Alexander Vorbrugg

University of Bern | UniBe · Institute of Geography

In most literature in geography and agrarian studies, rural dispossession is neatly related to land rights or access, a trend that increased with debates about the recent wave of farmland investments worldwide. Drawing on long‐term fieldwork in rural Russia, this paper critiques that focus and the assumed nexus between rural dispossession and farml...

This article explores the nexus of slow violence as a concept, research focus, and problem on the one hand, and the practices and politics of ethnographic fieldwork and writing on the other. I argue that paying more explicit attention to methodological challenges in conducting ethnographies of slow violence is both necessary and worthwhile. Ethnogr...

Millions of hectares of farmland have been abandoned over the past decades globally. Yet abandonment remains a neglected "outside" of both the Planetary Urbanisation debate and the emerging field of Planetary Rural Geographies. Engaging with abandonment can benefit both these debates and help overcome persistent and new binaries between the rural a...

Trees have been growing on millions of hectares of abandoned farmland in Russia for decades but have only recently become an issue of political and public controversy. This controversy was sparked by a campaign promoting the legalisation and management of these hitherto informal forests and promising multiple socioeconomic and ecological benefits b...

Excerpt from the introduction of book "Dispersed Dispossession. Collective Goods, Appropriation, and Agency in Rural Russia (forthcoming with the University of Georgia Press in Spring 2025). Excerpt published here: https://emptiness.eu/field-reports/dispersed-dispossession/

https://theconversation.com/les-politiques-climatiques-ces-autres-victimes-de-la-guerre-de-poutine-en-ukraine-186255

Full text: https://theconversation.com/other-casualties-of-putins-war-in-ukraine-russias-climate-goals-and-science-182995

Das Handbuch Feministische Geographien lädt dazu ein, feministische Arbeitsweisen und Konzepte in der Geographie kennenzulernen und zu vertiefen. Feministische Geographien zeigen auf, wie sich Räume und intersektional gedachte Geschlechterverhältnisse gegenseitig beeinflussen. Räume reichen dabei vom Körper über das Haus bis hin zu Stadtteilen, Reg...

This chapter written together with my colleague Alexander Vorbrugg has been published in the third edition of a major German Geography text book (Gebhardt et al., Springer/Spektrum, 2019), takes a much broader view on land and agriculture in the 'global market society', but contains some sections on the financialization of food and agriculture. Not...

This edited issue on "Feminist research practice in geography" deals with the many and recurrent conversations on the beauty and rewards, but also the struggles and problems around conducting research in the social sciences.

Понятие «медленное насилие» рассмотрено в статье с точки зрения соотношения в нем, с одной стороны, концептуального содержания и исследовательской проблематики, с другой стороны — практик этнографической полевой работы и описаний. Акцент в статье сделан на двух аспектах проблематики: во-первых, автор рассматривает эпистемологическое взаимодействие...

In this “positioning” we discuss current developments, possibilities and challenges around working with film in and for geography. We describe possibilities that certain conscious and collaborative ways of employing film offer: They point beyond film analysis and are more than a mere add-on to communicate research results, but rather can stimulate...

Bei transcript erscheint diesen Sommer das "Wörterbuch Land- und Rohstoffkonflikte" https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-4433-3/woerterbuch-land-und-rohstoffkonflikte/. Darin auch mein Beitrag zum Schlagwort "Ressourcen"

Public discussions concerning the cancellation of a planned lecture by the controversial chairman of the German Police Trade Union (DPolG), Rainer Wendt, at the Goethe-University Frankfurt provides an example to reflect on current discursive-political shifts towards the right in Germany. We develop this reflection along three motives, namely the no...

В большинстве публикаций по географии и аграрным исследованиям проблема лишения прав четко связана с владением землей или с доступом к ней, и эта тенденция лишь упрочилась по мере расширения дискуссий о новой волне инвестиций в сельскохозяйственные угодья по всему миру. Статья критикует такой подход и предполагаемую им связь между сельхозугодьями и...

Der Beitrag von Vanessa Eileen Thompson und Alexander Vorbrugg geht von der Beobachtung aus, dass gegenwärtige Diversity- und Gleichstellungspolitiken die kolonialen Kontinuitäten von institutionellem Rassismus an der Hochschule nicht wirksam adressieren, geschweige denn mit ihnen brechen. Sie zeigen die vielfältigen Verflechtungen und Fallstricke...

Rural transformation in Russia went along with historic changes in production and property patterns, and it provides exemplars to revisit questions of rural dispossession. In much of the critical agrarian studies literature, rural dispossession is neatly related to land rights or access. But since farmland's role in securing livelihoods cannot be t...

Drawing on ethnographic research, this study analyzes the work of a German political foundation in Ukraine. Departing from a governmentality perspective that closely examines concrete practices, I focus on the organization's attempts to establish itself as a political actor. This foundation aims to build more democratic political imaginations and o...

Nimmt man die im Dezember 1991 unter Präsident Jelzin verabschiedete Gesetzgebung zur Privatisierung der Kolchose und Sowchose als Ausgangspunkt, so ist die russische Landwirtschaft seit mittlerweile ziemlich genau 20 Jahren Ziel intensiver Restrukturierungsbemühungen. Im Rückblick fällt auf, dass erhebliche Diskontinuitäten und Brüche, veränderte...