Prof. Dr. Peter Lindner

„Kreativpolitik“?

Das Projekt „Kreativpolitik — Zur Entstehung und Ausdifferenzierung eines politischen Gestaltungsfeldes unter neoliberalem Vorzeichen“ hat seine Wurzeln in der Arbeit an einem Kreativwirtschaftsbericht für die Stadt Frankfurt zusammen mit Ch. Berndt, P. Goeke und V. Neisen. Dabei wurde unübersehbar, dass die Diskussion um Kreativität, kreative Milieus und die Kreativwirtschaft als Grundlage städtischer Entwicklung trotz aller berechtigten Kritik längst performativ geworden ist und sich ihre eigene Wirklichkeit geschaffen hat. Gestützt unter anderem auf die Arbeiten des US-amerikanischen Stadtplaners Richard Florida kam es zu einer Neufokussierung städtischer Förderprogrammatiken auf eine lebendige Kunst- und (Sub-)Kulturszene als Grundlage wirtschaftlicher Prosperität, welche bislang relativ autonome Teilbereiche der Stadtgesellschaft (Kunst, Musik, Literatur) einem verstärkten Verwertungssog unterwarf. Dies geschieht nicht zuletzt im Rahmen der Etablierung eines neuen politischen Feldes, das wir als „Kreativpolitik“ bezeichnen und dessen Funktionsweise, Ausdifferenzierung und Wirkungen in dem Projekt untersucht werden. Dabei konzentrieren wir uns insbesondere auf die Art und Weise, wie unterschiedliche und häufig widersprüchliche Rationalitäten städtischen Regierens – marktorientierte Wirtschaftsförderung, Stadtplanung sowie Kunst- und Kulturpolitik – gemeinsam artikuliert und in einer neuen ‚konsensualen Programmatik' zusammengeführt werden. Als Fallstudie dient die Stadt Frankfurt a. M.

Bearbeiter: Iris Dzudzek und Peter Lindner Förderung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Laufzeit: 2010-2014

Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen:

• 2016: Kreativpolitik: Über die Machteffekte einer neuen Regierungsform des Städtischen. Bielefeld: transcript (I. Dzudzek).

• 2018: Kreative Stadt. In: Bernd Belina, Matthias Naumann und Anke Strüver (Hg.): Handbuch kritische Stadtgeographie (3. Aufl.). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, S. 184-189 (I. Dzudzek).
• 2018: Creativity policy: Conserving neoliberalism's Other in a market assemblage? In: Economic Geography 94/2, S. 97-117 (P. Lindner).
• 2015: Performing the creative-economy script: Contradicting urban rationalities at work. In: Regional Studies 49 (2015, 3). S. 388-403 (P. Lindner und I. Dzudzek).
• 2014: Vergesst Kreativität! In: Bildpunkt - Zeitschrift der IG Bildende Kunst (2014/3), S. 28-29 (I. Dzudzek).
• 2013: Unternehmen oder Unvernehmen? – Über die Krise des Kreativsubjekts und darüber hinaus. In: Geographica Helvetica 68 (2013/3), S. 181-189 (I. Dzudzek).
• 2012: Coworking Space. In: Nadine Marquardt und Verena Schreiber (Hg.): Ortsregister: Ein Glossar zu Räumen der Gegenwart. Bielefeld: transcript. S. 70-75. (I. Dzudzek).
• 2008: Креативный город: проектирование модели на примере Франкфурта [Die kreative Stadt: Modell und Projekt am Beispiel Frankfurts]. In: Никулин, Александр (Hg.). 2008. Пути России: культура – общество человек: материалы международного симпозиума (25-26 января 2008 года). Москва. S. 128-147.
• 2008: Kreativwirtschaftsbericht Frankfurt. Frankfurt a.M. (Gutachten, online veröffentlicht; mit Ch. Berndt, P. Goeke und V. Neisen). pdf 2 MB

Kommunen im (Klima)-Wandel?

War Klimapolitik lange Zeit vor allem eine internationale und nationalstaatliche Aufgabe, so etablieren sich in jüngster Zeit verstärkt auch Städte und Gemeinden als eigenständige Akteure. Sowohl in europäisch und national geförderten Programmen wie auch in internationalen, nationalen oder regionalen Städtenetzwerken ist dabei zu beobachten, dass ein besonderer Fokus auf die Förderung von Wissenstransfer und Erfahrungsaustausch gelegt wird. Trotz der enormen Popularität von Instrumenten wie Best Practices oder Case Studies in der kommunalen Klimapolitik ist wenig darüber bekannt, warum sich diese Regierungstechnologien so großer Beliebtheit erfreuen und welche Konsequenzen die Fokussierung auf Techniken des Transfers „guter Praktiken“ für die politische Problematisierung des Klimawandels sowie für entsprechende Regierungsweisen hat. Mit dieser Forschungslücke befasst sich das Projekt „Kommunen im (Klima)-Wandel? Politische Rationalitäten der kommunalen Klimapolitik: Regieren durch Best Practices“. Untersucht wird, wie Klimawandel in Städten und Gemeinden durch den Gebrauch und die Verbreitung von vermeintlichen Best Climate Practices regierbar gemacht wird. Als Fallstudien dienen das „Masterplan 100% Klimaschutz“-Programm des Bundesumweltministeriums und das Climate-KIC Innovationsprojekt „Transition Cities“.

Bearbeiter: Nanja Nagorny-Koring und Peter Lindner in Kooperation mit Hannes Utikal (Provadis Hochschule) Förderung: Climate-KIC Laufzeit: 2014-2017

Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen:

• 2018 (im Druck): Kommunen im Klimawandel: Best Practices als Chance zur grünen Transformation? Bielefeld: transcript (N. Nagorny-Koring).

• 2018: Replication vs mentoring: Accelerating the spread of good practices for the low-carbon transition. In: International Journal of Sustainable Development & Planning 13/2, S. 316–328 (S. Boulanger und N. Nagorny).
• 2018: Managing urban transitions in theory and practice: The case of the pioneer cities and transition cities projects. In: Journal of Cleaner Production 175, S. 60-69 (N. Nagorny-Koring und T. Nochta).
• 2018: Leading the way with examples and ideas?: Governing climate change in German municipalities through best practices. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning (N. Nagorny-Koring).
• Nagorny-Koring, N. (2019): The power-knowledge of best practice. In: Cashmore, Matthew; Jensen, Jens S. and Späth, Philipp (Hg.): The Politics of Urban Transitions: Knowledge, Power and Governance. London/New York: Routledge (Research in Sustainable Urbanism, 5), S. 67-87.

