@phdthesis{Still2025, author = {Still, Enid}, title = {Affective Roots: Memory, emotions and viscerality within organic agri-food networks in Tamil Nadu, India}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15838}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {272 Seiten}, year = {2025}, abstract = {For activists I met in Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu in India, organic food and farming was a 'way of life'. Stemming from my curiosity about this statement and what it meant for different actors in the regional organic agri-food networks, this research explores the interconnected lives and livelihoods of organic farmers and activists in Tamil Nadu. To engage with the social dynamics of these agri-food networks, the research focuses in on the role of the affective, feeling body. The emphasis on affect emerged in the form of memories, emotions and visceral experience, from empirical data collected between 2020 and 2022. And as the thesis demonstrates, affective dimensions, or what moves people, are important because, unlike economic, statistical or structural perspectives, they make visible the ways different actors feel socio-ecological change. Adopting the lens of Feminist Political Ecology and drawing on the fields of historical anthropology and feminist ethics, this thesis highlights: (1) the enduring nature of epistemic injustice within agri-food relations, (2) how social boundaries are built, maintained and remade through affective encounters, circumscribing what I call the 'affective roots' of socio-ecological change and (3) how ambiguous affective relations co-constitute organic agri-food networks, shaping anxious environmental subjectivities, that stem from socially mediated encounters with agro-chemicals, the market, the landscape and the other. Deepening our understanding of socio-ecological and agrarian change through empirical inquiry into how people feel matters, I argue, because it sheds light on injustices that are often concealed beneath the clouds of crisis.}, language = {en} } @book{OPUS4-1400, title = {Mythenjagd : Soziologie mit Norbert Elias}, editor = {Benkel, Thorsten and Meitzler, Matthias}, publisher = {Velbr{\"u}ck Wissenschaft}, address = {Weilerswist}, isbn = {978-3-7489-1579-9}, doi = {10.5771/9783748915799}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14002}, publisher = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {293 Seiten}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Der vorliegende Band r{\"u}ckt verschiedene Aspekte und Diskurse rund um Elias' Schaffen in den Vor­der­grund und kontex­tua­­lisiert die generelle soziologische Relevanz seines Schaffens. Er liefert einen {\"U}berblick {\"u}ber die ak­tuel­le Elias-Forschung und verdeutlicht den Stellenwert und die Anschlussf{\"a}higkeit des Elias'schen Werks f{\"u}r so­zialwissenschaftliche bzw. sozialtheo­re­tische Debatten, insbesondere hinsichtlich zeit­ge­n{\"o}s­si­scher ge­sellschaftlicher Ent­wick­lungen. Dabei zeigt sich: Die Wis­sen­schaft selbst, so Elias, l{\"a}uft Gefahr, sich in Mythen zu verfangen, w{\"a}hrend sie die Mythen der Wirk­lich­keit unter die Lupe nimmt. Somit ist Mythenjagd nicht nur ein Schlagwort, sondern auch eine Devise, unter die sich Elias' Gesamtwerk stellen l{\"a}sst.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{Hering2025, author = {Hering, Robin}, title = {Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict: Safe Areas and the Silencing of Mass Atrocities}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15765}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {200 Seiten}, year = {2025}, abstract = {This publication-based thesis approaches the topic of the protection of civilians in armed conflict by 'zooming in' on two specific sub-topics: safe areas as well as the silencing of mass atrocities. The thesis consists of five publications (four of them published in double-blind peer reviewed journals) and of an introductory chapter that presents the overall argument and contextualises the publications. Two publications argue that mass atrocities are silenced, or at least not politicised, in the discourses and debates of Germany as an exemplary UN member state. It is argued that 'silencing' is a structural feature of an 'identity-mismatch' with the domestic ideational structure that inhibits debates and freezes the possibility space for foreign policy. Empirically, the first publication assesses the rhetoric of the German chancellor, foreign ministers and parliamentary group leaders vis-{\`a}-vis the mass atrocities committed in Yemen, Myanmar and South Sudan. The second publication widens the scope and looks at German political, media and societal debates in twelve cases of mass atrocities between 1992 and 2019. The remaining three publications focus on the topic of safe areas. The first publication systematically collects and assesses the existing conceptual literature on safe areas. The second publication presents a comprehensive definition, a four-fold typology based on a distinction by size and the logic of protection as well as an extensive empirical dataset of safe areas. By analysing case studies from Iraq and South Sudan, the third publication argues that safe areas have a very limited potential to provide an alternative to flight, especially from the perspective of the protection-seeking civilians themselves.