Research projects
We conduct theory-guided empirical research in Africa and South Asia. Our aim is to contribute to, challenge and refine ongoing academic debates on nature-society relations, resource conflicts, ‘new’ wars, state failure, ethical trading and uneven development. At the same time, we collaborate and dialogue with policy makers and development practitioners and establish partnerships with academics from the global South.
AID: Aid and Conflict in Sri Lanka
(B. Korf, J. Goodhand, J. Spencer)
This edited volume compiles papers by eminent peace researchers and practitioners from Sri Lanka and elsewhere on aid and peace building in Sri Lanka after the ceasefire in 2002. In 2010, the editors have done a final review and edit of the book chapters. The book has appeared with Routledge in January 2011.
BORDERLANDS: Brining the margins back in: war making and state making in the borderlands
(T. Raeymaekers, B. Korf, T. Hagmann with J. Goodand, SOAS)
This project challenges the received wisdom about contemporary state formation as a centrally guided, top down process. Instead it looks at today’s borderlands as key sites of contestation and negotiation that are central to state-making processes. Taking case studies from Africa and Asia, it gives a central place to the everyday experience with violent conflict and state formation at the border, and the way these affect the making and unmaking of political configurations. In a first step, a workshop was conducted in Ghent in February 2010 where more than a dozen invited papers were discussed. A selection of these papers will be compiled in an edited volume to be submitted to Palgrave in 2011.
CONTESTATION: Space, Contestation and the Political (2010)
(B. Korf, D. Featherstone, Glasgow, J. van Wezemael, Fribourg)
This project engages recent theoretical debates in political theory that signal the reassertion of notions of antagonism and political contestation, taking Chantal Mouffe’s work (and reading of Carl Schmitt) as starting point. From the emergence of networked resistances to neo-liberalism to the persistence of violent conflicts in many parts of the world contestation continues to be important to what can be called “the political.” A workshop organized in February 2009 in Zurich sought to explore what is at stake in these debates over the relations between space, contestation and the political. Selected papers were pooled into a themed issue submitted to the journal Geoforum (currently under review).
DECENTRALIZATION: Decentralization to the household: The case of the garee misoma in state-led rural road construction
(R. Emmenegger, T. Hagmann)
Ethiopia has embarked on a radical reform of decentralization since the coming to power of the current EPRDF government in 1991. Recently, this newly established four-tiered administrative/decentralized structure has been strengthened by the creation of garee in the Oromia region. A garee consists of a group of households, which is mobilized for development purposes. Its establishment has been accompanied by considerable controversy. While critics describe the garee as a mechanism of control and repression, the government presents it as an answer to popular demand for development. Guided by anthropology and sociology of development, this research explores the role of garee in state-led development activities, particularly rural road construction. Field work has been conducted in 2009; data analysis was mainly conducted in 2010.
DEVELOPMENT: Negotiating Rural Development at South Asia’s Frontier (SNF- ProDoc; jointly with Ulrike Müller-Böker, Human Geography)
(U. Müller-Böker, B. Korf, B. Klem, M. Juninger)
The SNF ProDoc research module on Negotiating Rural Development in South Asia is a joint project with Human Geography and hosts two PhD studies. Bart Klem’s PhD research focuses on the war and post-war transition in eastern Sri Lanka. It takes on a range of interconnected political, ethnic and development issues that feature saliently in this transition. Within this broad canvas of issues, it focuses on the role of the civil service, political entrepreneurs, and religious leaders. In 2010, Bart conducted three months of fieldwork in Sri Lanka and started to draft and submit PhD papers. On a more thematic note, he co-organised a reading and debating seminar on the Anthropology of the State literature, a topic that will be developed further in the coming period. A first article on “Islam, politics and violence” is forthcoming in the Journal of Asian Studies.
FAITH: Conflict, Community and Development in Sri Lanka
(B. Korf, B. Klem, J. Goodhand, J. Spencer, K. T. Silva, S. Hasbullah)
This is a collaborative project with the University of Edinburgh, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka which was funded by ESRC. The project funding has come to an end in 2009, but many activities are continuing in this network, which investigates linkages between aid, religion and conflict in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious east coast of Sri Lanka. From July to September 2010, Dr. S.H. Hasbullah, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka joined our research group again and worked on his field material, while discussions were also held with prof. Jonathan Spencer during his short visit to Zurich. The research group continues to work on a joint book project [in preparation for Pluto Press] with the title “Temple, Church, Mosque and Checkpoint: A collaborative ethnography of war and peace in eastern Sri Lanka”.
