Though immigration to Argentina of people with connections to the national socialist government has received a lot of scientific and media attention in the last years, the National University of ...Tucumán’s boom and the role scientists with national socialist connections played in this has hardly been studied. From the perspective of geography, and also from beyond said disciplinary viewpoint, this research note analyzes the nexus between the rise of the National University of Tucumán and the arrival of German scientists in the 1940s and 1950s.
Mientras que la inmigración de personas con vínculos nacionalsocialistas a la Argentina ha recibido mucha atención mediática y científica, el auge de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán durante el primer peronismo y el rol de científicos alemanes nazis en este, ha sido poco estudiado. Desde la perspectiva de la geografía, pero también yendo más allá de esta disciplina, esta nota analiza el nexo entre el crecimiento de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán y la llegada de científicos alemanes en las décadas de 1940 y 1950.
For decades, German geographers' entanglement with Nazi rule has been described as primarily related to geopolitics and, more specifically, to the figure of Karl Haushofer - the 'black sheep' of an ...otherwise 'scientific' discipline. While research has been dismantling this 'Haushoferism' since the 1980s, the academic geography environment in which Haushofer was embedded in Munich has not been studied thus far. The present article seeks to fill this lacuna. In doing so, it aims to enhance our understanding of the relationship between geography, geopolitics, and Nazi rule. Through a biographical analysis, we investigate the work of three key geography scholars at Munich's Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU): the two consecutive chairholders in geography (Erich von Drygalski 1906-1935 and Fritz Machatschek 1935-1946) and Haushofer's closest academic disciple (Gustav Fochler-Hauke). Building on archival research, complemented by an analysis of these geographers' writings, we focus on 1) the relationship between geographical and geopolitical thought development at LMU and 2) the entanglement of Fochler-Hauke and Machatschek with Nazi rule. Our analysis shows that geographical and geopolitical thought were inextricably linked. Whereas much research has focused on (Haushofer and) the development of geopolitics, geographers' increasing transformation into Kämpfende Wissenschaftler fighting scholars has been neglected. This applied, practical-political orientation of geography, which aimed to sustain and support the expansionary National Socialist project, characterised the development of the discipline at LMU during the Nazi period.
Recent economic geography scholarship has emphasized (1) the performative work of market making (i.e., the geographies of marketization perspective) and (2) value-creation practices in markets ...(particularly the geographies of association and dissociation perspectives). In this article, we propose making stronger connections between these bodies of literature to gain a better understanding of how the performative constitution of markets and of brand and commodity value in markets are connected. More precisely, we argue that not only the b/ordering of the market and market outside (i.e., the world outside the market) but, equally, b/ordering processes within markets are essential components of performative market making and key to the contested attribution of value to commodities and brands. We flesh out this conceptual argument by empirically investigating the global wine market, which is characterized by high significance of brand building and of symbolic qualities-particularly geographic origin. In recent decades, the global wine market has been marked by a massive globalization process, strongly linked to the trading of wine in bulk form and outsourced bulk wine assembly for retailers' private labels. Building on ethnographical research, we analyze the associative and dissociative b/ordering of the bulk wine market vis-à-vis the (premium) wine market, arguing that this performation struggle is key to the attribution of value to wine. Bearing in mind that we are witnessing an increasing aestheticization of consumer goods in the global economy, resulting in a dramatic rise in branding activities, contested b/ordering processes within markets, we argue, will grow in importance in the future.