Frontier Regions globaler Marktexpansion

Bearbeiter: Stefan Ouma, Marc Boeckler und Peter Lindner Förderung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Laufzeit: 2010-2013

Der globale Agrarmarkt befindet sich in einem tief greifenden Umbruch. Nahrungsmittelkrisen und Lebensmittelskandale gehen einher mit steigenden Ansprüchen an Qualität und saisonunabhängige Verfügbarkeit von hochwertigen Agrarprodukten, die in Europa noch vor kurzem kaum bekannt waren. Im Zuge dieser Entwicklungen werden frontier regions – Regionen des Globalen Südens, in denen die landwirtschaftliche Produktion bislang der Selbstversorgung diente oder nur lokal gehandelt wurde – von Großunternehmen in Weltmarktbeziehungen integriert und fundamental umstrukturiert. Idealtypische Marktmodelle dienen dabei als Handlungsvorlage, müssen jedoch an lokale Bedingungen angepasst werden und bringen so neue Marktordnungen hervor. Diese Expansionsprozesse untersuchen wir in dem Projekt „Der globale Agrarmarkt und seine unscharfen Ränder: Formen und Folgen der Integration von Kleinbauern in transnationale Warenketten“ anhand von zwei Beispielregionen in Ghana, in denen erst vor kurzem mit der Produktion von Just-in-Time-Fruchtsalaten und Bio-Mangos für den europäischen Markt begonnen wurde. Sechs sich ergänzende Perspektiven auf die neu entstehenden Arrangements sowie die Performativität von Marktmodellen bilden für uns den Ansatzpunkt der empirischen Arbeit: Die Definition neuer Produkte, die Preisfindung auf „schwachen“ Märkten, die Regelung des Wettbewerbs, die unterschiedlichen Marktmodelle als Referenzpunkte, Kontroll- und Sanktionsmechanismen sowie neue Kriterien sozialer Differenzierung als Konsequenz der Marktintegration.

Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen:

• 2015: Assembling Export Markets. The Making and Unmaking of Global Food Connections in West Africa. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell (S. Ouma).
• 2013: Extending the margins of marketization: Frontier regions and the making of agro-export markets in northern Ghana. In: Geoforum 48, S. 225-235 (S. Ouma, M. Boeckler und P. Lindner).
• 2012: Creating and maintaining global connections: Agro-business and the precarious making of fresh-cut markets. In: Journal of Development Studies 48 (3), S. 322–334 (S. Ouma).
• 2012: Markets in the Making: Zur Ethnographie alltäglicher Marktkonstruktionen in organisationalen Settings. In: Geografica Helvetica 67 (4), S. 203–211 (S. Ouma).
• 2012: The making and remaking of agroindustries in Africa. In: Journal of Development Studies 48 (3), S. 301–307 (S. Ouma und L. Whitfield).
• 2010: Von Märkten und Reisenden: Geographische Entwicklungsforschung oder Wirtschaftsgeographien des Globalen Südens? In: Geographische Rundschau 62 (10), S. 12–19 (P. Lindner und S. Ouma).

Industriestadt Frankfurt?

Bearbeiter: Peter Lindner, Stefan Ouma, Max Klöppinger und Marc Boeckler Förderung/Laufzeit: Wirtschaftsförderung Frankfurt; 2012-2013

Spätestens seit der Finanzkrise erfolgt europaweit eine Neubewertung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Bedeutung des verarbeitenden Gewerbes. Zeitgleich zeichnet sich ein verändertes Bild industrieller Produktion ab, das seinen prominentesten Ausdruck im Begriff der „vierten industriellen Revolution“ findet. Welche Anforderungen sich daraus an die kommunale Industriepolitik ergeben, ist jedoch weithin unbekannt. Vor diesem Hintergrund hat die Stadt Frankfurt beschlossen, einen Masterplan Industrie zu entwickeln, der die Richtung der stadtökonomischen Entwicklung in den nächsten Jahren maßgeblich mit bestimmen soll. Das Projekt „Industriestudie Frankfurt“ liefert dafür die Grundlagen. Es nimmt konsequent die Perspektive der Unternehmer und ihrer Beschäftigten ein und zielt darauf ab, ein detailliertes und differenziertes Bild eines Sektors zu entwerfen, der immer schwerer vom Bereich der „Dienstleistungen“ abzugrenzen ist. Dazu kombiniert die Studie eine traditionelle SWOT-Analyse mit der vertieften Untersuchung von Netzwerkbeziehungen und Wertschöpfungsketten und skizziert industriepolitische Handlungsfelder für einen zukünftigen Masterplan.

Ausgewählte Veröffentlichungen:

• 2014: Industriestudie Frankfurt am Main 2013. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang (P. Lindner u.a.). 

Creative Industries in Frankfurt

• Bearbeiter: Ch. Berndt, P. Goeke, P. Lindner und V. Neisen
• Förderung: Wirtschaftsförderung Frankfurt GmbH
• Laufzeit: 2007-2008

„In Russland wurde ich als ,Faschistin' beschimpft, hier bin ich zur ,Russakin' geworden“ – die besondere Bedeutung von Binnenstrukturen für Russlanddeutsche in der BRD

Privatisierung des öffentlichen Raums: Gated Communities in Moskau

• Bearbeiter: S. Lentz und P. Lindner
• Förderung: Eigenmittel
• Laufzeit: 2002-2005

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Etikettenwechsel oder Strukturwandel? Alltagsräume und Strukturationsweisen in ländlichen Regionen Rußlands nach der Umwandlung kollektiver Betriebsformen

Bearbeiter: P. Lindner Förderung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Laufzeit: 2000-2002

Industrieentwicklung in Palästina aus institutionenorientierter Perspektive

• Bearbeiter: P. Lindner
• Förderung: Bayerischer Forschungsverbund Area Studies (FORAREA)
• Laufzeit: 1995-1998

Der Wandel des Verhältnisses von sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung und gesellschaftlicher Praxis: Anwendungsbezüge in der Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeographie

Zwischen Volks- und Hochislam: Die Transformation islamischer Wallfahrtsorte in Marokko

Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Aretaic Shift in Biopolitical Governance

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s „The Politics of Life Itself“ (2001, 2007) there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This talk uses what Rose terms „molecular politics“, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question „What, then, of biopolitics today?“ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimisation, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not „life itself“ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of (self-)governance.

