Prof. Dr. Antje Schlottmann

Contested wildlife – neglected corporeality: The case of the Namib wild horses (with Robert Pütz, Goethe-University Frankfurt)

Living in Common worlds comprises a permanent struggle of advantaged and disadvantaged actors. Paradoxically, this holds even more, when it comes to objectives of conservation. Their application continuously produces borders between a nature worth conserving and a rather dispensable nature and its parts and members. Territories such as conservation areas confine a spatial fixation of such determinations of nature. However, borders, territories as well as related concepts of nature and wilderness are permanently struggled upon.

Against this background, the case of the wild horses in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in southern Namibia serves as an instructive example. Their struggle for life due to persistent drought and evermore pressure of predatory hyenas is for the Park management the common course of life and death, while representatives of local NGOs and touristic entrepreneurs empathetically claim for human action in order to save the horses from extinction.

We take this case in order to disentangle a conflict that comes with different agendas of what nature is about and what is worth conservation. Moreover, we analyse the postcolonial discourse, which in the case of Namibia this conflict is steeped with. Secondly, we show that actors in the field incorporate conservation as a praxis of bordering nature. Their embodiment of social norms and ethical values, however, leads to inner struggles and frictions with their affective experiences in the course of working with the horses and “caring” for them, sometimes in situations that crave a decision for life or death. We argue that neither established approaches of discourse analysis nor the newer assemblage perspectives sufficiently grasp this circumstance, and we suggest the phenomenological concept of intercorporeality as a promising perspective for understanding Human-animal relations in conservation practice.

The commercialization of wildlife encounter: selling nature to save it? Nature conservation as a market in Namibia (with Olivier Graefe, University of Fribourg)

It is estimated that 80 % of the wildlife in Namibia is now in possession of private game farmers and private parks. Here is good news: The number of elephants tripled since independence in 1990 and Namibia has by now the biggest national population of Black Rhinos while the species was near extinction in the 1980’s. Hence, the devolution of rights over wildlife to private land owners and custodians since the mid-1960 is unmistakably a success in terms of wildlife conservation and growth of animal population. So, what’s biting? At the same time, wildlife conservation has turned into a source of profit and nowadays attracts many actors like private entrepreneurs, companies but also nature conservation NGOs. Competition is fierce. The trade for animals developed immensely not only in form of auctions and sells by catalogue for hunting concessions, trophies and life animals for breeding, but also for touristic wildlife encounter of different kinds in private game reserves. In short, there is a new complexity of commercialization of wildlife going on with yet unidentified implications for humans, nature, and their relationships.

While the political economy of lively commodities, especially price fluctuations of different species are worth own research, our purpose is to understand the potential as well as occurring implications of the commercialization of wildlife from a political-ecological and socionature perspective. Therefore, as a complement to use and exchange value, we employ the concept of encounter value introduced by Donna Haraway (2008) and further developed by Maan Barua (2016).

Theoretical framing

The outdoors is not a given, waiting for being represented. It is made real, presented and enacted in various fields of communicative practice.
Depending on the angle of reflection the outdoors may then appear as a growing industry of so called outdoor products (rising number of outdoor trade fairs, spread of companies that sell outdoor wear / gear). This industry advertises in a growing number of journals dedicated to outdoor pursuits (tgo, trail, ute, outdoor), and obviously there is a broad readership that can be addressed with outdoor issues. According to common language use, the outdoors can also be understood as a space that can be entered (and left). As such, it appears as a destination for a growing number of people doing so called outdoor sports such as hiking, trekking, canyoning. Children are sent to the outdoors for educational reasons.
On the other hand, the outdoors seems to be something that can be experienced. According to habitual language use people cannot only travel to the outdoors, but also enjoy it or explore it. The outdoors is – at least to some extent - constituted by the practice of experiencing and feeling “outdoors". In this respect, the outdoors may appear as a synonym for nature: The “Profilstudie Wandern" 2005 of the German Institute for Hiking (Marburg) shows that “enjoying nature" is a growing motivation for people relocating their leisure activities to the outdoors (Profilstudie Wandern 05/06: http://www.wanderforschung.de/files/prostu060-korrektur1251264511.pdf). This report also shows a trend towards solitude hiking (i.e. no longer understanding hiking as a group experience, an idea that was formative for the Wandervogel movement in the late 19^th century or the rise of organised tours as members of Alpine Clubs etc.). Theoretically, the phenomenon is hence connected to an increasing individualistic body-centred culture – in response to a life-style more and more steeped in technology and artificial surroundings (Bette 2001). This stresses not only the important force of a visual consumption of the environment (Urry 2002, Urry and Larsen 2011), but also of consuming natural space with the whole body.

