Jakob Graf holds a PhD in Sociology, works as a PostDoc at the Center for Climate Resilience at the University of Augsburg, Germany, and teaches in the area of environmental sociology. He is also on the editorial board of the German journal PROKLA (Journal of Critical Social Sciences). His research focuses on issues of social inequality, class relations and socio-ecological conflicts in the (semi-)peripheries of the world-system. She did her PhD on the forestry industry, the economy of necessity and the conflict between forestry companies and Mapuche communities in south-central Chile. He is currently working mainly on socio-ecological conflicts and food sovereignty in the context of climate change.

Selected publications

2024. The Forest Stewardship Council in Chile. Continuities of Inequality through Market-Based Regulation of Extractivist Commodity Chains. En: Sociology of Development. (en proceso de publicación)

2024. Die politische Ökonomie der "Überflüssigen": sozialökologische Konflikte und die Kämpfe der Mapuche gegen die Forstindustrie in Chile. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-43536-3

2023. Coproducion with Stefan Schmalz, Dasten Julián-Vejar, Johanna Sittel and Cristian Alister Sanhueza: Challenging the three faces of extractivism: the Mapuche struggle and the forestry industry in Chile. En: Globalizations 20 (3), S. 365-383. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2022

2020. Clean capitalism? Ambiguities in Marx's critique of political economy from a global perspective. En: Kerstin Knopf, Detlev Quintern (Hg.): From Marx to global Marxism: Eurocentrism, resistance, postcolonial criticism. Trier: WVT - Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier (Inputs - Kritische Beiträge zum postkolonialen und transkulturellen Diskurs ; 6), S. 41-55.

2020. Coproduction with Anna Landherr: Tanz der Überflüssigen: Klassenkämpfe im Globalen Süden am Beispiel Chiles. En: PROKLA: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft 50 (200), S. 467-489. DOI: 10.32387/prokla.v50i200.1896

2019. Coproduction with Anna Landherr and Cora Puk: Das Modell Chile: die sozial-ökologischen Folgen des neoliberalen Vorzeigemodells. En: Martín Ramírez, Stefan Schmalz (Hg.): Extraktivismus: Lateinamerika nach dem Ende des Rohstoffbooms. München: Oekom, S. 79-98.

2018: Introducción. En: Martín Ramírez, Stefan Schmalz (Hg.): ¿Fin de la bonanza? Entradas, salidas y encrucijadas del extractivismo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, S. 195-199.

Research project at CALAS
Title: The political crisis and the crisis of reproduction in Chile: how could a collective identity emerge from shared social and ecological problems?

Summary: In Chile, the large protests of the Estallido Social, from October 2019 onwards, revealed three deep crises. First, a crisis of political representation, as the traditional parties, both right and center-left, lost all their approval. Second, the Social Outburst revealed a social crisis, caused by social inequality and the socio-economic problems of a large proportion of precarious households, characterized by high indebtedness, the constant rise in the cost of living and the absence of a welfare state in many areas. Third, a profound ecological crisis, caused by both climate change and extractive industries, which has exacerbated the social situation in rural Chile. The research project proposed here asks whether in the socio-ecological struggles in Chile that culminated in 2019 there is a unifying antagonism between precarious households and the dominant landowning class. My hypothesis is that at least there is a common interest of the Chilean people that consist in improving the conditions of social reproduction. This topic has recently been discussed mainly in feminist debates, so the research project asks what current debates on social reproduction can contribute to an understanding of socio-ecological conflicts and their central actors and identities in Chile.