GIFT: Moral Geographies and the Tsunami Gift in Sri Lanka
(P. Hollenbach)
This PhD project is funded by the University Priority Research Program Asia and Europe (UFSP). The project is based on three years of working experiences in the tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction process in Sri Lanka. Using gift theory and the concept of solidarity, he research studies hidden “rules” of humanitarian giving and how it creates an asymmetric relation of reciprocity and power. The project deconstructs how aid is used to transfer and create new “models of living” and how the involved stakeholders govern and modify project goals and project participants in order to achieve their interests. In this context the project traces the multi-local nodes of the aid chain and analyses moral discourse and practices of giving and how these translate into concrete aid practices and rituals. Field work is conducted in Sri Lanka and Germany.
MSI-Centre: Competence centre for multi-stakeholder supply chain initiatives
The project analyses the possibility of setting up a „Swiss Centre for Multi-Stakeholder Supply Chain Initiatives“ (MSI-centre). The project follows three main aims:
· Situation analysis: How are existing MSI-Initiatives in Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands organized?
· Development of scenarios: How should a Swiss MSI-centre be organized to meet the needs of Swiss stakeholders?
· Evaluation of the scenarios: Which chances and limits are connected with the two scenarios? How do Swiss stakeholder evaluate these scenarios?
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[1] Ethical Trade Inititative (UK), Initiatief Duurzame Handel (NL), „Runde Tisch Verhaltenskodizes“ in Deutschland, der „Runde Tisch“ vom BAFU, OFTCC von Helvetas
</div>PASTORALISM: Pastoral Conflicts in the Horn of Africa and Pastoral Development in sub-Saharan Africa
(T. Hagmann, C. Ifejika-Speranza, DIE)
Pasture based extensive livestock production is the dominant land use system in the Horn of Africa. Studies on the proliferation of violent inter-group conflicts in the past two decades have proliferated. Tobias Hagmann Chinwe Ifejika Speranza have edited a special issue that looks at new avenues for pastoral development in sub-Saharan Africa and which has been in European Journal of Development Research in November.
sotomo
(M. Hermann)
Since summer 2007 the sotomo research unit is constituted as an independent corporation, which is associated to the Department of Geography and its division of Political Geography. sotomo combines research with application and knowledge transfer including consultancies and contract research. The two main thematic foci are quantitative social geography (social area analysis, segregation analysis, urban studies) and Swiss political geography (regional political mentalities, values and political behaviour).
STATE: Negotiating Statehood in Africa and Political Orders Beyond the Nation-state
(T. Hagmann, D. Péclard, swisspeace)
Academic and policy discourse nowadays portrays post-colonial African states in virtually pathological categories; they are perceived to be threatened by ‘collapse’, ‘failure’, ‘fragility’ and ‘weakness’. Following a systematic critique of the state failure debate, the objective is to come up with an alternative framework for the study of political orders within and beyond the nation-state in contemporary Africa. In this process Tobias Hagmann and Didier Péclard have co-edited a themed issue on “Negotiating Statehood in Africa”, which has appeared in the journal Development and Change.
TERRITORIES: State failure and formation in the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa after 1991.
(Tobias Hagmann, Woodrow Wilson Center)
This project elaborates a comparative study of key political and state-building processes in the Republic of Somaliland (Northern Somalia), the autonomous Republic of Puntland (Northeast Somalia), south-central Somalia, the Somali region of Ethiopia or Ogaden and the Northeastern Province of Kenya (Somali region of Kenya). While Somalia is commonly associated with state collapse, recent empirical research demonstrates that numerous state and non-state governance arrangements have emerged in these different Somali entities since the outbreak of the Somali civil war in 1991. The proposed study will provide key insights into the variations of Somali statehood and the reasons why some of these political entities became successful state-builders (Somaliland, Northeastern Province of Kenya) while others produced mixed results (Ethiopia’s Somali region, Puntland) or failed completely (south-central Somalia).