In this paper, we argue that the rapid expansion of exports as a share of global wine production is strongly related to the invention of flexitanks for wine transportation and the concurrent ...exponential growth of the bulk wine industry. Bulk wine fundamentally changes wine production, from the organisation of grape growing to the commercialisation of the final product, as it enables companies to assemble wine across the globe by establishing new connections between distant rural regions. Building on ethnographic fieldwork with New Zealand and Chilean bulk wine producers and German large‐scale wineries which specialise in bulk wine blending and bottling, our aim in this paper is to investigate how these new connections are forged and sustained. Drawing on the work of Çalışkan and Callon, we consider marketisation processes to be composed of different types of framing, and we analyse three of them in respect of the bulk wine market: objectification of goods, marketising agencies, and market encounters. Through detailed analysis of one market encounter that we have called “wine design sessions,” we show that German retailers align the other bulk wine agencies in a way that means they are well placed to decide on the final composition of the wines in a highly flexible accumulation scheme. It is through these wine design sessions and the practices of tasting, comparing, designing, analysing, and controlling wines that they organise the assembling and objectification of bulk wines from Chile and New Zealand (and from other countries around the globe) according to their specifications. Hence, rather than through top‐down pressure, coordination in the bulk wine market is accomplished through mundane practices and mechanisms which allow for action at a distance and which connect (and sometimes disconnect) rural regions on a global stage.
In this paper, we argue that the rapid expansion of exports as a share of global wine production is strongly related to the invention of flexitanks for wine transportation and the concurrent exponential growth of the bulk wine industry. Bulk wine fundamentally changes wine production from the organisation of grape growing to the commercialisation of the final product, as it enables companies to assemble wine across the globe by establishing new connections between distant rural regions. Building on ethnographic fieldwork with New Zealand and Chilean bulk wine producers and German large‐scale wineries which specialise in bulk wine blending and bottling, our aim in this paper is to investigate how these new connections are forged and sustained.
The relationship between “national” geographical schools and an increasingly globalized geographical theory-building under the logics of Anglophone hegemony has generated critical debate within ...geography. This paper aims to contribute to current discussions on the development of differential, language-based “schools of thought” in geography and how these are mobilized and de- and recontextualized when they travel beyond their origins. However, it does not focus on the period of Anglophone hegemony but intends to shed a new, historically informed light on the politics of geographical knowledge production. Against this backdrop, we study why, how and with what consequences German geographical knowledge traveled to Argentina in the 1940s – the end of the “German hegemony” – following the employment by the National University of Tucumán (UNT) of the four German geography professors Wilhelm Rohmeder, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, Fritz Machatschek and Willi Czajka, all of whom had been institutionally and ideologically entwined with National Socialism. Firstly, we show that the epistemic differences between “national” schools of geographical thought – skillfully juggled by the geographers we analyze here – can provide an opportunity for the successful de- and recontextualization of theory. Secondly, we argue that boundary spanning and the traveling of theory beyond their geographical origins – largely (implicitly) viewed as progressive – should always be put in context(s) and assessed more cautiously from a normative point of view.
Although questions of “quality” have gained prominence in economic geography, research has not fully explored recent discussions on processes of qualification in economic sociology. This paper has ...two key aims. The first is to introduce the way qualification processes have been conceptualized in recent pragmatism-inspired, process-oriented social science contributions, drawing particularly on work relating to actor-network theory, as well as on studies focusing on status/aesthetic markets. The second is to make this body of literature fruitful for a geographical perspective on product qualification in status/aesthetic markets. For the second aim, the paper empirically focuses on the global fine wine market. Since consumer products have increasingly become aestheticized in recent decades, an analysis of the geographies of fine wine qualification—an agricultural product that is also a key example of an aesthetic/status product—can provide insights into the dynamics of aestheticization in the food and beverages market more broadly. In order to advance a global perspective on fine wine qualification, this paper draws on qualitative empirical research in three wine regions around the world: South Tyrol (Italy), Salta (Argentina) and Marlborough (New Zealand). It argues that qualifying products is not only a highly reflexive and dynamic process, as contributions from economic sociology have revealed, but also, and crucially, a profoundly geographical matter.