This tentative approach to what is called the outdoors reveals various dimensions of my research subject (rather than conclusively explaining its nature):

1. the outdoors is a complex social construction, a relative and contingent, yet stabilized concept that is somehow interlinked with other concepts such as space, nature (and its opposite, say culture), and the body
2. this communicative interplay involves the dimension of meaning as well as the dimension of experience, theoretically spoken: the construction of the outdoor has a semiotic and a phenomenological side, a representational and a presentational level.

Though these two realms might seem to be disjoint, I adopt the theoretic assumption that they are dialectically intertwined. Even experiences of what is called the outdoors are not pure or innocent or in a way antecedent and hence more real. Rather, like the realm of meaning, they are discursively informed. Taking this as a starting point for a heuristic approach, the question I am concerned with is:

What does the everyday making of “the outdoors" as both a representation and a presentation reveal about contemporary understandings of nature and culture and their respective “spaces"? And how is a contemporary concept of the body involved in this process?

Put as a working hypothesis: (Re-)Presentations of the outdoor are a key for observing the contemporary discursive interplay of ideas of nature, culture and the body.

Methodology

Visual images, I suggest, are of vital importance in order to grasp both the semiotic and the experiential dimension of the discursive construction, because they can be theorized as mediator of signification and sensation

As Sachs-Hombach (2001) (following the French Philosopher Merleau-Ponty) put it, visual images are “perceptional signs", they dwell in an ontological interspace. That means, visual images do not simply reproduce and frame an external world of objects. Nor should they be understood as pure subjective constructions, or rather, as genuine products of the mind. They are rather “in betweens" since they have both a representational reproductive and a presentational productive character. On the one hand, according to Watzlawick, visual images provide an “analogous" form of communication (see Watzlawick et al. 1971, 61ff.). 'Analogous' here means, that material images do not present their message by contingent naming (that follows a linear grammar), but by similarity relations. On the other hand, as phenomenologists such as Waldenfels point out, this similarity is neither barely representative nor “innocent". Speaking from a critical realistic stance, visualization is not as contingent as naming, yet analogous images (especially computer generated images) are always culturally informed. Additionally, visual images are intertwined with the performative act of perceiving. And this act of perceiving, in turn, is discursively informed as well. There is no such thing like the innocent eye. Perceiving in this perspective is the performance of codes that have been learned through social institutions.

The visual images hence can be seen as powerful agents in the re-production of concepts such as space, nature and the body on the one hand. On the other hand, visual images can be conceptualized as powerful agents in the discursive structuration of sensations of space, nature and the lived body (Leib), in Foucauldian terms: visual images bear “somatic power". The value of a conceptual difference between the body (Körper) and the lived body (Leib) gets obvious in this regard. Though these concepts describe different analytical levels, some theorists claim convincingly, that the lived body is also discursively formed, in Foucault's terms, that it is an object of genealogy. Hence the idea of first-order experience must be questioned, or rather reflected and historized: what is the cultural origin of absolute feelings we have? And why do we take them naturally for granted?

One approach in this direction is to understand that images bear truth claims about the objects they visualize. They bear a mimetic implicitness, a character of evidence, and they imply illocutionary acts such as “the presented object looks like the object represented!" or “the presented place (there) looks like this!"). According to speech-act theory these can be understood as “visual assertive statements". Associated sensations thus easily lose their subjective character and appear to be mere responses to inherent features of visualized environments. The romantic gaze (Urry 1990), for instance, is not experienced as contingent and culturally informed gaze. Instead, the landscape gazed at is experienced as if it was romantic by nature. Hence, images – and seeing or gazing respectively - are powerful agents in the process of naturalizing affective relations to objects or the environment

In sociological theory of embodiment or “incorporation", this naturalizing effect is seen as an important stance of validating organizational and complexity reducing structures of the social (Jäger 2004), for example the understanding of the world in terms of binaries such as nature and culture.

