Sarah Klosterkamp

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main · Institute of Human Geography

Courtroom ethnographies are very rare in English-, German-, and Spanish-language legal geography. Yet courtrooms are dense spaces through which legal subjects, spaces, and instruments are performed, created, disciplined, and managed. In this article, we develop a feminist geographic ethnography of the court. This approach attends to the affective,...

Listening occurs in many ways in fieldwork situations, but it is not always consensual or without complexities. It is especially challenging in situations deeply embedded in institutional power, rendered and shaped by the law and its objectives. Yet, how listening differ within and between sites saturated with institutional knowledge remain still u...

Sarah Klosterkamp will in diesem Buch erstens bereits bestehende gerichtsethnographische Methoden für eine Humangeographie fruchtbar machen, die an Recht und seinen multiplen Wechselwirkungen im Sinne von Subjektkonstitutionen und Produktionsweisen gesellschaftlicher Ungleichheit interessiert ist. Hierfür schlägt sie ein methodisch-methodologisches...

Displacement and de-tenanting are critical issues at the intersection of housing crises and legal frameworks, demanding a nuanced understanding that integrates class, gender, and race. This article aims to contribute to this scholarship by employing a feminist legal geography perspective, specifically through courtroom ethnography. The examination...

Die Wohnung, wie wir sie heute kennen ist ein widersprüchlicher Ort. Sie ist Ort der Reproduktion, also ein Ort, an dem Menschen sich erholen, Hausarbeit machen, essen, schlafen und ihren Alltag verbringen. Zugleich ist sie aber als Ware in Wirtschaftskreisläufe eingebunden. Sie hat als Anlageobjekt eine zentrale Funktion in der politischen Ökonomi...

Video links have become “the new normal” (Rossner et al. Current Issues in Criminal Justice 33:94–110, 2021) in many courtrooms across the globe. Constituting a contemporary form of interacting in trials, video-linked proceedings create new challenges and conditions for those participating via a screen and for those in the physical courtroom. In th...

Courtrooms are sites where both the mundane and the life-changing are deliberated, evaluated and decided upon. Child custody battles, traffic violations, asylum appeals, contractual disputes, war crimes, climate actions, murder, defamation, even pigeon-related damage claims, all are handled in courtrooms. The courthouse can be understood as an aren...

How does your own body affect your research? How do we deal with unpleasant moments of being called out, misread, ignored or approached by other courtroom attendees during fieldwork? And how do these moments differ, if we investigate powerful institutions (the court, the police, the judge) vs. marginalised objects (the defendant on dock or their fa...

Departing from reflections and observations raised by Food Policy Councils (FPCs) within North America specifically, this article explores the complex material, discursive, and governance aspects of food provision on the urban-regional scale by highlighting recent accounts of public food provision within state-funded public-catering places in Germa...

International treaties and European directives have put new legal responsibilities on EU member states to pre-emptively monitor and prosecute terrorist activities and offences. In particular, the prosecution of terrorism financing has been an important focus to prevent material and ideological support for terrorist organisations. Yet, a clear disti...

Legal geography is an interdisciplinary area of scholarship that focuses on the intersec- tions and co-constitution between law and space and place: that is, how law and legal processes produce space/place, and how par- ticular places in turn influence law. Rather than thinking of law as an abstract, univer- sal, a-spatial set of rules, legal geogr...

Should Volkswagen be held partially liable for creating a climate that hurts farmers? Ulf Allhoff-Cramer thinks so. In May 2022, Allhoff-Cramer, a farmer in Germany, sued Volkswagen in German court, arguing that since Volkswagen is the second largest car company in the world, the company is partly responsible for the damage the farmer has suffered,...

Liebe Leser*innen, die vorliegende Feministische Geo-Rundmail beschäftigt sich mit einem Ort, der den meisten von uns vermutlich eher aus Filmen, Serien, Literatur und Medienberichten bekannt sein dürfte: dem Gerichtssaal. Im Rahmen eines Master-Seminars im geo- graphischen Profilbereich „Governance & Raum“ an der Universität Bonn, haben wir uns d...

Based on a feminist political-geographical analysis of 45 anti-terrorism trials which got carried out in Higher Regional Appeal Courts in Germany between 2015 and 2020, I argue within my dissertation that spatial affiliations and gendered attributes cannot explain ‘Islamist terrorism’ but play an important role in court. Methodologically, I combine...

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...

Based on an ethnographic study of anti-terror trials at higher regional appeal courts in Germany, conducted in 2015–2020, this article examines the interrelation between the German penal system and criminal trials as mutually constitutive, governmentally guided, and highly secured elements of a state-induced and Islam-centred terrorism prevention....

Wer fühlt sich an welchen Orten aufgehoben, wer verwundbar? Welche Gefühlsäußerun- gen sind in welchen sozialräumlichen Kontexten erlaubt oder tabu? Welche Emotionen – Wut, Euphorie, Trauer, Ernüchterung – inspirieren und begleiten politisches Handeln im öffentlichen Raum? Welche Gefühle und körperlichen Regungen – Angst, Scham, Glück, Zuneigung –...

Political geographers have repeatedly demonstrated how the 'global war on/of terror has led to repressive and unjust international and domestic policies. Nevertheless, little has been said about the multifold intertwinements between such 'Western perceptions and their shaping of anti-terrorism efforts within. To this end, this paper draws on recent...

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.

Syrian Rebel Groups such as Harakat Ahrar al-Sham, the so-called Islamic State or Junud al-Sham, depend on globally linked networks and logistics to exchange personnel, goods and financial resources. European Border security authorities and many researchers in this field have so far mainly focused on male bodies who support logistics networks and s...

Universität und Stadt als Orte der gesellschaftlichen Reproduktion sind durch Hierarchien, Herausforderungen und Zwänge gekennzeichnet, die einer feministisch solidarischen Praxis in vielerlei Hinsicht (diametral) entgegenstehen. Entlang der Diskussionen von Beispielen aktueller Reproduktionsverhältnisse und Bedingungen von Care-Arbeit, sowohl in d...

In the last ten years, several uprising organizations such as the so called Islamic State have become a new challenge for civil societies in facing and defeating international terrorism. This paper, as part of a bigger research project, presents theoretical and methodical approaches for analyzing those organizations in the way they operate abroad a...

An einem kalten Wintertag im November 2014 sitzt ein Mann aus Syrien in der Ausländerbehörde von Chemnitz und füllt einen Asylantrag aus. Sein Name ist Abu Dieb. Vor ihm liegt ein Befragungsbogen in arabischer Sprache, die Behörde möchte Missverständnisse vermeiden. Frage 9a lautet, ins Deutsche über-setzt: "Haben Sie Erkenntnisse über in Syrien be...