}, subject = {Zivilbev{\"o}lkerung}, language = {en} } @unpublished{PantaleonOsuna2024, author = {Pantale{\´o}n Osuna, {\´A}lvaro}, title = {Climate change as a driver of migration? A comparative case study in eastern and northern Ghana}, number = {1}, address = {Passau}, doi = {10.15475/mitrawa.upa1}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14585}, pages = {12 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Academic studies and media reports have pointed to climate change as a dominant factor responsible for future mass migrations from and within the Global South. In response to the deterministic nature of their estimates and predictions, this research explores the link that migrants establish between the environmental changes they experience and migration as a climate adaptation strategy. Furthermore, the overlaps between the profile and migratory behavior of those who manifest a greater presence of climate change in their migratory processes and their counterparts are analysed to identify potential unique climate migration patterns and practices. The quantitative analysis of data gathered in the context of the Mitra|WA project in Ghana's Eastern and Northern Regions in 2022 reveals that, while migration is not predominantly propelled by climate change climate, it does not constitute a new form of mobility demarcated from existing migration patterns and practices. This paper provides an opportunity to redirect future research towards the factors that determine the agency of individuals in response to climate hazards and to explore the role of climate change in a set of drivers of migration in a West African setting.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schwind2025, author = {Schwind, Mara}, title = {„Insgesamt sah ich wirklich die Wellen an mir vorbeirauschen, mich darin befindend" - Die Folgen negativer Reaktionen gegen Wissenschaftler*innen in den sozialen Medien}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15627}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {236 Seiten}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Wissenschaftler*innen werden immer h{\"a}ufiger zum Ziel von Kritik, Anfeindungen und {\"A}hnlichem in den sozialen Medien. Die Studie nimmt die reziproken Effekte dieser negativen Reaktionen in den Blick. Konkret wird untersucht, mit welchen Arten negativer Reaktionen Wissenschaftler*innen konfrontiert werden, welche mentalen Verarbeitungs- und Bewertungsprozesse in diesem Kontext relevant sind und wie die Betroffenen mit den negativen Reaktionen anschließend umgehen, um die entstandene Belastungssituation zu bew{\"a}ltigen. Neben der theoretischen Aufarbeitung der Thematik wird daf{\"u}r auf qualitative Leitfadeninterviews mit betroffenen Wissenschaftler*innen zur{\"u}ckgegriffen. Die Erkenntnisse der Studie werden in einem „Modell der Konfrontation mit negativen Reaktionen in den sozialen Medien" zusammengef{\"u}hrt. Das Modell erm{\"o}glicht zum einen die strukturierte Beschreibung entsprechender Vorf{\"a}lle und kann zum anderen als theoretisch-konzeptionelle Grundlage f{\"u}r weitere empirische Untersuchungen dienen.}, language = {de} } @phdthesis{DwiLaksmana2023, author = {Dwi Laksmana, Dimas}, title = {Knowledge in the making : embodying transdisciplinary moments on organic agriculture in Yogyakarta, Indonesia}, address = {Passau}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-12667}, school = {Universit{\"a}t Passau}, pages = {154 Seiten}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Organic agriculture in Java, Indonesia, has been historically intertwined with social movements that struggled for more economically, ecologically, culturally, and socially sustainable agriculture. While these grassroots movements emerged under an authoritarian government that showed little interest in organic agriculture, the turn of the 21st century saw the rapid involvement of the Indonesian government in supporting, regulating and, arguably, commodifying organic agriculture. Institutionalization triggered diverse responses from competing organic actors, reflecting their different standpoints and knowledges. In this context, a transdisciplinary approach is deemed suitable to provide context-specific insights into organic agriculture. This dissertation draws on anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) to explore the politics of knowledge of organic agriculture in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as a contribution to a critique of transdisciplinarity. My interest on the hierarchization of different knowledges is inspired by the work of anthropologists of knowledge that asks how the communities they study construct knowledge and how they themselves construct knowledge about these communities. Since transdisciplinary knowledge is co-produced by science and society and reflects their embedded power relations, transdisciplinary research needs to be open to different interpretations, and reflexive towards the unequal distribution of resources, accountability, and responsibility. By linking these two lines of thought, I examine the making of knowledges through reflexive transdisciplinary work. I reflect on how "epistemic living space" (Felt 2009) and "co-presence" (Chua 2015) affect research and shape the politics of knowledge of organic agriculture in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I argue that the hierarchization of different knowledges of organic agriculture was intertwined with my shifting positionalities, as a field researcher in Indonesia and PhD student at Passau University, as I moved between these two different "field sites". This cumulative dissertation is divided into two parts. In Part I, "Knowledge in the making", I present my contributions towards transdisciplinary knowledge production and politics of knowledge of organic agriculture. Part II, "Publications", comprises the three stand-alone papers. The first contribution is my formulation of the notion of knowledge in the making. The second is my exploration of the ways that reflexive transdisciplinary work, and living and intersubjective experience shape knowledge in the making. The third is my demonstration of how an understanding of knowledge in the making sheds lights on the politics of knowledge of organic agriculture. This approach serves to examine the politics involved in synthesizing the conceptualizations of organic agriculture employed by different actors into one overarching narrative, such as sustainable agriculture or alternative agriculture. My final contribution is the notion of transdisciplinary moments, a conceptualization of transdisciplinary research practice that accounts for the politics of knowledge in which both scientific and extra-scientific actors are embedded. As a conclusion, I share the lessons learned from pursuing a PhD as a cumulative dissertation in an unstructured setting within a German-Indonesian research project on Indonesian organic agriculture. Finally, I identify bodies of literature and strands of thinking for future engagement within transdisciplinary research and discuss their potential to contribute to radical change in the institutional and value structures of contemporary academia.}, language = {en} } @techreport{EjibaOlajide2025, author = {Ejiba, Ikenna V. and Olajide, Adeola O.}, title = {Does translocality influence climate change adaption of rural farming households? : evidence from Arochukwu, southeast Nigeria}, number = {5}, editor = {Ungruhe, Christian and Wehner, Stefanie}, doi = {10.15475/mitrawa.upa5}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-15773}, pages = {10 Seiten}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Impacts of climate change are a burden for many rural communities in the global south, and particularly affect vulnerable farming households, that depend on agriculture for their sustenance. Understanding how vulnerable rural migrant households respond to this, from a translocal perspective can help to build households' resilience to climate change. While studies in Nigeria have assessed the impact of migration as a means of adaptation, studies assessing the influence of vulnerable households, using this approach is limited. This study therefore assessed how translocality influence adaptation to climate change, for vulnerable rural households in Arochukwu, southeast Nigeria. To achieve this objective, a multistage purposive random sampling technique was used to collect data from rural farm households. Primary data were collected from the households in the Area of Origin (AoO) and Area of Destination (AoD) using survey and interviews, and analysed using mixed methods analysis. Results indicate that rainfall variability and high temperature are the most risks encountered, resulting in crop losses. As a means of adaptation, migrant and non-migrant households engage in off-season migration to urban and rural areas, with more migrant households engaging in off-season rural-urban and rural-rural migration. Among migrant households, flow of resources occur, with the type of item determining the medium of exchange; while households in the AoO pay less attention to agricultural investment. Migrant and non-migrant households also differ significantly in terms of the number of adaptation measures employed. Findings from the empirical analysis on the influence of translocality on adaptation indicate that, perception of climate change, household size, and the transfer of ideas, knowledge, and innovation by migrants to their households in the AoO significantly influence adaptation of rural farming households. The research makes a case for consideration of translocality in national adaptation plans, aimed at building resilience of rural households in Southeast Nigeria.