Globale Gesundheitspolitik zwischen ökonomischer Rationalität und Regieren im „State of Exception“

Der Umgang mit Covid-19 ist im Kontext einer seit einigen Dekaden stattfindenden Verschiebung der Rationalitäten des Regierens im Politikfeld Gesundheit zu sehen. Standen unter der Ägide des Gesundheitsministeriums lange Zeit humanitäre und sozialstaatliche Agenden im Vordergrund, so gewann in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten die Gewährleistung staatlicher Sicherheit zunehmend an Bedeutung. Damit einher ging eine Ökonomisierung gesundheitspolitischer Krisenstrategien, die einerseits auf die Funktionsfähigkeit der nationalen Ökonomie abzielt und sich andererseits in der ökonomischen Bewertung von Risiken und Maßnahmen im Sinn eines Kosten-Nutzen-Kalküls äußert. Die Ökonomisierung stellt jedoch – neben z.B. der Sicherung kritischer Infrastrukturen und administrativer Handlungsfähigkeit – nur eine der Rationalitäten des derzeit stattfindenden Versicherheitlichungsprozesses dar. Sie bleibt deshalb fragil, ist permanenten Aushandlungsprozessen unterworfen und kann im Krisenfall insbesondere durch den Verweis auf einen Ausnahmezustand unvermittelt außer Kraft gesetzt oder neu interpretiert werden, wie einige der Maßnahmen im Kontext der Covid-19 Pandemie eindrucksvoll belegen. Unser Forschungsprojekt zu „Globaler Gesundheitspolitik zwischen ökonomischer Rationalität und Regieren im Ausnahmezustand“ untersucht die Ökonomisierung der globalen Gesundheitspolitik der BRD in diesem Kontext und setzt dabei heuristisch an vier Feldern an: strategische Globalisierung, wirtschaftspolitische Re-Nationalisierung, ökonomische Maßnahmenbewertung und Ausnahmezustand als Legitimationsnarrativ. Den empirischen Ausgangspunkt bildet das 2015 neu geschaffene Amt eines „Koordinators für die außenpolitische Dimension globaler Gesundheitsfragen“ im Auswärtigen Amt.

Reset Modernity! Künstlerische Interventionen gegen den „Teufel des Doppelklicks

Als den „Teufel des Doppelklicks“ hat Bruno Latour die für die Moderne charakteristische Annahme bezeichnet, auf Wissen über die Welt direkt zugreifen zu können und dabei dessen Produktionsbedingungen außer acht zu lassen. Künstlerische Interventionen sind eine Möglichkeit, diese vermeintlich unmittelbare Verbindung zwischen Dingen, ihrer Repräsentation und der Eingliederung in Wissensordnungen zu irritieren und damit kontingente Konstruktionsprozesse offenzulegen. Gerade für die Erschütterung etablierter Sehgewohnheiten und Darstellungen von ‚Natur‘, welche der Begriff Anthropozän einfordert, hat dieses Irritationspotenzial große Bedeutung, da es eine neue Art zu Schauen (gaze) ermöglicht, die über kognitive Korrekturen hinausgeht. Die von Bruno Latour kuratierte Ausstellung „Reset Modernity!“ (Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe, 2016) zielt genau darauf ab und dient für den Vortrag als Bezugspunkt um zu zeigen, wie Kunst neue Perspektiven auf das Anthropozän im Spannungsfeld zwischen Wissenschaft, Ästhetik und Politik eröffnen kann. 

Smart Bodies — Smart Cities: Kritische Anmerkungen zu einem neuen Schnittfeld stadtpolitischer Steuerung

Die Smart City-Vision, als Leitbild in Planung und Administration längst performativ geworden, beschreibt die Stadt als Netzwerk und suggeriert mit dieser Metapher Inklusion sowie dezentral-angepasste anstatt bevormundend-hierarchischer Steuerung. Die ‚klassischen‘ sozialen und materiellen Ungleichheiten (spät-)moderner Metropolen rücken dabei unbemerkt in den Hintergrund. Der Vortrag zeigt auf, inwieweit der mikrotechnologisch-smart ergänzte, erweiterte und vernetzte Körper ein Element dieses Leitbildes ist und problematisiert die verbreitete Hoffnung auf Autonomiegewinne durch individualisierte Informationen. Eingegangen wird dazu auf Paradoxien, die im Rahmen von Smart City-Diskursen bislang wenig thematisiert werden. Dazu zählen die Gleichzeitigkeit von Responsibilisierung und Abhängigkeit, die Verfügbarkeit von Information als Handlungsressource und Teil einer manipulativen choice architecture, die Rationalität eines technologisch unterstützen Alltagslebens und neue emotional-spielerische Bindungen („captivation“) sowie die gouvernementale Intentionalität neuer sozio-technischer assemblages einerseits und deren vielfältige, nicht-intendierte Effekte andererseits. Damit werden Spannungsfelder aufgezeigt, in denen sich eine sozial-räumliche Neu-Positionierung von Körpern in der ‚Smart City‘ und damit veränderte körperbezogener Subjektivierungsprozesse abzeichnen, die neue Formen von Urbanität hervorbringen.

Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Aretaic Shift in Biopolitical Governance

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s “The Politics of Life Itself” (2001, 2007) there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This talk uses what Rose terms “molecular politics”, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question “What, then, of biopolitics today?” – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not “life itself” but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of (self-)governance.

Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Nudge Revolution

Situated at the intersection of health, lifestyle, and fitness, mobile sensor-software technologies that are integrated within smartphones, watches and clothing (‘wearables’) are experiencing a rapid increase in distribution. The European Union assesses the savings they create for the health care sector as €100 billion per year, and the global market is estimated to reach $50 billion by 2020. Such technologies have in common the fact that they all serve self-improvement, although with varying concrete aims. This development seems to perfectly support Nikolas Rose’s diagnosis of a shift from classical, state-led biopolitics to decentred, relational and individually applied ‘ethopolitics’. Yet what Rose primarily has in mind is genetic, medical and biochemical work on one’s own body which serves health, well-being or performance; in contrast, mobile sensor-software technologies target modes of behaviour. This purportedly minor difference, in combination with the entirely different way in which these technologies work, leads to thoroughly different forms of governmentality, which are discussed in the presentation based on an empirical example.

CfP: AAG San Francisco 2016
Peter Lindner
Erich Sheppard

Capital in the 21st Century and Multi-scalar Geographies of Inequality

Socio-spatial inequality long has been a central topic in human geography, but the publication of Thomas Piketty’s bestseller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has engendered massive attention within and beyond the discipline. While Piketty has popularized the question, at the same time he reframed it in a ‘technical’ manner that has provoked sharp criticism from different sides. His stunningly rich, detailed, and alarming historical analysis of the distribution of income and wealth is accompanied by an equally stunningly ‘thin’ conceptualization of geography, power, and social processes more broadly. While he highlights increasing gaps between the top and the bottom of the income pyramid, his analysis falls far short of a relational or socio-spatial approach to understanding wealth and poverty, and inequalities more broadly. Although interested in political solutions (taxation), he fails to develop a political perspective; he sharply criticizes mainstream economics but retains neoclassical concepts; he unveils long term historical trends, like growth-exceeding profit rates, but reduces them to a “law” rather than exploring the role of power relations, etc. These tensions and ambiguities offer entry points for a renewed look at multi-scalar geographies of multifold inequalities.

