled in military security politics as a politics of killing and letting die that is enabled by generational injustice. Based on the analysis of the three case studies of military recruitment and citizenship in France, Sweden, and Latvia, the paper argues for greater attention to the militarization of young people’s lives and to the ethical and generational justice implications of this.

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In this afterword to the themed issue German Theory, we explain the origins and meaning of German Theory as a constellation of German-Jewish thought that although it has its origins in the cultural and intellectual life of Weimar still has something important to say to contemporary human geography and its theoretical debates.

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This study explores how religion and nature shaped the Alpine landscapes of South Tyrol in the nineteenth century. By analyzing travellers' writings and images, it shows how faith was expressed through mountain spaces and how these sacred places helped form local identity. The research reveals that sacred landscapes are dynamic, linking memory, belief, and a sense of belonging that still resonates today.

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Geological disposal projects rest on the assumption that radioactive waste can be safely managed through its spatio-temporal separation from human life at the surface. This paper examines how a local farmer in the Zürcher Weinland – one of the regions considered for nuclear waste disposal – disrupted this assumption by rendering the radioactive hazard perceptible through a series of landscape interventions.

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This paper explores how Swiss development agencies strategically facilitate climate finance in Rajkot, India. By anchoring climate finance locally, these projects promote climate-resilient infrastructure while advancing Switzerland’s geopolitical and economic goals. The study examines the formation of state–capital hybrids and explores the shifting role of the state under current climate finance practices.

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How do you advocate for and send aid to a country at war thousands of kilometers away? This is the questions facing the Ukrainian diaspora in France since 2014 and the "first" Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The article shows that pro-Ukrainian activists, who are largely new to the cause, are building their practical know-how "on the job" by experimenting with other activists, consulting professionals (especially in the medical field), and interacting remotely with their contacts in Ukraine.

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The editorial introduces the special issue on socio-environmental emotionalities. It stresses the importance of analysing the emotional and affective dimensions of shifting society–environment relations in the context of climate change and socio-ecological crises. Based on a political and spatial conceptualisation of emotions and affects, the editorial asks about their role in shaping power relations and subjectivities, while engaging with the rich contributions to the special issue.

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The author offers a retrospective of her researching on borders in Palestine in the late 2010's experience, in the form of commented narrative reconstructions. The author describes and analyzes the processes of silenciation and the obstacles encountered in conducting research on Palestine. She intends to raise questions about what is build as legitimate or not within the academic space, reflecting on the power relations that act as structural brakes on the production of knowledge.