Integrated Research Training Group at the DFG Collaborative Research Centre "Future Rural Africa" (SFB/TRR 228)

Application Deadline:

Any time during the year

Program Language:

English

Program Duration:

4 years

"Future rural Africa“ takes current large-scale landuse change in rural Africa as its starting point. Focusing on the two seemingly opposite, yet often mutually constitutive processes of intensification and conservation, it investigates their impact on social-ecological transformation in the context of three major growth corridors in eastern and southern Africa. While social-ecological transformation is commonly understood in relation to past processes, this CRC takes a different perspective: It conceptualizes socialecological transformation as an expression of ‘future-making’. Resonating with current debates in the interdisciplinary field of future studies, this means that potential futures and the different ideas of how they can be realized are seen to have a decisive impact on current land-use dynamics, especially through diverse processes and politics of anticipation. ‘Futuremaking’ refers to physical changes as well as social practices that link the present to the future in various ways. Whereas natural scientists primarily study how a ‘future of probabilities’ is anticipated in different forms of calculation, measurements and models, the social scientists also take into account how a ‘future of possibilities’ takes shape in visions and imaginations. Together, the projects of the CRC will analyze how such different approaches to the future inform practices of large-scale land-use change, and how they relate to each other.