This session will approach Capital in the 21^st Century as a “boundary object” in the best sense of Starr’s term: It allows differently positioned scholars of inequality to gather around it in order to engage in critical discussions without prioritizing consensus. We invite authors from, and working in, a variety of countries and theory cultures to submit papers of any conceptual alignment that intervene in debates on geographies of inequalities, with or without reference to Piketty, including contributions that reconsider the issue through specific empirical engagements.

Possible themes include, but are by no means limited to:

• Inequalities as problematique: recent reframings, and their broader political consequences.
• The production of inequalities through new mechanisms of exclusion or even expulsion (Sassen).
• Comparative and processual perspectives on the spatial dynamics of inequalities.
• Justifications of inequalities and their contestations.
• Changing approaches to inequalities in the development sector/industry.
• Inequalities and the role of marketization.
• Territorial/reifying vs. relational approaches to inequalities, power, and privilege.
• Empirical case studies of the relationship between experimental interventions and inequalities.
• Sites of resistance; social actions and policy initiatives seeking to counter growing inequalities.
• Critical engagements with Piketty, including: questions of geography, scale and methodological territorialism; the conceptualization of power, especially with respect to capital-labor relations; determinism and the nature of ‘laws’ like r > g; just-the-facts empiricism; the role of institutions and (path-dependent) evolution; the conceptualization of capital; how globalization is brought into play; modernist and teleological arguments and the question of development. 

The New Development-Market-Environment Orthodoxy

Geographies of Worth: Resources, Valuation and Contested Economization

Global markets for agricultural goods and mineral resources have a centuries old colonial history. But during the last decade the modalities and geographies of the economization of resources, agricultural land and ‘nature’ (in its broadest sense) have changed fundamentally. New markets emerged – e.g. for carbon emissions and offsets, water rights, genetic codes or body parts – and others have been globalized and financialized in entirely new ways (e.g. the global market for farmland and agricultural as ‘alternative asset classes’). Despite significant individual differences, these new markets are characterized by a range of commonalities. First, they are often made up by complex and networked relationships of a variety of actors such as firms, states, international organizations and different intermediaries (e.g. standard setting bodies), whose agendas require coordination and translation amidst a field of potentially conflicting “orders of worth” (Boltanski/Thévenot 1991). Second, they are battlefields of knowledge and spaces of power, where actors with different resources as well as unequal cognitive, technical and political endowments are engaged in struggles for particular kinds of worth. Third, they depend on the successful framing of new commodities as well as on socio-technical, legal and moral infrastructures for the production, assignment and calculation of “value”. Yet, at the same time the very foundations and the modus operandi of these markets remain contested from different sides: changing international regulations, local resistances (emanating from national/local politics and/or affected social groups) and ethical considerations may all be sources of critique and disruption with regard to the institutionalization and operation of “resource markets”.

We encourage the submission of presentations (20 minutes) dealing with:

• The socio-economic, technical and legal production of value in resource economies.
• The emergence and organization of markets for natural resources.
• The mobilization of worth and commodities along global value chains.
• The financialization of land, nature and natural resources.
• The shifting power relations – global and local – that come along with the privatization, economization and mobilization of local resources for (global) markets.
• Forms, pathways and targets of resistance against the marketization of resources.

Please feel free to contact the organizers with any question concerning the outline of the session or the thematic ‘fitting’ of your potential contribution!

Creative Policies: Conserving the Urban Political in a Market Assemblage?

Markets are usually associated with anti-political effects or, more broadly, an “anti-political”, “technological economy” (see Barry 2002; Barry/Slater 2005). But at the same time many of the building blocks of market architectures contain considerable potential to produce irritation, friction and ruptures. This holds true, for instance, for measurement and calculation, which are an integral part of any effort to create a market but at the same time provide the basis for an “opening up of new objects and sites of disagreement” (Barry 2002, 274). Similarly the development of standards, as Thévenot (2009, 796) argues, is not only an important component of marketization but also produces “doubt and suspicion” because it can never entirely veil its “conformist, formulaic and inauthentic arbitrariness”. Callon (2005, 28) even sees an increasing politicization of markets resulting from a proliferation of “hybrid forums” in which the “functioning and organization of particular markets … are discussed and debated” publicly. In my paper I will pick up these arguments and develop them further by asking if and how market assemblages conserve existing, and create new, positions for critique. Empirically I draw on the implementation of urban creative policies which have infused the spheres of arts, culture and subculture all over the world. The neoliberal and anti-political stance of these policies is obvious, but what seems to be less clear to me are the heterogeneous effects they produce as practical accomplishments.

Development by Adaption? ‘Climate Change is Real!’ They Say

The times when climate change was a highly disputed topic are gone. Or to be more precise, a second strand of thinking accompanying the debates about scenarios for the global rise of average temperatures is now well established. This new understanding regards climate change as a market transition (Janković/Bowman 2013), seeing it as ‘real’ in a different sense and reframing the opportunities for economic development independent of the ongoing debates among natural scientists. The production of this new reality depends on a highly sophisticated assemblage of heterogeneous elements, three of which will be discussed in the presentation: laboratory-like natural experiments to create climate-development-knowledge, global networks to circulate this knowledge, and markets to translate it into a means of governance. The intention of the talk is twofold: The examples should offer some insights into the production of climate change as a powerful truth regime while at the same time providing a heuristic framework for a better understanding of why and how this truth regime has become so relevant for development studies.

Assembling the Economy With the Ruins of Post-Socialism: Failed Markets and the Quest to Govern

The transformation of centrally planned economies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, drafted in a clearly neoliberal vein but often leading to unexpected results, represents the most comprehensive “natural experiment“ in organizing markets ever witnessed. Stephen Collier in his book Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics (2011) uses the rich material privatization experiments in Russia are offering to argue that neoliberalism is not a “project” but a practice of critical analysis and reflection which is always situated and engaging with concrete problems, contexts, things and institutions. Even the most neoliberal reformers had to organize markets in post-socialist settings with and not on the ruins of the past (Stark 1996, p. 995).

This paper uses this argument as a vantage point to ask how neoliberal reflections became practically effective when problematizing the big infrastructures of the Soviet collective farms (kolkhozes and sovchozes). Gradually – this is the first thesis of the paper – the overarching objective to physically divide them up into smaller entrepreneurial units, so typical for neoliberal reforms in general, lost its impetus. The initial goal to individualize property to stimulate the emergence of peasant farms was given up and even market orientation itself faded into the background. The “wild market” (dikij rynok) became the synonym for the failure of organizing a market economy in rural Russia, and the formal as well as the informal ties between agricultural producers and the state administration were strengthened again.