The anaerobic digestion of swine manure was performed for more than 2 years in a biogas pilot plant with cereal residues as a mono-input, either by a simple intermittent substrate feeding or by ...feeding with an automated “autopilot” system under the direction of a Fuzzy logic control (FLC) system, working with a closed-loop feedback control. The pilot plant of the University of Applied Sciences in Nordhausen consisted of a 2.5 m3 dosage tank, a 2.5 m3 digestate tank, and a 1 m3 biogas reactor. Only three control parameters were used for FLC: pH, methane %, and the specific gas production rate (GPR) related to the organic loading rate (OLR), that is GPR/OLR m3 biogas/(kgVS d), vs = volatile solids. The specific GPR was referred to the OLR of the last feeding every 8 h in terms of kgVS/(m3 d). In test period I without an FLC system, a safe process with just an OLR of 4 kgVS/(m3 d) was reached, followed by an overloading and reactor disturbance at ≤6.3 kgVS/(m3 d) as indicated by acidification with volatile fatty acids up to 25,000 mg/L. However, test period II (585 trial days) with an integrated FLC system allowed a safe OLR up to 11 kgVS/(m3 d). Apparently, the microbes themselves directed the speed of substrate feeding by the dynamics of their substrate turnover and by the closed loop feedback control, while the three FLC parameters prevented acidification. Therefore, the application of FLC enabled a doubling of the throughput for a biogas reactor in the same time with a ‘turbo speed’. The concomitant hydraulic residence time (HRT) of only 10 days reduced the stirring and heating costs. The usage of an FLC system should open the door for networked biogas production to enable flexible biogas production on demand.
There is very little research on German colonial geography in general, and the boom in this subdiscipline during the National Socialist period has not received any scholarly attention so far. Against ...that backdrop, this paper aims to contribute: a) to a finer-grained picture of colonial, racial-Völkish thinking – and its application – in German geography during the National Socialist period and b) to our understanding of the continuities and ruptures in German geographical scholarship after WWII. To that end, I focus on the biography of Oskar Schmieder (1891–1980). Two interrelated aspects of Schmieder's writings will guide the analysis: first, his conceptualization of race, Volk, and soil regarding (Germans in) South America and, secondly, the political colonial project that he pursued for Nazi Germany. Studying Oskar Schmieder shows that German geographers not only stood up for the re-establishment of a German colonial empire during the National Socialist period, but also fought for its Fascist orientation – which, at least for Schmieder, was to differ from the German colonial pre-1914 empire. Being primarily known as a representative of Länderkunde, Schmieder's institutionally and conceptually influential career after 1945 can be seen as a prime example of the continuities within the discipline in Germany.
•Investigates the biography of German colonial geographer Oskar Schmieder.•Shows how Schmieder interpreted (German) settler colonialism in Latin America.•Analyzes the ascent of German colonial geography during National Socialism.•Contributes to our knowledge of geographer's contribution to colonialization efforts.•Analyzes continuities in German geography before and after WWII.
While most research into amenity/lifestyle migration still focuses on rural places in the Global North, it has recently been acknowledged that international North-South migration is a growing ...phenomenon. Against the backdrop of strong media attention to Global North immigration, there is a need to focus more on the rapidly increasing - but much less visible - migration streams of lifestyle/amenity movers to the Global South, and particularly on their implications for local and global inequalities. This is what this paper proposes, and it pursues this goal by providing a comprehensive review of the growing interdisciplinary literature on amenity/lifestyle migration in Latin America. From a critical geographical perspective, it firstly discusses key political economic factors that drive the production of high-amenity places in Latin America. The focus will be on real estate business and land markets. Secondly, the article analyses the local to global socio-spatial consequences of international amenity/lifestyle migration. The paper argues that amenity/lifestyle migration to Latin America builds on, and deepens, historically inherited global and local inequalities, which in many areas - rural and, increasingly, also urban - manifest themselves through growing social-spatial exclusion and fragmentation.
Rainer discusses the importance of 'nature' for tourism, the long neglect of political ecology's potential for tourism studies is surprising. Rainer argue that insufficient attention has been paid - ...both theoretically and empirically - to the production of nature for leisure and tourism, and particularly to its key role in increasing land value and speculating on future returns. This research note aims to show why a stronger focus on the production of nature holds potential for further developing a political ecology of tourism.
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