}, language = {en} } @article{Piwoni2024, author = {Piwoni, Eunike}, title = {Comprehending and sensing racism : how Germans of migrant background make sense of experiences of ethnoracial exclusion}, series = {Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Onine ISSN: 1469-9451)}, volume = {50}, journal = {Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Onine ISSN: 1469-9451)}, number = {12}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/1369183X.2024.2316635}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18508}, pages = {2783 -- 2802}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Over the past decade, there has been a strong focus on studying individuals' responses to stigmatisation, discrimination and racism, while the question of how individuals recognise and make sense of an exclusionary event, has been largely side-lined. To fill in this gap, this study leverages an affect-theoretically informed reformulation of Essed's (1991, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. London: Sage) classic concept of 'comprehension of racism' to investigate how individuals understand and make sense of experiences of ethnoracial exclusion. Empirically, the article analyses 419 experiences/incidents of ethnoracial exclusion reported in 66 semi-structured interviews with highly educated, second and 1.75 generation immigrants representing three 'groups' of Germans who (may) experience exclusion due to their migrant background: Germans of Polish migrant background, Black Germans and Germans of Turkish migrant background. The study identifies three modes by which interviewees talked about exclusionary experiences/incidents: (1) by normalisation (interpreting an experience/incident as 'normal'), (2) by categorisation (identifying an experience/incident as, e.g. 'racist', 'discriminatory', or 'disadvantaging') or (3) by indicating feelings of unease. For each of the three modes, the article outlines the role of affects and emotions in interviewees' narratives, provides insight into the types of experiences/incidents for which the modes were used and highlights differences between the three groups of respondents.}, language = {en} } @article{Rajal2024, author = {Rajal, Elke}, title = {Countering antisemitism through Holocaust education : a comparative perspective on Scotland and Austria}, series = {Educational review (Online ISSN: 1465-3397)}, volume = {77}, journal = {Educational review (Online ISSN: 1465-3397)}, number = {5}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/00131911.2024.2325068}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18514}, pages = {1480 -- 1499}, year = {2024}, abstract = {There is an emerging debate in the field as to whether or not Holocaust education is effective in combating antisemitism. This paper aims to provide explanations for the frequently observed ineffectiveness of Holocaust education in reducing antisemitism by examining two cases that are in many ways diametrically opposed: Scotland as a former part of the Allied Forces and Austria as a post-Nazi state. The case studies focus on overlapping, contrasting and conflicting understandings of Holocaust education and the role of antisemitism within it. The perspective is primarily sociological, inspired by Critical Theory. Evidence is based on research papers and basic documents from the field of Holocaust education (curricula, websites of key actors and educational materials). It is interpreted according to the principles of qualitative content analysis. Findings suggest that in both cases opportunities to address and reduce antisemitism are being missed: In the Scottish case, the teaching of the Holocaust tends to downplay the specific Jewish experience and largely fails to address antisemitism, or does so in a very simplistic way. In the Austrian case, antisemitism is talked about, but in the context of widespread secondary antisemitism it risks being explained and understood in ways that are themselves antisemitic.