The paper discusses how the current climate change debate influences the way in which development is conceptualised, negotiated and implemented. The objective of the article is to explore some of the underlying controversies that characterise development discourses in the context of climate change. Adaptation to climate change goes along with a significant shift in discourses used to deal with what is normally called development. This is reflected in shifting research interests and perspectives, from vulnerability studies to resilience thinking. However, the paper argues, this shift is problematic for the normative contents of development and especially for a pro-poor and grass roots perspective.

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In the past few years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a dominant new theme in development politics, to an extent that it can almost be considered as a new development paradigm. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in three East African countries presented in this article indicates. The article argues that the current transformation of environmental governance reflects not only climate change as such, but also – and perhaps even more so – the discourse of a changing climate and its effect on development politics. The empirical evidence shows that African farmers, politicians and government officials often respond to the new ‘adaptation paradigm’ more readily than to directly felt phenomena caused by a changing climate. We therefore argue that the ontology of the concept of adaptation to climate change needs to be readjusted. Epistemologically, our concern is to trace the discourse of adaptation to climate change across multiple sites, i.e. how it ‘travels’ between global epistemic communities and adaptation projects in developing countries. Drawing on actor‐network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by highlighting the contested and multi‐sited narratives and practices that bring adaptation into being.

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Building upon post-foundational political philosophies, this article scrutinizes the Paris Climate Conference in December 2015 from a micro-geographical perspective. The analysis suggests that three different spaces exist at the site of the summit and reveals how their constituting practices and material arrangements rendered "Paris" post-democratic. We begin with exposing the staged statements of the world's political elites in the meticulously orchestrated Leaders Event as different phenotypes of the post-democratic condition. We then investigate the formal negotiations in the cordoned-off backrooms, where positions within the system were at stake, but not the system as such. Finally, we wander through the strictly policed "trade fair" and unveil attempts to entice delegates into techno-managerial solutions to the climate crisis. In the conclusion, we ponder over the prospects of environmental activism at the COPs in the light of their massive depoliticization.

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Abstract. Der Beitrag plädiert für eine Neuorientierung der geographischen Entwicklungsforschung im Sinne einer geographischen Sozialforschung in Entwicklungsländern. Ausgangsbasis dafür ist eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der aktuellen entwicklungstheoretischen Diskussion und der Übertragung akteurszentrierter Ansätze in die Entwicklungsforschung. Die Kritik an diesen Ansätzen konzentriert sich auf deren unzureichend fundiertes Gesellschaftsverständnis, in dem die Beziehung zwischen Subjekt und Gesellschaft nicht hinreichend erklärt wird und Abhängigkeitsverhältnisse zu wenig berücksichtigt werden. Mit der «Theorie der Praxis» von Pierre Bourdieu wird versucht, die Forschungsperspektive auf genau jene gesellschaftsrelevanten Zusammenhänge zu richten. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei das «soziale Feld», das durch Machtbeziehungen und die Konkurrenz von Akteuren geprägt wird, und der «Habitus» als System dauerhafter Dispositionen bzw. als verinnerlichte Verhaltensgrammatik. Nach der Darstellung der wichtigsten Bourdieuschen Theoreme schließt der Artikel mit einigen kurz umrissenen Beispielen, die eine mögliche forschungspraktische Umsetzung skizzieren.

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