But what is striking is that in spite of this unanticipated turn, the former workers of the collective farms are still continually confronted with waves of privatization, new regulations and laws to register their properties. Yet today these are disentangled from attempts to break up big infrastructures and production units. Instead – the second thesis of the paper – to create clearly defined and individually attributable private property rights became a means of governing the countryside. Regional and urban planners as well as administrations who had lost their socialist bodies of interference and control – collective farms as well as industrial plants with their comprehensive grip on their workers – are now dependent on private property which they can tax, restrict in size, schedule to defined uses, and even expropriate. More broadly, this paradoxical turn of a reform agenda which initially aimed at creating a market economy but at a later stage began to use property rights to govern the rural population poses the question of how far exactly the flexible and contradictory outcomes of neoliberal interferences help to keep the neoliberal zombie (Peck 2010) alive.

Keeping Neoliberalism’s Other Alive: An Assemblage Perspective on Creative Policies

Creative city policies can surely be seen as yet another round of neoliberal restructuring. In this regard they provide one more evidence for capitalism’s astonishing capacity to accommodate its ‘Other’ and put it into economically productive use (Boltanski/Thévenot 2007). But at the same time this process of accommodation creates ruptures and even opportunities for non-market practices and discourses. The talk deals with this simultaneous production of new lines of contradictions and new spaces of contestation at the fringes of the market economy. It argues, that creative policies have necessarily to draw on their ‘Other’ to become effective and by that paradoxically create new positions for critique not from ‘outside’, but from the very centre of what is usually seen as a neoliberal policy assemblage.

Kollektive Infrastrukturen, Neoliberalisierung und Privateigentum: Von vertrauten Instrumenten und flexiblen Verwendungen

Die neoliberal konzipierte, aber gleichwohl – wie sich bald zeigen sollte – ergebnisoffene Transformation der sozialistischen Zentralplanwirtschaften Osteuropas und der Sowjetunion stellte ein „natural experiment“ bislang ungekannter Größenordnung dar. Es lieferte sowohl den Architekten des neuen Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftssystems wie auch den Sozialwissenschaftlern, welche die Reformexperimente in situ beobachteten, reichlich Anschauungsmaterial. Zu letzteren zählt Stephen Collier, der auf eigene ethnographische Arbeiten zur Privatisierung der Infrastruktur in russischen Kleinstädten zurückgreift, um in seinem 2011 erschienen Buch „Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics“ das gängige Verständnis von Neoliberalismus in doppelter Hinsicht zu hinterfragen: Zum einen, indem er genealogisch rekonstruiert, wie bestimmte Traditionslinien neoliberalen Denkens aus dem Mainstream-Verständnis von Neoliberalismus ausgeklammert wurden. Zum anderen, indem er Neoliberalismus als eine situierte Praxis der kritischen Analyse versteht, die sich immer auf konkrete, historisch kontingenten Fragen und Gegenständen – nicht selten „Infrastrukturen“ – bezieht und nur in dieser Gebundenheit zu einem „Programm“ werden kann (S. 19). Zu seinen zentralen Thesen zählt, dass die großmaßstäblichen und zentral organisierten städtischen Heizsysteme sowjetischer Städte mit ihren verzweigten und aneinander gekoppelten Röhrenkonstruktionen die Handlungsoptionen der Reformer – in einem ANT-inspirierten Verständnis – prägten (S. 213f) und oft keine Alternativen ließen, als auf eine radikale Individualisierung der Nutzungsentgelte zu verzichten und stattdessen auf normative Verteilungsmodelle („Wie viel Heizwärme steht im russischen Winter jeder und jedem zu?“) zurückzugreifen. 

Der Vortrag knüpft an diese Überlegungen an und stellt die Frage, in welcher Weise neoliberale Konzepte praktisch wirksam wurden, als sie im Zuge von Privatisierungsmaßnahmen auf die großbetrieblichen Infrastrukturen der sowjetischen Landwirtschaft trafen. Schrittweise gingen dabei – so die erste vorläufige These – zuerst die Zielsetzung der physischen Aufteilung des Kollektiveigentums der ehemaligen Großbetriebe und später auch die ursprünglich so wichtige Marktorientierung der Reformen verloren. Die Marktidee wurde durch pejorative Beschreibungen wie dikij rynok („wilder Markt“) als Leitbild diskreditiert und in der Praxis scheiterten marktförmige Transaktionen im ländlichen Raum am fehlenden institutionellen und infrastrukturellen Umfeld. Auffallend ist jedoch, dass die ehemaligen Kolchozarbeiter bis heute mit ständig neuen Formalisierungs- und Privatisierungswellen in Form veränderter gesetzlicher Regelungen konfrontiert sind. Diese sind mittlerweile allerdings entkoppelt von Bemühungen zur Schaffung individualisierter, kleinbetrieblicher Strukturen und lokaler Märkte für Agrarprodukte. Privatisierung – so die zweite These – erhält ihren zentralen Antrieb nunmehr von der bürokratischen Notwendigkeit, den ländlichen Raum, seine Bewohner sowie die physische Infrastruktur und die naturräumlichen Ressourcen verwaltbar zu machen und wurde zu einem Instrument staatlicher Governance. Diese paradoxe Wendung eines ursprünglich explizit als neoliberal angetretenen Reformprojekts wirft die Frage auf, inwieweit es die widersprüchlichen Effekte von Neoliberalisierung als eine sozio-ökonomische Praxis sind, die den Zombie (Peck) in Bewegung halten.

Zwischen Marktlogik, Stadtplanung und Kulturpolitik: Das Konzept der "kreativen Stadt" und seine Performationen

Im Diskurs über die kreative Stadt überschneiden sich verschiedene Politikfelder, die sich durch unterschiedliche und nicht selten widersprüchliche Logiken des Regierens auszeichnen. Dennoch aber erscheint er als ein kohärentes Skript regionalökonomischer Entwicklung, das mittlerweile weltweit Anwendung findet. Es wird performativ in alltägliche Institutionen und Routinen eingeschrieben und weitet neoliberale Regierungsweisen auf neue Lebensbereiche und Subjekte aus.

     Aufbauend auf eine Fallstudie in Frankfurt a.M. beschäftigt sich der Vortrag mit der Frage, wie die unterschiedlichen Rationalitäten unternehmerischen Handelns, der Stadtplanung sowie der Kunst- und Kulturpolitik in diesem ‚konsensualen‘ Projekt zusammengeführt werden, das wir als „Kreativpolitik“ bezeichnen. Dazu werden insbesondere die Mechanismen – von einem machtvollen zum Schweigen bringen alternativer Narrative bis hin zur Konstruktion von scheinbaren Win-Win-Situationen – in den Blick genommen, mit denen Brüche und Widersprüche überbrückt oder zumindest temporär aufgehoben werden.

