Friedenssicherung durch Minderheitenschutz : Instrumente und Mechanismen der Vereinten Nationen

Ziel des vorliegenden Papers ist die Bewertung der Instrumente und Mechanismen der Vereinten Nationen zum Minderheitenschutz. Das friedliche Zusammenleben von Mehrheiten und Minderheiten innerhalb der Bevölkerung kann, so wird gezeigt, nur durch eine substanzielle Zusammenarbeit der internationalen Staatengemeinschaft erreicht werden. Auf Basis einer Analyse historischer Entwicklungen und mittels exemplarischer Untersuchungen dreier zentraler Minderheitenschutzinstrumente aus dem System der VN wird die Wirksamkeit der Menschenrechtsinstrumente bzw. Mechanismen auf theoretischer sowie legaler Ebene bewertet. Durch eine kritische Bewertung ihrer praktischen Umsetzung werden außerdem Alternativen zum existierenden internationalen Minderheitenschutzsystem aufgezeigt

Special Issue for Berliner Blätter

The Western world has traditionally viewed cities in opposition to the natural elements, constructing modernist urban spaces to resist the forces of water, air, fire, and earth. Today, urban societies are haunted again by the overflows and burning presences of the elements they have tried to ban. In the face of ongoing climate crises, social sciences and humanities often treat "nature" and natural elements as urbanized, shaped by urban processes rather than influencing them. How can urban anthropology develop a more integral perspective on the interaction of cities and the elementals, one that acknowledges their vitality and agency? An elemental urbanism positions cities as crucial sites in the so-called critical zone, where bodily, conceptual and political attunements to the delicate flows and interdependencies of planetary processes take shape.Peer Reviewe

Berlin Teufelsberg as leaky archive

In this contribution, we argue that the material process of urbanizing soil is not limited to the transformation of a “natural” into an “urban” element. Rather, soil is produced in and from cities. This is exemplified through the case of Teufelsberg, a rubble mound in the southwest of Berlin, created from 26 cubic metres of city rubble from the early 1950s onwards. We accompany soil scientists on an excursion to trace the scientific debates and troubles around classifying urban soil, studies about sulphate leaching from bricks, and recent ideas of resignifying the experimental rubble mound as a soil monument of both scientific and cultural significance. The Teufelsberg process of rubble pedogenesis confronts us with an imaginary of soils as leaky archives of human activity. Through their hybridity as both material and lively, organic and technogenic, rubble soils trouble imaginaries of elemental “purity”.Peer Reviewe

Engaging the terrestrial in city making

Introductory remarks to the volume "Elemental Urbanism"Peer Reviewe

Free Riding Rio: Protest, Public Transport and the Politics of a Footboard

This article explores the political quality of relations between residents and urban materiality. Against a background of mass protests against transit fare increases in major Brazilian cities, and the violent infrastructural transformations of post‐Olympic Rio de Janeiro, I show how the four‐year suspension of a central city tramline has led to the emergence of new forms of urban collectivity. My case study concentrates on the tramway’s function as “free riding” device, which allows residents to jump on and off the footboard without having to pay for the journey. I draw on filmed accounts of footboard‐riding to examine how embodied relations to urban matter have induced claims for alternative ways of organizing public transport and access to the city. By combining approaches to assemblage, micropolitics and affect, I argue that residents’ attachments to the tramway and its latest technological changes generate ambiguous political mobilizations, ranging from revolutionary to reactionary.TU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel – 202

Bonding oder „Was hält die Stadt zusammen?“

„Infrastrukturen städtischer Intimität“ – flüchtige, affektive Prozesse des Sich-Verbindens, vermittelt durch konkrete, mit Versprechen, Wünschen und Begehren behaftete Objekte – halten die Stadt zusammen. Gleichzeitig werden Prozesse der Fragmentierung, De-Mobilisierung, Ent-Politisierung häufig auf ebendiese intimen Verbindungsweisen zurückgeführt. In meinem Beitrag gehe ich dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Zusammenhalt und Auseinanderbrechen, zwischen neuen Verbindungen und regressiven, beharrenden Dynamiken urbaner Kollektive nach. Erstens zeige ich am Beispiel „öffentlicher Verkehr“, wie Intimität, Verletzlichkeit und exposure als raumproduzierende Taktiken eingesetzt werden, die heteronormative Allianzen und Ordnungen aufbrechen. Zweitens argumentiere ich mit einer Anekdote zu den kreativen Baugruben-Protesten im prä-olympischen Rio de Janeiro, dass gerade das Spiel mit der Intensität „loser Verbindungen“ es ermöglicht, die fragile Balance kollektiven Lebens in urbanen Gesellschaften zusammenzuhalten

Spaces of exposure: Re-thinking ‘publicness’ through public transport

Developing thoughts on exposure in cultural geography, literary studies, and mobilities research, this article aims to provide a more comprehensive account towards the publicness of public space. What would happen if we assessed publicness not by degrees of openness and inclusion, but through the nexus of vulnerability and complicity that is fundamental to the notion of exposure? To grasp such an intrinsic dualism, our perspective goes towards public transport, where experiences of exposure are intensified by its specific conditions of encapsulation and movement. We illustrate this perspective drawing from the autobiographical chronicles of the Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, in order to then propose a ‘learning from’ the case of public transport for a rethinking of publicness. Specifically, we argue that exposure provides new insights on agency, power and vulnerability as part of a more processual notion of public space.Peer Reviewe