}, language = {en} } @article{CreakTrotier2024, author = {Creak, Simon and Trotier, Friederike}, title = {Sport, diplomacy, and regionalism in Southeast Asia : the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games and ASEAN}, series = {Sport in Society : Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics (Online ISSN: 1743-0445)}, journal = {Sport in Society : Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics (Online ISSN: 1743-0445)}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/17430437.2024.2325971}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18520}, pages = {20 Seiten}, year = {2024}, abstract = {The biennial Southeast Asian or SEA Games, a regional sport mega-event modeled on the Olympic and Asian Games, were established by Thailand in 1959, and since then have been conducted 32 times across 10 of the region's 11 countries. This article examines how this understudied event has operated as a forum for diplomatic representation, negotiation and communication in Southeast Asia. We make three key arguments: (1) the SEA Games have provided member countries with a means to signal national progress and membership of the regional community, as well as to define and delineate this region; (2) the SEA Games have evolved parallel to the region's political grouping, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but with important differences as well as similarities; and (3) the regional perspective of the SEA Games offers insights that blur the distinction in recent scholarship between traditional 'sports diplomacy' (foregrounding the state) and 'international-sport-as-diplomacy' (foregrounding non-state actors).}, language = {en} } @article{Bueno2024, author = {Bueno, Arthur}, title = {The end (and persistence) of subjectivity : Luk{\´a}cs with Adorno, Adorno with Luk{\´a}cs}, series = {Distinktion : Journal of Social Theory (Online ISSN: 2159-9149)}, volume = {25}, journal = {Distinktion : Journal of Social Theory (Online ISSN: 2159-9149)}, number = {3}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/1600910X.2024.2381469}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18548}, pages = {435 -- 454}, year = {2024}, abstract = {This paper revisits Luk{\´a}cs's and Adorno's analyses of reification to articulate a diagnosis that accounts both for its tendencies towards authoritarianism and its emancipatory potentials. Despite their divergences, Luk{\´a}cs's conception of the proletariat as 'identical subject-object of history' and Adorno's diagnosis of 'the end of psychology' in the authoritarian masses seem to converge on a similar outcome. Through opposite paths, they both culminate in the elimination of the subject-object distinction, leading the critique of reification to a political impasse. However, this alternative is rooted in partial interpretations of Luk{\´a}cs's and Adorno's arguments. As I contend, one can reconstruct Luk{\´a}cs's analysis in a way that portrays emancipatory subjectivity not as hostile to otherness but as driven by the material limits of reification, or what Adorno termed the non-identical. Correspondingly, in light of Luk{\´a}cs, Adorno's diagnosis can be read in a way that the end of psychology, far from negating the possibility of emancipation, serves as its driving force.}, language = {en} } @article{KlingToepflJuergens2024, author = {Kling, Julia and T{\"o}pfl, Florian and J{\"u}rgens, Pascal}, title = {Entertainment interspersed with propaganda : how non-legacy-news accounts deliver explicitly political content to mass audiences on Russia's most popular social network VK}, series = {Information, Communication \& Society (Online ISSN: 1468-4462)}, volume = {28}, journal = {Information, Communication \& Society (Online ISSN: 1468-4462)}, number = {7}, publisher = {Taylor \& Francis}, address = {London}, doi = {10.1080/1369118X.2024.2420029}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-18562}, pages = {1252 -- 1269}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Previous research on political communication on Russia's most popular social network VK has concluded that most users avoid news by not following legacy-news accounts. In this study, we expand the universe of scrutinized accounts with the most-followed non-legacy-news accounts (>100,000 followers) that regularly publish what we theorize to be 'explicitly political content' (EPC; N = 355). We delineate a typology of six types of EPC accounts, calculate their aggregate follower counts, and determine how many of them were still (1) accessible from Russia and (2) publishing Kremlin-critical content in October 2022. Our findings indicate that non-critical accounts attracted 26 times more followers than Kremlin-critical accounts. Entertainment-focused EPC accounts had seven times more followers than legacy-news accounts. As a result, they became the primary means through which non-critical EPC reached news-avoidant mass audiences. We identify three dimensions through which autocrats can interweave propaganda and entertainment and highlight promising research paths.}, language = {en} }