Human-environment relations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East are changing at an ever-increasing pace. Previously ‘remote’ spaces and ‘inaccessible’ natural substances are being rendered accessible for global markets by new technologies and infrastructures. With this access comes new modes of production, consumption, and living that, in turn, bring long-lasting pollution. At the same time, the effects of anthropogenic climate change are transforming agricultural, pastoral and maritime practices. The projects of the research unit Environment and Justice examine these changes from both contemporary and historical perspectives. Through case studies drawn from the region, these projects seek to answer three key questions: How have local actors been acting and reacting to such transformations, and how have they been evaluating them? To what extent have they been discussing shifting human-environmental relations in terms of justice/injustice, or other related alternative concepts? What analytic concepts should we use to properly describe the relations between environmental change, social differences, and political hierarchies in these regions?
Environment and Justice
Research Projects
Revisions of Rurality: Ecology, Conflict and Violence in a Changing Middle East
“Green Halal”: Multiple, Translocal, and Enacted through Encounters (AvH)
A New History of Infectious Diseases in the Southern Red Sea Region (DFG)
Associated and Affiliated Researchers
Completed Projects
Urban Infrastructure in pre-2011 Aleppo. Civil Agency and State-power Dynamics Between Water Provision and Waste Disposal (BMBF)
Until September 2021The Stubborn Mobility: Nomads and Political Agency in the Arab East, 1920–2015 (AvH)
Until September 2020Debating Extraction: Plural Visions of Infrastructure in Papua, Indonesia
Contact
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PD Dr. Katharina Lange
Head of Research Unit "Environment and Justice"
Phone: +49-(0)30-80307-222 Email: Katharina.Lange(at)zmo.de