Human Geography in Zurich
Our research strives to understand social change and its consequences in various local settings linking those contexts with global processes.
Our work is positioned within theories of practice: in the sense that we seek to understand how people construct and change their livelihoods through social practices in different localities being embedded in different networks, and connections and dependencies. Conceptually, our main analytical categories include place-space, multi-locality, territoriality, inequality, conflict and social change. Our methodological approach is positioned within ainformed by qualitative-interpretative social science and uses case study methods for field research as well as textual and visual analysis.
Our empirical studies are based in locations in the global South (South and Southeast Asia, Central Asia) as well as the global North (Europe, specifically Switzerland); however, through the focus on global processes, it and transcends the local as a field of study.
At present, we are conducting research on poor people’s livelihood strategies (with emphasis on access to resources), governance of natural resources, migration, technology studies and policy processes. We study global-local dynamics in processes of space appropriation. Further, our interest is in understanding the ambivalent relationship between policy (as planned intervention and site of multiple negotiations) and in the multiple social practices that coincide with those policies and their implementation.
Our academic engagement is firmly grounded in a number of normative premises: it is based on the idea of sustainable development and is carried forward by a desire to contribute to social justice and a good life beyond spatially confined islands of wealth. Our research is politically relevant in the sense that we forge strategic transdisciplinary partnerships with other researchers (specifically in the South), practitioners of development, policy makers and the general public. Rather than offering clear-cut action-oriented solutions, we are seeking to provide knowledge for orientation and reflection in an increasingly complex earthworld.