“Es war wie im Bürgerkrieg Rot gegen Weiß”: Die lokale politische Ökonomie des land grabbing in Russland

Während land grabbing seit der Nahrungsmittelpreiskrise 2007/08 und der Veröffentlichung der „Global Land Matrix“ in Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit enorme Aufmerksamkeit erfährt, ist über die sozialen, ökonomischen und politischen Folgen konkreter Projekte meist wenig bekannt. Dabei gehen die so bezeichneten Landkäufe gerade auf lokaler Ebene mit sozio-ökonomischen und politischen Neuordnungen einher, die strukturell-nachhaltige und für die Betroffenen höchst problematische Folgen haben können.

     Im Vortrag werden die durch großmaßstäbliche Landtransaktionen ausgelösten Dynamiken in zwei russischen Dörfern vergleichend gegenübergestellt. Die in beiden Fallstudien völlig unterschiedlichen Folgeentwicklungen veranschaulichen, dass eine konzeptionelle Annäherung an die Transformationen lokaler politischer Ökonomien der Kontingenz und Spezifität wie auch den globalen Bezugspunkten solcher Prozesse gleichermaßen Rechnung tragen muss.

Knowledge Transfer as Performance: Reading and Articulating the Creative-Cities Script

To spread around the globe as a blueprint the peculiar ‘knowledge’ of any urban development concept has not only to be de-contextualized but it has also to become entangled in specific local settings. Our paper is using the creative-cities scheme as an empirical example to critically assess this latter aspect which is often neglected by urban policy mobility approaches. Working with the metaphoric notions of ‘script’, ‘reading’, and ‘articulation’, we ask how it could inscribe itself into the fields of urban governance, which themselves were far from being a tabula rasa. For this to take place, the new strategy had to come to terms with established rationalities, to resolve potential contradictions and to forge new connections. Our case study on the city of Frankfurt/Main is tracing back this process; it demonstrates how a particular reading of the creative-cities script could become hegemonic and how the implementation of creative policies has contributed to a neoliberalisation of urban governance as well as of the field of arts and culture. But it also highlights contradictions, frictions and ruptures; at best temporarily settled, these render creative city strategies precarious and paradoxical arrangements, which continue to bear the potential for non-neoliberal, non-market changes.

Situating Property in Practice: Beyond the Private and the Collective

Markets and – as their essential building blocks – private property rights have become the fetish of development recipes over the past few decades. In the former centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe, they were used as the means not only to prevent a possible political step backward but also to guarantee a quick economic revival after a presumably unavoidable transitional crisis. Somehow paradoxically, then, it were precisely the actual developments in transformation countries, these “valuable laboratories and experiments” for the systematic creation of markets (Callon 1998a, p. 41; see also Stiglitz 1999, p. 1 and Burawoy 2001, p. 1100), which put some basic assumptions of the ‘markets for development approach’ into question. But in search of an explanation for the widely acknowledged disappointing performance of most post-socialist economies a prominent role was again attributed to property rights, often within the broader framework of the “good governance” rhetoric. But already in 1994 Williamson (1995, p. 173) summarized the experiences of the first years of transformation at the annual development conference of the World Bank in a remarkable resumé which at least tentatively questions the stable link between the establishment of formal rights and the emergence of markets: „‘Getting the property rights right’ seemed to be more responsive to the pressing needs for reform in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union… But the deeper problem is that getting the property rights right is too narrow a conception… The more general need is to get the institutions right, of which property is only one part”.

     The main argument of this paper is that the “deeper problem” is not the concentration on only one institution, thereby neglecting many others, as Williamson suggests but a conceptual gap between models of the economy (and property rights) and actual property practices. Science and technology studies bridge this gap by arguing that these very models become performative, effecting that the model of the world becomes the world of the model (Thrift 2000, p. 694). But my sense is that at least in transformation contexts and concerning property practices the interpellation of the “market model” serves to solve too many problems at one time; that it sometimes contains a reified kind of power, a power which is treated as part of what the model is and which needs no further explanation; that it marginalizes the critical capacities of those who practice “economy” in their everyday life in one form or another; and that it weakens researcher’s sensitivity for the importance of other forms of exchange – “alternative market”, “non-market” (Anonymus/Community Economies Collective 2001; Gibson-Graham 1996), “reciprocity” or “hierarchy” are all notions pointing to these “other forms” – by reducing them to results of “frictions” and “worldly encounters” (Tsing 2005, p. 4). This is surely partly due to the fact that in post-socialist settings an important category of intermediaries between economics’ models and the economy is widely absent: “economists in the wild” (Callon 2007, p. 336ff) who as lay people and practitioners draw upon the knowledge of the working of markets with which they have grown up, were confronted during their education and which surrounds them in public media in their everyday life, thereby translating textbook models of markets and property rights into practices, codes of conduct, arrangements of things, infrastructures, techniques of evaluation etc.

     So how is the legitimacy of illegitimacy of property practices negotiated in a situation which Callon would have called “hot”, which was a historical turning point where “everything becomes controversial”, where “information is scarce, contradictory, asymmetrical, and difficult to interpret and use”, and where “uncertainty rules the day” (Callon 1991, p. 154; 1998b, p. 260)? As a vantage point to address this question I am using five brief episodes from fieldwork in Russian collective farms between 2000 and 2011. They represent crucial situations which reveal what in the literature is often seen as the core issues of privatization in rural Russia, namely the individualization of property rights and the importance of the rural community and highlight five characteristic moments of everyday negotiations on property rights: Firstly, these negotiations are experienced with all senses, evoke emotions which change over time, and call for reflections; temporality is therefore not an analytical category imposed by external observers but an essential quality of the situations themselves which are characterized by growing familiarity. Secondly, in negotiations about property actors draw on a range of different and equally valid arguments; these negotiations constitute active processes in which legitimacy is created, not just mechanical derivations of a pre-existing normative system. They, thirdly, carry always a moment of openness as different “orders of worth” (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006) can be mobilized in disputes or challenged by changing situations. Fourthly, these mobilizations are often competitive or even conflicting and have to be understood as attempts to establish new ties between ideas, things, and people to give a situation its “meaning”. And finally, things and devices unfold a considerable power in negotiations about property and have therefore to be taken seriously as analytical categories in their own rights.

     Going beyond these case studies the empirical findings suggest that the all too familiar dichotomy between “private” and “collective” is primarily anchored in economics’ models and much less so in everyday economic practices. The latter often appear contradictory as they are tied to concrete situations and cannot be disembedded from these situations as abstract categories. They rely on what Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) call the “critical capacity” of actors to order situations by attributing meaning to the persons, things, and issues involved and they are always only temporally stabilized as long as situations are understood as relationally connected, similar, and comparable. “Everything around here belongs to the kolkhoz, everything around here is mine” (vsë vokrug kolkhoznoe, vsë vokrug moë) goes a famous saying in rural Russia derived from the old Soviet song “Dorozhnaya”. While these lines can be read as a praise for the collectivization of land, they can also mean that everybody can take from the farm what one needs for one’s own household and personal auxiliary farming – interpretation depends on the situation and so do property practices.

