Conflicts in Space – Conflicts in Politics, Physical Violence, and the Economy
This year’s annual conference organized by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1265 Refiguration of Spaces focused on the question of how a spatial perspective can shed light on current social conflicts. On October 10th and 11th, researchers from the CRC and beyond provided insightful answers to this question by sharing examples of their research across a wide range of scales and settings. In this first of a two-part blog post, we would like to highlight some key takeaways from day one of two exciting conference days.
Hubert Knoblauch opened the conference and introduced the CRC as an interdisciplinary research consortium that, inspired by Martina Löw’s theory of space, investigates the far-reaching spatial reorganization of society. As Knoblauch explained, although conflict was not initially on the agenda of a social science that often saw globalization as an unstoppable and seamless expansion, tensions soon became apparent, and we are now witnessing a resurgence of spatial conflicts, particularly around issues of borders and national sovereignty. The concept of refiguration, and a key interest of the conference, was to give credit to the complexity of these spatial conflicts.
Introducing the Conference Theme & Arjun Appadurai’s Keynote
The sessions of the conference were conceived as a meeting place – between research within and outside the CRC – to identify and discuss key lines and fields of conflict at the intersection of nature, culture, ideology and economic interests, bodily encounters, as well as the development and diffusion of digital technologies and the increase in global circulation.
The first keynote was given by renowned anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (NYU), whose work has accompanied the CRC since its inception, particularly with his concept of multiple scapes and his early recognition of the constraints, disjunctions, fissures, and conflicts that accompany the transnationalizing forces of globalization.
In his lecture “The Territory of Affect: Polymorphous Populism and National Boundaries,” Appadurai re-examined the success of right-wing authoritarian movements (in their various guises and labels). He pointed out that the Right has clearly been successful in conquering the terrain of affect – the subjective experience of feelings and attachments that individuals have in response to different situations – and argued that it has done so by embracing a “polymorphous” nature: a diffuse, multisensory economy anchored in emotion that resists restriction or localization. By tapping into this affective mass sensorium, the Right evokes a particular notion of “the People” and recodes citizens into followers.
The battleground of liberalism versus authoritarianism was therefore not (only) the economy, but the arena of affect. This insight, Appadurai continued, brings us back to the spatial concept of the territory and to a question that has occupied him for most of his career: Why, despite changes in the global economy, transnational loyalties, diasporas, etc., does the love of the nation retain such force, and why is it the only large-scale social form to do so, even though it is fairly young, ultimately artificial, and rather abstract? Echoing the key themes of this conference, he argued that this affective charge might be at least partially illuminated by unpacking spatial constructions of land (property), soil, territory, and in particular the ways in which the affective environment of the nation is produced through the enactment of violence. The rise of the Hindu Right under Prime Minister Modi in India served as an example of the Right’s ability to capture the terrain of affect through various forms of violent mobilization.
Appadurai’s keynote provided a fitting opening to the conference, tying into the CRC’s interest in transcending scales – from affects to institutional orders. It also resonated with the theme of conflicts between different spatial logics – i.e. territorial, transnational and local logics, highlighting why, in this conflictual constellation, right-wing populism can succeed through the affective environment of the territorial nation-state.
Spatial Conflicts and Physical Violence – Panel I
The “Spatial Conflicts and Physical Violence” panel addressed a significant gap in the study of spatial conflicts by examining violence from various perspectives and scales.
The panel opened with René Tuma and Mina Godarzani-Bakhtiari’s (TU Berlin) presentation on the spatiality of micro-interactional violence. Their research explored how violence unfolds in specific situations, with a focus on the interaction between subjects and bodies as they move through space. Building on the theories of Teresa Koloma Beck, they emphasized that street violence should not only be understood through the actions of perpetrators and victims but also through the role of bystanders and observers. Tuma and Godarzani-Bakhtiari further highlighted how institutions like Forensic Architecture and media outlets such as Al Jazeera or the Süddeutsche Zeitung mediate and reconstruct violent events. By claiming objectivity, these organizations position themselves outside the violent encounter, while reshaping how these incidents are perceived and negotiated in their aftermath.
Second, Agatha Mutio Nthenge (Chuka University Kenya), discussed the persistent violence between pastoralist groups in northern Kenya. This region, which is heavily reliant on pastoralism, has seen intense competition over vital resources like water and pasture, leading to conflicts between pastoralist groups. Nthenge explained that pastoralism is not only essential for survival in these arid regions but also holds deep cultural and social significance. However, the political and economic marginalization of these communities, dating back to Kenya’s independence, has intensified the conflicts. Development projects, such as oil exploration, and the increased availability of small arms through porous borders have further fueled violence and raids in these areas. Nthenge emphasized how these clashes often go beyond resource competition, representing struggles for social status, territorial control, and political influence within marginalized communities.
The final presentation of the panel, delivered by Abram de Swaan (University of Amsterdam), addressed extreme and systemic violence in what he termed “enclaves of barbarization.” These are isolated spaces where violence is perpetrated against unarmed and unorganized individuals by armed, organized groups in processes of mass annihilation. Drawing on historical examples, de Swaan highlighted how such enclaves are spatially and psychologically separated from everyday society, allowing regimes and their followers to dissociate from the barbarities occurring within. This spatial segregation not only conceals violence but also facilitates a kind of psychological compartmentalization for those involved in or adjacent to these violent acts. Here, de Swaan used the example of concentration camps, often built removed from populated areas, to illustrate how societies and individuals can disavow knowledge of the atrocities happening nearby – while emphasizing that it remained obvious to the public that extreme violence was taking place. He also explored how this compartmentalization might explain different responses to trauma, such as the higher incidence of PTSD among American veterans compared to German perpetrators, whose violence was rarely verbalized in social spaces and was therefore compartmentalized in space and in their minds.
