I am a social anthropologist and my research and teaching expertise lies in the fields of urban anthropology, architectural anthropology, urban political ecology, infrastructure, waste and environmental anthropology with a regional focus on China.
I am working as an assistant professor at the Unit of Social Anthropology, University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and lead the project “Urban Bricolage. Mining, Designing and Constructing with Reused Building Materials.” The 5-year project is funded by a PRIMA grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation and examines the practical challenges of reuse practices in Europe.
From 2016-2021, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the SNSF-funded research project, “Architecture and Urban Climates,” at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland (Università della Svizzera Italiana). In 2014, I obtained my PhD from the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Bern.
I am working as an assistant professor at the Unit of Social Anthropology, University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and lead the project “Urban Bricolage. Mining, Designing and Constructing with Reused Building Materials.” The 5-year project is funded by a PRIMA grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation and examines the practical challenges of reuse practices in Europe.
From 2016-2021, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the SNSF-funded research project, “Architecture and Urban Climates,” at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland (Università della Svizzera Italiana). In 2014, I obtained my PhD from the Institute of Social Anthropology of the University of Bern.
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Papers by Madlen Kobi
In 2011 and 2012, I had many lighthearted encounters with local residents in and around food spots. This audio project revives some of the moments I spent with Turakiz, a Uyghur woman the same age as me who had grown up in the city.
Submission to Special Issue “N°6 Architectures of hyper-conditioned environments”, edited by Daniel Siret and Ignacio Requena for Les Cahiers de la Recherche Architecturale, Urbaine et Paysagère
https://journals.openedition.org/craup/2880
Mining corporations adopted a pioneering role in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR proofs to be useful for immunizing corporations against critique (Kirsch 2014) and as a tool for corporate security (Welker 2014); it thereby supports the imposition of “developmentalist” value-systems, as defined by corporate actors, over the political and socio-cultural sphere. As an “anti-politics machine” (Ferguson 2006), CSR-related consultation and compensation programs nurture expectations among local populations to participate in “development”, rather than to resist against negative socio-environmental impacts of mining. This exacerbates social divisions and results in complex resistance/negotiation-dynamics, with different sectors taking conflicting positions during a mine’s life cycle. However, the turn to CSR has also improved the power leverage of local people under certain conditions. Conflicts at specific mines can thus become “hot-spots” for contestations, discourses and practices that relate to other places and local movements against large-scale industrial projects, in different stages of development (in the sense of a “politics of time and space”, Kirsch 2014). They may thus be “politics machines”, i.e., a breeding ground for the constitution of shared values that counter mainstream notions of “development”, which again may be the precondition for the emergence of new institutions
The chapter presents two examples from our comparison of 13 case studies of large-scale mining projects (Niederberger et al. 2016). The chosen cases – the Mopani copper mines in the Copperbelt district of Zambia and the proposed copper mine of Tampakan in the Philippines cover the extremes of the mining cycle and illustrate very different power coalitions despite both being managed by the company Xstrata. In Zambia, historical marginalization and dependence on mining incomes leaves local people with little leverage over the interests of mining corporations. In the Philippines, local people were able to mobilize an internationally recognized and legitimized indigenous identity, combined with legal recognition of collective ownership rights, at an early stage of mine development. The juxtaposition conveys a feeling of the “politics of time and space” involved in these spatially extensive operations, and how local populations become entangled in glocalized expectations, struggles and dependencies.
In 2011 and 2012, I had many lighthearted encounters with local residents in and around food spots. This audio project revives some of the moments I spent with Turakiz, a Uyghur woman the same age as me who had grown up in the city.
Submission to Special Issue “N°6 Architectures of hyper-conditioned environments”, edited by Daniel Siret and Ignacio Requena for Les Cahiers de la Recherche Architecturale, Urbaine et Paysagère
https://journals.openedition.org/craup/2880
Mining corporations adopted a pioneering role in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR proofs to be useful for immunizing corporations against critique (Kirsch 2014) and as a tool for corporate security (Welker 2014); it thereby supports the imposition of “developmentalist” value-systems, as defined by corporate actors, over the political and socio-cultural sphere. As an “anti-politics machine” (Ferguson 2006), CSR-related consultation and compensation programs nurture expectations among local populations to participate in “development”, rather than to resist against negative socio-environmental impacts of mining. This exacerbates social divisions and results in complex resistance/negotiation-dynamics, with different sectors taking conflicting positions during a mine’s life cycle. However, the turn to CSR has also improved the power leverage of local people under certain conditions. Conflicts at specific mines can thus become “hot-spots” for contestations, discourses and practices that relate to other places and local movements against large-scale industrial projects, in different stages of development (in the sense of a “politics of time and space”, Kirsch 2014). They may thus be “politics machines”, i.e., a breeding ground for the constitution of shared values that counter mainstream notions of “development”, which again may be the precondition for the emergence of new institutions
The chapter presents two examples from our comparison of 13 case studies of large-scale mining projects (Niederberger et al. 2016). The chosen cases – the Mopani copper mines in the Copperbelt district of Zambia and the proposed copper mine of Tampakan in the Philippines cover the extremes of the mining cycle and illustrate very different power coalitions despite both being managed by the company Xstrata. In Zambia, historical marginalization and dependence on mining incomes leaves local people with little leverage over the interests of mining corporations. In the Philippines, local people were able to mobilize an internationally recognized and legitimized indigenous identity, combined with legal recognition of collective ownership rights, at an early stage of mine development. The juxtaposition conveys a feeling of the “politics of time and space” involved in these spatially extensive operations, and how local populations become entangled in glocalized expectations, struggles and dependencies.
新疆将成为新丝绸之路上的交通要道。同时沿途的城市将逐渐扩展为一个现实的网络,其中充斥着货物、人们和创意的交流。以该区域为研究对象,本文讨论了基础设施在其中的复杂角色(主干道和城市基础设施)所出发的各种城市进程。此外,本文还讨论了跨国道路的建设和维修所面对的挑战。本文通过研究目前新疆道路建设的复杂性,我们试图为应对新丝绸之路基础设施建设所将面临的挑战做出更好的准备。另一方面,本文也将表述新丝绸之路沿线城市区域的城市投资和社会转型间的相互影响。