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Findings

From the outlined theoretical/methodical perspective I have traced the continuous performance of the nature/culture dualism (as a social construction) and the respective incorporation of the body in the ads of the outdoor industry.

This dualism is clearly manifest in the propositions of many visual images and their captions. The outdoors as a natural space is typically depicted as the non-human, the non-technical or non-artificial. The images provide the idea of a pure and exclusive nature and they evoke - via kinaesthetic effects - purified nature feelings. Furthermore, these images rely on topoi such as escaping from artificial surroundings and “going nature". The outdoors thus appears as a late-modern arcadia where members of an urbanised and technology-based society can regain freedom and self-affirmation.

Surely, this construction of a quiet zone where you can recover from an over-directed working life obscures the fact that it is precisely the satisfaction of this need which reproduces the functionality for this working life.
Likewise, the idea of regaining freedom obscures the fact that the proposed dress code for the outdoors can also be seen as a disciplinary action of the outdoor industry. The outdoor body as constructed by the images is not only fit and well trained but uniformly dressed in hi-end functional wear.

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References

• Bette, Karl-Heinz (2001): »Körper, Sport und Individualisierung«. In: G. von Randow (Hg.), Wieviel Körper braucht der Mensch? Standpunkte zur Debatte für den deutschen Studienpreis. Hamburg, S. 89-100.
• Jäger, Ulle (2004): Der Körper, der Leib und die Soziologie. Entwurf einer Theorie der Inkorporierung, Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag.
• Plessner, Helmut (1982): »Der Mensch als Lebewesen«. In: Helmut Plessner (Hg.), Mit anderen Augen. Aspekte einer philosophischen Anthropologie, Stuttgart: Reclam, S. 9-62.
• Sachs-Hombach, Klaus (2001): »Bild und Prädikation« In: Klaus Sachs-Hombach (Hg.), Bildhandeln: interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Pragmatik bildhafter Darstellungsformen, Bildwissenschaft Band 3, Magdeburg: Scriptum-Verlag, S. 55-76.
• Searle, John R. (1982): Ausdruck und Bedeutung. Untersuchungen zur Sprechakttheorie, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
• Urry, John (²2002): The Tourist Gaze, London: Sage.
• Urry, John & Jonas Larsen (2011): Tourist Gaze 3.0. London: Sage.
• Watzlawick, Paul/Beavin, Janet H./Jackson, Don D. (1971): Menschliche Kommunikation. Stuttgart: Verlag Hans Huber.

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Publications

• 2012 Schlottmann, A.: Outdoor. In: Marquardt, N. & V. Schreiber (Hg.): Ortsregister. Ein Glossar zu Räumen der Gegenwart. Bielefeld: transcript, 211-216.
• 2010 Schlottmann, A. : Erlebnisräume / Raumerlebnisse: Zur Konstruktion des "Draußen" in Bildern der Werbung. In: Wöhler, K.-H.; Denzer, V. & Pott, A.: Tourismusräume. Zur soziokulturellen Konstruktion eines globalen Phänomens. Bielefeld: transcript, 67-88.
• 2009 Schlottmann, A.: „Endlich Platz!“: Zur Konstitution von Raumerlebnissen in der Werbung. In: Döring, J. (Hg.): Geo-Visiotype. Zur Werbegeschichte der Telekommunikation. MUK 170/171 Massenmedien und Kommunikation. Siegen: universi, 35-70.
• 2009 Schlottmann, A. & J. Miggelbrink: Visuelle Geographien – ein Editorial. In: Social Geography 4, 13-24. (Special Issues - an editorial)
• 2009 Miggelbrink, J. & Schlottmann, A.: Diskurstheoretisch orientierte Analyse von Bildern. In: Glasze, G. & A. Mattissek (Hg.): Handbuch Diskurs und Raum. Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung. Bielefeld: transcript, 181-198.
• 2006 Schlottmann, A.: Outdoor-Boom und geregeltes Draußen – Anleitungen zum Aufenthalt in der freien Natur. In: Praxis Geographie, 36, 4, 14-17.