Der ländliche Raum in Russland 20 Jahre nach der Privatisierung der Landwirtschaft

Die Reorganisation der Kollektivbetriebe im ländlichen Raum Russlands zählt zu den größten Privatisierungsprojekten überhaupt: Einbezogen waren über 10 Mio. Beschäftigte und eine Fläche, die dem fünffachen Staatsgebiet der Bundesrepublik Deutschland entsprach. Die Auflösung der Kolchoze und Sovchoze musste dabei meist gegen den Willen der Betroffenen durchgesetzt werden und das ursprüngliche Ziel, die Etablierung kleinbäuerlicher Strukturen, wurde nicht einmal in Ansätzen erreicht. Der Vortrag geht den Ursachen dieses Scheiterns nach und zeigt, dass der Schlüssel zum Verständnis des Verlaufs der Transformation in der symbiotischen Beziehung zwischen Hofwirtschaften und Großbetrieben zu sehen ist. Er endet mit einem Überblick zu den jüngsten Entwicklungen, die häufig mit dem Begriff „Land Grabbing“ umschrieben werden und eine völlig unerwartete Wende in der nunmehr 20jährigen Geschichte des Privatisierungsprozesses im ländlichen Raum Russlands bedeuten.

The Local Political Economy of Large Scale Land Acquisitions in Russia: Some Preliminary Observations

Although a comparatively recent phenomenon – at least in their concrete forms and dimensions – big scale acquisitions of agricultural land have received astonishing media coverage. Critically addressed as “land grabbing” they are usually framed as a new investment pattern which can only be understood from a “global” perspective: as a “global race for farmland”, as linked to the “global food crisis”, as part of “global investment strategies” or as stimulated by the “global need for alternative sources of energy and biofuel”. As accurate as these framings are – they go along with a peculiar kind of top-down perspective, identifying a powerful constellation of actors, motivations, (lacking) regulations, market structures and political agendas at the “global level” which affect rural regions all around the world in a more or less uniform way. Although the threads of expropriation, hunger and deprivation of local populations´ political rights which they usually emphasize are real and serious, such descriptions are problematic for two reasons: They tend to reduce target regions and their populations to passive ´victims´ and they often remain insensitive for the very specific and different ways in which land acquisitions affect the political, economic and social situation of peasants and the population in different regions.

     If a lack of studies dealing with the broader implications of land acquisitions on the local level is characteristic for the ´land grabbing´ debate in general, this holds even more true for Russia. Little is known about the extent of land-acquisitions there, about the ways land-deals are processed, about the forms of cooperation between foreign and national investors, and still less about the ambivalent shifts and changes that go along with them on the local level. It is one of the big methodological challenges to relate recent developments on the Russian market for agricultural land to the “global” processes mentioned above while at the same time remaining sensitive to the very peculiar situation in the post-socialist world where large-scale farms have existed for decades (whereas usually peasant-farmers are those primarily affected by land deals).

     The aim of our paper is to shed some light on what could be called the “local political economy of large scale land acquisitions” in Russia and at the same time to highlight what in our view are the crucial questions of a respective research agenda. Drawing on fieldwork in rural Russia 2009 - 2011 we discuss some implications of these acquisitions for village communities and enterprises. Our first case study stems from the village of Kalikino in the black earth region near Lipetsk. Five years ago a Russian investor took over most of the farmland there on the basis of ten year lease contracts. Bringing in considerable investment into infrastructure and machinery and promising employment, growth, and prosperity it had not been difficult for him to convince the villagers to lease out their land for payments in kind. But the investor´s strategy did not work out and two years after the land deal had been concluded it became clear that a nearly bankrupt investor had taken the place of a nearly bankrupt collective farm, employing far less people than promised, paying lower wages, and not fulfilling his tax obligations to the communal administration; even the cultivation of the fields had been given up due to lack of seeds and machinery which the company had lost to a bank. The disentanglement of local agricultural production, political-administrative structures and livelihoods of most of the local population in the end culminated in a situation that forces many to seek ways to make their living beyond agriculture.

     Our second case study stems from a rural settlement in the region of Perm. In 2006 a private investor began to approach single farm members there and offered them 1,000 roubles for each hectare of land. Several owners agreed, but after the cases had become public a heated debate began and split the village into two camps. The mayor soon took a leading role in the confrontation calling the potential disappearance of the former collective farm in its actual form a “catastrophe” and a threat to the very existence of the village. Subsequently she initiated a village meeting to discuss the situation with the shareholders where she – together with the kolkhoz manager – explained the wider consequences of selling land shares, emphasized her all-encompassing responsibility for the village and its inhabitants and successfully organized resistance; in 2008 the investor gave up his plans to acquire land in the village.

     These examples show that despite the fact that – due to harsh economic conditions and an urgent need for investment and market-access – the power-asymmetry between local actors and investors tends to be huge, the outcomes of interventions on the land market are not pre-determined. While there are examples of communities that resisted the takeover of land shares and enterprises, even `successful´ investors have to adapt to local expectations and circumstances while simultaneously trying to transform and reconfigure them; and they can easily fail even after having acquired the land. Land acquisitions therefore cannot be adequately analysed as a “single act” or “point in time”. Rather, they have to be looked at as open ended interplays of investment-trends and ‑strategies on the one hand and local contexts on the other, during which land- and property-relations are transformed, modes of regulation and legitimation change, and established power relations are put into question. In our case studies, in the course of these processes notions of “efficiency”, “modernization”, “economic necessity”, “prosperity” or “justice” appeared as locally contested references – arguments for legitimizing or delegitimizing investments and processes of re-ordering which were constantly re-interpreted and transformed. Various old written contracts which hitherto were barely known by anybody were unexpectedly used to justify claims, functional arguments – “Who will care for the social infrastructure?” – were entangled with moral ones – “The integrity of the village community!” – and the balance between formal and informal regulations of local “public affairs” shifted considerably. Although barely known, these changes on the local and regional level all too easily remain out of sight from a predominantly “global” perspective on large scale acquisitions of agricultural land – not only in Russia!

Governing Vacancy in the Name of Creativity? Conflicting Urban Policies an Work

The creative industries narrative contains logics as different as entrepreneurialism, economic development, culture, town planning and arts to name just a few. But it nevertheless presents itself successfully as a coherent conceptual script which became an all-encompassing and hegemonic guideline for regional and urban economic policies. Today it is performatively put into practice in cities all around the world, inscribed into institutions and everyday routines, and helps to expand the reach of neoliberal modes of governance to new areas and subjects. How was it possible to merge established conflicting rationalities of urban policies into a common project and which mechanisms were at work to bridge obvious ruptures and contradictions?

