Jenss, Dr. Alke
Position:
Senior Researcher, Coordination Cluster Contested Governance
Email:
alke.jenss [at] abi.uni-freiburg.de
Phone:
+49 (0)761 888 78 26
Areas of Research:
the Production of Security and Insecurity, “war on drugs”, statehood, multiscalar governance, political economy of land conflicts, spatial theory
Regional Focus:
Latin America (particularly Colombia, Mexico)
Publications
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Progress in Political Economy (PPE) Blog
In May 2011, 20,000 people took to the streets of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. The Zapatista support movement had called for a ‘march of silence’ against the government’s so-called ‘war on drugs’. Women, children, and men walked in silence, holding up banners saying “no more blood” and “we are fed up” (“estamos hasta la madre”). Their clarity about the violence not only by so-called cartels, but also by state institutions, exposes what much state theory on the ‘war on drugs’ has lacked — an idea of the state’s role.
2023
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Benjamin Schütze
Security in Context Blog
While transregional energy infrastructure projects like the Central American Electrical Interconnection System (SIEPAC) and MedRing quite literally connect regions anew and envisage borderless energy flows, as we argue in an article recently published with Globalizations, these projects potentially prefigure politics: removing opportunities for democratic contestation, and fixing some specific energy futures in place and preventing others.
2023
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Gurol-Haller, Dr. Julia / Dr. Alke Jenss / Dr. Fabricio Rodríguez / Dr. Benjamin Schütze / Cita (Universität Freiburg), Wetterich
GLOBALIZATIONS
Research on authoritarian connections beyond the state requires a transregional practices approach. This special issue is an invitation to combine critical approaches to the study of authoritarian power by paying attention to spaces of contestation, authoritarian practices, as well as non-state actors and agency below and beyond the scale of the state. We focus on authoritarian practices and their spatial and temporal articulations in (1) transregional infrastructures, (2) global processes of capital accumulation and (3) nature-society relations.
2023
Monographie (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Paramilitaries, crime, and tens of thousands of disappeared persons—the so-called war on drugs has perpetuated violence in Latin America, at times precisely in regions of economic growth. Legal and illegal economy are difficult to distinguish. A failure of state institutions to provide security for its citizens does not sufficiently explain this.
Selective Security in the War on Drugs analyzes authoritarian neoliberalism in the war on drugs in Colombia and Mexico.
2022
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Valeria Guarneros
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13081
This article builds an analytical framework to study the relation between security and informality and the extent to which it contributes to producing hegemony in local politics.
2022
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Prof. Dr. Rosa Lehmann
Latin American Research Review
doi:10.1017/la
In this recent article, Rosa Lehmann and Alke Jenss analyze the potential and existing obstacles to political participation for Indigenous networks and activists in Mexican development projects.
2022
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Spatializing Authoritarianism
Alke Jenss recently published a chapter on multiscalar perspectives on Oaxaca, an authoritarian city in Mexiko, in a volume about "Spatializing Authoritarianism", edited by Natalie Koch.
2022
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Spatializing Authoritarianism
The analysis of “new authoritarianisms” is rarely based on their entanglements across sites, scales and administrative boundaries. Far too often, authoritarian developments are analysed as endogenous problems, based on internal social dynamics or ‘problematic’ governments. Literature on authoritarian developments in the urban often stresses repressive or unreliable forms of policing.
2022
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Geographie der Gewalt
2022
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Evelina Gambino / Emily Judson / Annabel Pinker / Ludovico Rella / Gerald Taylor Aiken / Bregje Van-Veelen
Political Geography
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102378
The proliferation of civic demands for democratisation through material infrastructures, including those pertaining to energy, water, currency, and transport, indicates a desire to transform how societal needs are provided, and how technologies of provision might act as ‘loci of hope’ (Bernardo, 2010) for achieving a more desirable and equitable future (Dawson, 2020).
2022
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Rosa (Universität Heidelberg) Lehmann
Latin American Research Review
2022
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Tobias Boos / Dr. Rosa Lehmann
Sozialstrukturen in Lateinamerika. Dynamiken und Akteure im 21. Jahrhundert
Die Sozialstrukturen in Lateinamerika haben sich in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten stark verändert. Dieser einleitende Beitrag des Sammelbandes „Sozialstrukturen in Lateinamerika. Dynamiken und Akteure im 21. Jahrhundert“, der eine Art Follow-Up des Buches „Sozialstrukturen in Lateinamerika. Ein Überblick“ (herausgebracht 2008 im VS Verlag) ist, umreißt die im Buch anhand von vergleichenden und Fallstudien dargestellten sozialstrukturellen Entwicklungen.
2021
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Analyse & Kritik
Trotz massiver Repression bringen die Protestierenden in Kolumbien Staat und Militär in Bedrängnis.