Concept and Aims

The Project aims to gain and deepen insight into the ideas and concepts of nature and nature spaces, which children at an age of around 12 years have formed and which they adopt to make sense of the world and their environment.Against the background of theories of significative appropriation of space (Werlen 1993) as well as iconographic and phenomenological approaches to the perception of material surroundings (Sachs-Hombach 2001), we aim to figure out to what extend children have aquired ideas about the nature/ Culture divide and enclosed landscape entities such as forests, woodlands or urban areas.Additionally, we are interested in the perception of cultural heritage such as the Stora Alvaret on Öland in Sweden and the Biosphärenreservat Rhön in Germany, for instance. What differences can be analysed in comparing children with an urban and rather nature-distant educational background (Frankfurt), and children with a rural and rather close to nature educational background (Torslunda)? Are there any differences?This research is strongly related to recent discussions around Actor Network and non-representational approaches (Whatmore 2002, Thrift 2007) and a possible overcoming of traditional dualistic thinking: What can we learn from children as regards perceiving the environment as “heterogenous associations"? At what age and under what conditions could a non-dualistic education in school curricula be effective? What would be the implications for present scholarly worldviews?

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Methodology

Analytical frameworks combining semiotic and phenomenological approaches (Renggli) by using quantitative and qualitative methods such as mental mapping, reflexive photography, group discussion, hermeneutics.

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Project members

Torslunda Skola (Torslunda), Station Linné (Skogsby), Linné Universitetet (Kalmar), Gymnasium Riedberg (Frankfurt am Main) and Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main).

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References

• Sachs-Hombach, Klaus (ed.) (2001): Bildhandeln: interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Pragmatik bildhafter Darstellungsformen, Bildwissenschaft Band 3, Magdeburg.
• Thrift, N. (2007): Non-Representational Theory. London.
• Werlen, B. (1993): Society, action and space. London.
• Whatmore, S. (2002): Hybrid geographies: natures cultures spaces. London.

Theoretical Framing

In their inspiring paper on socio-spatial theory Jessop, Brenner and Jones (2008) identified four distinct spatial lexicons that have been developed by social scientists over the last thirty years: territory, place, scale, and network (Dicken, Kelly, Olds & Yeung, 2001; Paasi, 2004; Sheppard, 2002). These lexicons are associated with specific spatial turns and, although they problematize different issues, they should actually be seen as closely intertwined theoretically and empirically (Leitner, Sheppard & Sziarto, 2008).

However, advocates of a given turn are often tempted to focus on one dimension of spatial relations, neglecting the role of other forms of socio-spatial organisation (Leitner et al., 2008). Such one-dimensionalism falls into the trap of conflating one part (territory, place, scale, or networks) with the whole (the totality of socio-spatial organisation). In contrast, Jessop et al. (2008) argue for all four dimensions to be put into play, albeit not necessarily all at once.

Elsewhere, Terlouw and Weststrate (2013) argue for an overdue shift of attention from the historical evolution of current regions to the circumstances in the present in which regions are actually constructed. The starting point, then, is not the social construction of a specific region, but the motives behind the use of regions by local stakeholders in different situations to promote their interests. In other words, regions as socio-spatial relations (regions-in-becoming) are conceptualised as publics-in-stabilisation (Metzger, 2013).

Yet, Terlouw and Weststrate's (2013) one-sided focus on 'scale' must be seen as problematic leading to the sidelining of other spatialities in favour of scale as primus inter pares (Casey, 2008), first among equals, thereby contradicting this project's emphasis on the important interplay between different spatial dimensions (Jessop et al., 2008).

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Aims and Objectives

Drawing on earlier studies (Felgenhauer, et al., 2005; Schlottmann et al., 2007; Schlottmann, 2008) on spatial semantics of Central Germany (Mitteldeutschland), this project aims to achieve the following two main objectives. First, the project explores the role and motives of political stakeholders inducing multiple spatialities of the metropolitan region Central Germany – a loose political alliance comprising the three German federal states Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt. Second, the multi-dimensionality of spatial organisation is emphasised in this research analysing interdependencies between different spatial lexicons of scale, territory, and networks in the context of the metropolitan region.

The general and comparative questions therefore become:

• Why and how do political stakeholders utilise regional spatialities to promote their specific interests?
• Which spatial references are drawn upon and how do different lines of argumentation fluctuate in multiple contexts?

The spatial strategies of political stakeholders never focus on only one spatiality, but on a patchwork of related territories, scales, and networks. Instead of tracing the evolution of patterns of regional formation, as reflected in a single spatiality over time, the aim of this project is to contribute to current debates in regional and political geography by comparing intentions of local stakeholders shifting their support for a region, conceptualised as various partially overlapping spatialities, in order to secure/promote their interests to accommodate changing circumstances.