     Our empirical point of departure is a case study of a newly founded institution in the city of Frankfurt/Main which “prepares the ground” for the creative industries by providing space for offices and ateliers. It is based on interviews and several weeks of participant observation in Frankfurt’s Department of Economic Development. The paper analyses how this new institution deals with the three different and often competing rationalities of entrepreneurialism/innovation, town planning, and culture/arts and articulates them into an consensual endeavor with a clearly neoliberal impetus. The analysis identifies the mediating mechanisms at work which range from a forceful silencing of alternative narratives to the all-embracing presentation of situations as presumably win-win for everyone.

Markets Without Models: The “Wild Market” and Its Tamed Successors

“‘The economy’ is a surprisingly recent product of socio-technical practice” states Mitchell (2008: 116) somehow astonished about the findings of his own research which contradicts the established understandings of authors like Polanyi or Foucault. A substantial part of his work traces the overwhelming success of the neoliberal model, its performative contribution to the production of what it defines as “economic” and subsequently its hegemonic status. It is exactly this hegemonic status which let academic research on “economization” focus primarily – if not exclusively – on “marketization” in a neoliberal sense. This implies the presumption of a powerful and universal model of the economy which is able to advance the processes of marketization all around the world. That the outcomes of this process are not as universal as the model itself is explained by the fact that models necessarily have to engage in “worldly encounters” and “never fulfil their promises of universality … when considered as practical projects accomplished in a heterogeneous world” (Tsing 2005: 4, 8).

     Today, this equating of the categories economization and marketization and the underlying assumption of a hegemonic neoliberal model of the economy become more and more questionable. Callon himself, who prominently introduced the notion “marketization” is very cautious in this respect. First, he strongly emphasizes that marketization is only one way of economization, figuring for him just as a “case study” (Çalışkan/Callon 2009: 369). Second, addressing the dynamics of markets he explicitly points to a “transformation of the modelling itself” related to the rising prominence of experimental and behavioural economics (Çalışkan/Callon 2010: 20). But increasingly there are also empirical indications that the monopoly of the neoliberal model has to be questioned:

• Though the concrete workings of neoliberalism continue to be discussed along the lines of “roll back”, “roll out”, and “roll-with-it” (Peck/Tickell 2002; Keil 2009) a broadening consensus seems to emerge, that these workings are brought about by a zombie – moving limbs without a coordinating brain (Peck 2010: 109). The financial crisis is of course the most prominent recent case for the argument that there is something wrong with the model-brain (Peck/Theodore/Brenner 2010), but the general debate on “after-neoliberalism” (Larner/Craig 2005) or “post-neoliberalism” (Brand/Sekler 2009) is much broader.
• Beyond this, rendering the neoliberal model universal might not only be a-historical but also Eurocentric and the bodies of knowledge (“models” might be too big a term here) guiding the assemblage of markets in China or Russia are probably the best examples unveiling this Eurocentrism. The latter could be used as a perfect starting point for a more general reflection about models and markets.

     “What we have here is not like your [western] market, this is a ‘wild market’” (dikij rynok) was a friendly and sometimes cautioning explanation each western social scientist working in Russia in the 1990ies got to hear. The “wild market” did describe something bearing traits of the classical model of a market but it went beyond this: It meant the general absence of an interfering state but also the organization of markets by a broad spectre of resources and devices which allowed for exercising power and violence. The ‘tamed’ successors of these early post-Soviet markets, too, are in many cases far from the neoliberal model. This is obviously not only the result of worldly encounters and heterogeneous assemblages but also of a different body of knowledge – or something much less coherent than a “body” and even more a “model” – informing the organization of production, distribution and consumption. It might not come as a surprise that this ‘body’ combines strong elements of the model of a planned economy, of reciprocity as well as of the idea of market exchange. But this general observation can only be a preliminary starting point for a more detailed empirical reconstruction of the principles guiding the organization of what is identified as “the economy” in post-Soviet environments.

     The susses story of neoliberalism is often told as a historically unfolding process of diffusion, the travelling of an idea across space, the transcending of boarders between academia, politics and the field of the economic, its translation into laws, institutions, practices and built environments. No starting point for the reconstruction of a similar success story is at hand when looking at imaginations of the economy in post-Soviet contexts so models can only be derived from the justifications (in the sense of Boltanski/Thévenot 2006) given by those organizing and ‘doing’ the economy. To me, this ‘limitation’ seems to point methodologically in a direction which could be fruitful far beyond post-Soviet contexts: To temporarily suspend the idea of a universal neoliberal model and start to empirically reconstruct the points of reference used by “economists in the wild” (Callon/Méadel/Rabeharisoa 2002: 196; Callon 2005: 9ff; Mitchell 2005: 298ff) shaping and maintaining all the diverse markets, semi-markets, and non-market forms of exchange which make up “the economy”.

‘Kreativpolitik’? Logiken städtischen Regierens im Konflikt

Im Diskurs über die kreativen Industrien überschneiden sich verschiedene Politikfelder wie Wirtschaftsförderung und unternehmerisches Handeln, Kulturpolitik, Stadtplanung oder Kunstförderung, die sich durch unterschiedliche und nicht selten widersprüchliche Logiken des Regierens auszeichnen. Dennoch aber erscheint der Diskurs als ein kohärentes Skript, das sich mittlerweile als hegemoniale Leitlinie durch eine Vielzahl regionaler und städtischer Politiken zieht und weltweit Anwendung findet. Es wird performativ in alltägliche Institutionen und Routinen eingeschrieben und weitet neoliberale Regierungsweisen auf neue Lebensbereiche und Subjekte aus.

     Der Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie etablierte konfligierende Rationalitäten urbaner Politik in ein gemeinsames hegemoniales Projekt artikuliert werden, das wir als Kreativpolitik bezeichnen, und wie die offensichtlichen Brüche und Widersprüche dieses Projekts gekittet werden. Ausgangspunkt unserer Untersuchung ist die Gründung einer Leerstandsagentur für Kreative in Frankfurt am Main. Die Fallstudie basiert auf qualitativen Interviews sowie mehreren Wochen teilnehmender Beobachtung in der Wirtschaftsförderung Frankfurt GmbH. Die Analyse zeigt die vermittelnden Mechanismen, welche die drei zentralen konfligierenden Rationalitäten des unternehmerischen Handelns, der Stadtplanung sowie der Kunst- und Kulturpolitik in ein ‚konsensuales‘ Projekt mit klar neoliberalen Impetus übersetzt. Sie reichen von einem machtvollen zum Schweigen bringen alternativer Narrative bis hin zur Konstruktion von scheinbaren Win-Win-Situationen.