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Security Dialogue
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Evelina Gambino
"Intervention: Democratizing Infrastructures"
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102378
During the presentation of the masterplan for Anaklia City, a planned smart city and logistics hub at the border between Georgia and the de facto state of Abkhazia, the project CEO, Keti Bochorishvili, highlighted her commitment to the elimination of all barriers that inhibit the smooth flow of investments and commodities and the free movement of those engaged in trading.
2021
Herausgeberschaft (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Prof. Dr. Rosa Lehmann / Dr. Tobias (Universität Wien) Boos
Sozialstrukturen in Bewegung
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Global Policy
doi:10.1111/1758-5899.12878
This contribution draws on rhythmanalysis and the political economy of assemblage to provide a framework for understanding the productive spatio‐temporal effects of physical violence on urban rhythms. The paper explores how Buenaventura, Colombia's biggest port city, is transformed both by the growth in container turnover, and through recurring, spatial and temporal practices of violence. What role does violence play in the relation between trade‐driven acceleration through the port, and the aquatic, tidal rhythm that historically shaped the city?
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Perfiles Latinoamericanos
dx.doi.org/10.18504/pl2958-007-2021
Transformations towards “ecological” infrastructures are often highly contested and reproduce social conflict. To enrich the debate on such contested infrastructure expansions, I combine po-litical economy and political ecology approaches with literature on the “politics of operation” and logistics. This paper analyses renewable energy infrastructures within the Mesoamerican Project, which foments the production of transnational territories and implies a growing role of global corporations in local social struggles.
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Benjamin Schütze
International Studies Quarterly
https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaa083
How to rethink authoritarian power in ways that better account for authoritarian connections beyond nation-state boundaries? By reconceptualizing the context in which to analyze authoritarian power, we bring to light transregional authoritarian connections between the secondary port cities Aqaba/Jordan and Buenaventura/Colombia.
2021
Zeitschriftenartikel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke / Dr. Benjamin Schütze
International Studies Quarterly
10.1093/isq/sqaa083
How to rethink authoritarian power in ways that better account for authoritarian connections beyond nation-state boundaries? By reconceptualizing the context in which to analyze authoritarian power, we bring to light transregional authoritarian connections between the secondary port cities Aqaba/Jordan and Buenaventura/Colombia.
2020
Weitere Artikel, Konferenzberichte, Lexikonartikel und Länderberichte
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Analyse & Kritik
In Kolumbien gehört Gewalt schon lange zur staatlichen Strategie der Kontrolle. In der Pandemie verschärft sich die Lage – aber auch der Protest.
2020
Online-Publikation, Blog-Artikel, op-ed
Jenss, Dr. Alke
ALMA Reviews Blog
At first glance, Mariana Mora’s book may seem to be a conventional anthropological study of a highly popular movement: the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Southern Mexico. From 1994 onwards this movement, as an example of indigenous organising practices and their success in pressing for autonomy, has been the object of much anthropological enquiry. The Zapatista uprising occupied several towns in 1994 and later established autonomous municipalities with their own education and health services. Mora’s book differs from most, however, because of her decolonial and historicised approach.
2020
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Autoritärer Populismus
Weltweit schreiten der autoritäre Umbau liberal-demokratischer Staaten und der Angriff auf emanzipatorische Erfolge der Vergangenheit voran. Unter Rückgriff auf das theoretische Konzept des autoritären Populismus zeigt der Band Ursachen, Hintergründe und Folgen dieser Entwicklung auf. Der Fokus der empirischen Fallstudien zu den Ländern Türkei, Polen, Ungarn, Brasilien und Deutschland liegt auf den Konfliktfeldern Demokratie, Geschlechterverhältnisse und Klasse.
2020
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
Gewalt und Konfliktbearbeitung in Lateinamerika
In Guerrero, Mexiko, sehen wir einen Mann mit Vollautomatikgewehr im Schatten einer Zeltplane am Tisch sitzen. In einem Artikel der britischen Zeitung The Guardian bezeichnet sich der Mann als Teil der Stratege einer bewaffneten „Selbstverteidigungsgruppe“, die behauptet, sie verfüge über 9.000 Mann. Hundert davon seien zum Töten ausgebildet: “[A] team thatcomes to destroy”. Was nach einem billigen Actionfilm klingt, zeigt einerseits die zersplitterte und schwer durchschaubare Sicherheitslage in Mexi-ko.
2020
Beitrag Sammelband/ Buchkapitel (Wiss.)
Jenss, Dr. Alke
The Routledge Handbook to the Political Economy and Governance of the Americas
This handbook explores the political economy and governance of the Americas, placing particular emphasis on collective and intertwined experiences. Forty-six chapters cover a range of Inter-American key concepts and dynamics.
The flow of peoples, goods, resources, knowledge and finances have on the one hand promoted interdependence and integration that cut across borders and link the countries of North and South America (including the Caribbean) together. On the other hand, they have contributed to profound asymmetries between different places.
2020