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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The article explores how changed patterns of UN membership affected the prospects for UN Security Council institutional reform. First, we outline a theoretical framework based on path dependency, veto player analysis and social choice theory. Second, we offer calculations of decision probability and show that a higher voting threshold lowers chances of winning coalitions in a non-linear fashion. Third, we explore the specific decision-making procedures for UNSC reform and which actors can block reform. We conclude that not only diverging preferences, but that hurdles established early on combined with membership growth have 'locked in' the current institutional arrangement.

The arena of locally embedded and engendered responses to climate change offers a particularly fruitful and challenging space in which to scrutinise the encounters between established forms of governance and knowledge as they become entwined with locally generated forms of self-organisation. The issue of climate change offers a particularly fertile case for study because to date it has largely been dominated by state and market-based responses and associated forms of governance selectively articulated with knowledge generated through scientific and expert modes of knowledge. The central focus of the article is on identifying the variegated forms of understanding associated with the groups we researched and how they drew upon/utilised knowledge (knowledge-in-action) vis-à-vis the governance of ecological politics and environmental governance. The article draws on case studies of self-organising locally based groups in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom that are addressing climate change, in a broad sense, within their locality. These groups represent a range of responses to the issue and associated modes of action, exhibit different levels and forms of 'organisation' and may challenge more established forms of governance and knowledge in different ways.

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