The panel concluded by engaging the audience in a long-overdue discussion of the spatial dimensions of violence. The speakers and interventions from the audience demonstrated how understanding these spatial dynamics can offer important insights into both historical and contemporary conflicts.
Spatial Politics of Economic Activity – Panel II
Panel II focused on spatial conflicts, politics, and economic activity. While the presentations covered a wide range of topics – from the meatpacking industry, to different cities’ approaches to Airbnb regulation, to voluntary carbon offsetting – the issue of center and periphery cut through them all.
First, Ursula Mense-Petermann (Bielefeld University) presented research findings on the spatial impacts of the meatpacking industry and their connection to transnational labor markets. German meatpacking businesses heavily rely on posted workers – employees temporarily sent from their employer to perform services in other EU member states –, mostly from eastern EU member states. Mense-Petermann elaborated on the spatial conflicts that arise where production sites are located. For example, when real estate is used as collective accommodation for posted workers and falls into decay, or when the extreme exploitation of these workers becomes visible in public space. While the labor and contractual conditions of posted workers are regularly the subject of public debate, these spatial conflicts on the outskirts of small villages and towns hardly receive any attention.
In the second presentation, Simon Pohl (TU Berlin) shed light on how cities are trying to tame short-term rentals via Airbnb with different regulatory approaches. Based on webscraped data from the Airbnb marketplace, such as the approximate location of listings or the number of listings a host has, he showed how listings spread across Amsterdam and San Francisco over time. Even though these cities take different approaches to the regulation of short-term rentals, a professionalization divide becomes apparent in both of them. Professional hosts with multiple or long-term available listings dominate in the city center, while casual amateur hosts are mainly located on the periphery. Drawing on these results, we can speculate about the motivations for hosting via Airbnb. While in the city center it may be about profiting from tourists, in the periphery it may be driven by socio-cultural motivations and the search for additional income.
The diversity of topics covered by the panel was further expanded by Maria Backhouse’s (University Augsburg) presentation on conflicts surrounding voluntary carbon offsetting. Backhouse suggested a critical lens through which to view these market-based approaches to climate protection, illustrating her approach with reference to a program aimed at stopping deforestation through financial incentives. A fundamental critique of such programs concerns questions of responsibility. While carbon emissions primarily originate from economic centers in the Global North, projects aimed at carbon offsetting are mainly implemented in the Global South. To date, there is no evidence backing the impact of these programs on deforestation. Yet, spatial relations indicate an externalization of responsibility from centers to peripheries.
In summary, the theme of center and periphery cut across the presentations and vastly different research projects featured in panel II. We are therefore excited about the prospect of further research that investigates in depth how center and periphery in particular, and spatial relations in general, are entangled with politics and conflicts in economic processes.
Teresa Koloma Beck’s keynote
Teresa Koloma Beck’s keynote concluded the first day of the conference with a talk on “Scaling Violent Conflict,” which explored the question of how violent conflicts unfold in space: How is it that some violent conflicts seem to transcend place and acquire transnational relevance, or seem to multiply in different places? Drawing on 20 years of experience writing about violence and conflict in war and post-war societies, she began by reiterating the responsibility of such research and emphasizing that it is particularly important at this juncture in time to acknowledge its impact on vulnerable people and the imaginaries through which the realities of war are made sense of.
For Koloma Beck, it is crucial to recognize that violence is not just a means of conducting a conflict. Rather, it is embedded in processes of evaluation and dependent on an observer in order to become a socially relevant process. Violence is therefore not empirically evident, but contingent, meaning that the conditions under which a particular experience can be identified as violence change over time.
A key question for Koloma Beck is therefore how the observation of violence in a conflict affects the dynamics between the conflict parties. This is where “scaling” comes in as a mode of transnationalizing violent conflict. In her talk, she cited several examples of such scaling processes, such as the way in which human rights organizations and courts judge and observe violence, thereby granting or withdrawing legitimacy from the parties to the conflict. Another dynamic of transnationalization unfolds through social and historical relations that connect people in the place of conflict with other places through economic, cultural, academic, and civil society exchanges that ensure that those directly involved in violence do not remain abstract, distant people. The war in Ukraine and the response in Germany is one example, as is the war in the Middle East, both of which have a tangible impact on everyday life in places outside the theater of war. The effects can be manifold, including the expansion of new arenas of tension as well as the potential facilitation of relief work. A third horizon of transnationalization opens up through personal biographies that link conflicts across places in ways that resonate deeply with past experiences of violence.
The talk concluded by emphasizing the importance of thinking about these entanglements as a multi-sited, globalized dynamic that is deeply relevant to today’s democracies. Since it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between what is a domestic and what is a foreign policy problem, the resulting potential for conflict must be addressed in productive ways if plural democracies are to survive and evolve.
With this intriguing keynote, an exciting first conference day came to a close. To round up this report, a second blog post will cover day two of the conference on Conflicts in Space.
Author biographies
Zoé Perko is a research assistant at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin conducting research in the CRC subproject C01 “The Borders of the World II: Conflicts and Tensions in the Formation of Macro-Territorial Borders” on border and migration regimes in regional integration arrangements.
Christina Hecht is a sociologist researching spatial conflicts in subproject C07 “Platform Economy: Spatial Conflicts over Airbnb between Global Marketization and Territorial Containment” at the CRC.
Lucie Bernroider is an anthropologist working at the central management of the CRC 1265.