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Methodology

This research is conceptualised as a qualitative micro-analytical study focusing on official documents and expert interviews as resources. A multitude of analytical methods will be deployed in this venture including discourse (Dittmer, 2010), metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 2011), and argumentation analysis (Toulmin, 2003).

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Project Members

This is a conjoint research project conducted by Prof Antje Schlottmann and Roger Baars; funded since 2013 by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

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Presentations

“Regional Governance and the 'Phantom Region' Mitteldeutschland: The Political Dimension of Spatial Concepts". Paper presented at 'Phantom Borders in the Political Behaviour and Electoral Geography in East Central Europe' conference. The European University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder), 14.-15. November 2013.

"Inducing the Metropolitan Region of Central Germany - Multiple Spatial Dimensions of Politico-Economic Discourses." Paper presented at 'Regional Studies Association Winter Conference. Mobilizing Regions: Territorial Strategies for Growth'. Holiday Inn London Bloomsbury, London, UK. 22. November 2013.

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Publications

• 2013 Baars, R., & Schlottmann, A.: The Central German Metropolitan Region - Multiple Spatial Dimensions of Politico-Economic Discourses. Paper presented at the Regional Studies Association Winter Conference. 'Mobilizing Regions: Territorial Strategies for Growth'. London, UK: Regional Studies Association

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References

• 2015 Baars, R. & A. Schlottmann: Taking Borders Elsewhere – The Political Performance of Phantom Borders in Central Germany? Europa Regional (Special Issue).
• 2015 Baars, R. & A. Schlottmann: Spatial Multidimensionalities and the politics of regions: The 'Phantom Region' of Central Germany. Erdkunde (Special Issue).
• Casey, E. S. (2008). Questioning "Theorizing Sociospatial Relations". Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 402-404.
• Dicken, P., Kelly, P. F., Olds, K., & Yeung, W.-C. H. (2001). Chains and Networks, Territories and Scales: Towards a Relational Framework for Analysing the Global Economy. Global Networks, 1(2), 89-112.
• Dittmer, J. (2010). Textual and Discourse Analysis. In: D. DeLyser, S. Herbert, S. Aitken, M. Crang & L. McDowell (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Geography (pp. 274-286). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.
• Felgenhauer, T., Mihm, M., & Schlottmann, A. (2005). The Making of Mitteldeutschland: On the Function of Implicit and Explicit Symbolic Features for Implementing Regions and Regional Identity. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 87(1), 45-60.
• Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. (2008). Theorizing Sociospatial Relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 389-401.
• Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2011). Metaphors We Live By (6th ed.). Chicago, IL: Universitry of Chicago Press.
• Leitner, H., Sheppard, E., & Sziarto, K. M. (2008). The Spatialities of Contentious Politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(2), 157-172.
• Metzger, J. (2013). Raising the Regional Leviathan: A Relational-Materialist Conceptualization of Regions-in-Becoming as Publics-in-Stabilization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(4), 1368-1395.
• Paasi, A. (2004). Place and Region: Looking Through the Prism of Scale. Progress in Human Geography, 28(4), 536-546.
• Schlottmann, A., Felgenhauer, T., Mihm, M., Lenk, S., & Schmid, M. (2007). >Wir sind Mitteldeutschland!< Konstitution und Verwendung territorialer Bezugseinheiten unter raum-zeitlich entankerten Bedingungen. In B. Werlen (Ed.), Sozialgeographie alltäglicher Regionalisierungen - Band 3 (pp. 297-). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
• Schlottmann, A. (2008). Closed Spaces: Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(5), 823-841.
• Sheppard, E. (2002). The Spaces and Times of Globalization: Place, Scale, Networks, and Positionality. Economic Geography, 78(3), 307-330.
• Terlouw, K., & Weststrate, J. (2013). Regions as Vehicles for Local Interests: The Spatial Strategies of Medieval and Modern Urban Elites in the Netherlands. Journal of Historical Geography, 40, 24-35.
• Toulmin, S. E. (2003). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

• 2009/10 Schlottmann, A. & M. Hannah (eds.): Lost in translation? Interkulturelle Forschungs- und Publikationspraktiken in kritischer Betrachtung/A critical engagement with intercultural research and publication practices. (Special Issue in Social Geography)