VIOLENCE: Living with Violence: Rural Livelihoods in Mid-Western Nepal During and After the Maoist People's War
(S. Byrne, B. Korf, U. Mueller-Boeker, T. Rauch, B.R. Upreti)
This SNF-funded research project investigates the impacts of different forms of violence, coercion and control on rural livelihoods in Mid-Western Nepal during and after the Maoist conflict. It studies how different social groups and individuals navigate through the difficult social and political terrain of rural Nepal. The initial focus is on understanding the strategies developed by local state and non-state development workers, as well as local businesspeople, for dealing with insecurity, negotiating access and mobility, delivering services - in other words, strategies to continue working. Sarah Byrne conducted two months of field work in Surkhet and Kathmandu in September- November.
Our past research projects
TRADE: How Ethical is Ethical Trade? Private Governance-Networks in Global Value Chains
(M. Starmanns)
This PhD tries to disentangle the politics of private regulation in global production networks. It analyzes the practices of private regulation, the arguments companies and private regulation institutions use to legitimize their corporate responsibility approaches, and how stakeholders criticize these strategies. Main aspects analyzed are the credibility, the impact and the root causes. On a more general level the analysis might offer a framework that allows differentiating between practices of private regulation and corporate responsibility in global production networks. The research is based on empirical data from global garment chains between Europe, India and Bangladesh. So far, two MA theses have been supervised as part of the TRADE project. The first analyzed how various Swiss companies implement social standards, and the other one focuses on one specific Swiss company and analyses changes in this company in detail.
OLYMPIC: Swiss Olympic
(M. Starmanns)The aim of this project "Political CSR at Swiss Olympic" is to developing a strategy that makes Swiss Olmpic's procurement more sustainable. Swiss Olympic is the governing body of Swiss sport organizations. In the project we develop a CSR concept for sustainable procurement that follows a discursive approach. "Political CSR" tries to avoid greenwashing by fully and honestly embracing CSR. Following a Habermasian concept of democracy, one of the key ideas of "political CSR" is to set standards in a globalized economy in a discursive way, i.e., to involve stakeholders in a very transparent way. We thus invite stakeholders to comment the concept and guidelines - and later publish all comments and arguments, to make transparent which comments could be implemented and which ones could not.
CAPRI: Collective Action and Property Rights for Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia
(B Korf, F Beyene, B Hundie, A Bogale, M Mealin, with K Hagedorn, M Padhmanaban, R Meinzen-Dick, E Mwangi)
This project investigated the nexus of property rights, collective action and fragile statehood in Afar and Somali region, Ethiopia, with a special interest in pastoral communities. The project was a collaborative research endeavor with the Humboldt University of Berlin and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development. The project has been completed in Summer 2007. Outputs from the project include: participation in the Policy dissemination workshop of the overall research programme organized by IFPRI-CAPRi in Uganda (2007); funding of two small field studies in Ethiopia, one investigating the political geographies of resource conflict in Somali region (M Mealin), one studying local resource conflicts (A Bogale); the PhD dissertation of Fekadu Beyene on “Challenges and Options in Governing Common Property: Customary Institutions among (agro-) pastoralists in Ethiopia” (Supervisors: K Hagedorn, B Korf), which has been completed and successfully defended (7 Jan 2008).
ETHICAL SWISS: How Ethical Correct are Swiss Fashion Labels?
(M. Starmanns)
A student project in cooperation with the Berne Declaration, Fair Wear Foundation, Helvetas, Max Havelaar and Neosys. AIm of the project is to publish a market study on SME Swiss fashion labels, which is presented in Interlaken on the International conference "Organic and fair trade cotton - from fashion to sustainability". The project further aims at initiating a solution-oriented dialogue between fashion labels and diverse stakeholders in the area.
YOUTH: State making in Guinea and Youth as Political Actors
(M. Engeler)
This PhD research project looks at the nexus between youth and state making in Guinée Forestière, a marginal and understudied region of the West African state Guinea. The recent conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire have often been interpreted as youth crises or generational conflicts. However, youth has rarely been related to the state and, more particularly, processes of state making and state formation. This holds particularly true for Guinea, whose political dynamics have been influenced by the past civil wars in neighboring Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire. The aim of this research is to produce an ethnography of both youth organizations and local state institutions as they are manifest in this particular region of Guinea. Both youth and the state are conceptualized as social actors that express and reproduce material realities and symbolic imaginaries in their daily lives. Of particular interest are the social processes by which youth involves in state making and/or fulfills key state roles. The PhD project is now based at the University of Basel, Department of Anthropology.