Over the last years I’ve been studying the socio-cultural sustainability of animal farming by looking at citizen perceptions in the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark of  two farming systems; dairy and pig production (see former blogs). The debate is ongoing and I am happy to see that an increasing number of researchers are actively involved in this field.

However,  I’ll be moving into another – also very interesting – field… also animal farming… also sustainability, but this time in Mozambique and smallholder goat production.  Hence, this is my final blog for Rural Sociology. From the 15^th of June I’ll be working as post doctoral researcher for the International Livestock Research Institute (www.ilri.org) in Africa and India.

For those of you interested in the field of citizens and animal farming in Western societies,  below is a list of my publications, including two recently published papers. One paper includes the results of pig farm visits (see former blog), the other is a very compact review paper of my PhD thesis, only 9 pages…. Two other papers are published in open access journals, so I’ve included the link to the full paper for you. You’re free to use them (with correct reference of course) 🙂  

Boogaard, B.K., Boekhorst, L.J.S., Oosting, S.J., Sørensen, J.T. (online). Socio-cultural sustainability of pig production: farm visits with citizen panels in the Netherlands and Denmark. Livestock Science. (link to abstract)

Boogaard, B.K., Oosting, S.J., Bock, B.B., Wiskerke, J.S.C. (online). The Socio-Cultural Sustainability of Livestock Farming: an inquiry into social perceptions of dairy farming. Animal. The International Journal of Animal Biosciences. (link to abstract)  

Boogaard, B.K., Bock, B.B., Oosting, S.J., Wiskerke, J.S.C, Van der Zijpp, A.J., 2011. Social acceptance of dairy farming: The ambivalence between the two faces of modernity. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. 24:259–282 . (link to full paper) 

Boogaard, B.K., Bock, B.B., Oosting, S.J., Krogh, E., 2010. Visiting a farm: An Exploratory Study on the Social Construction of Animal Farming in Norway and the Netherlands Based on Sensory Perception. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 17(1), 24-50. (link to full paper)

Boogaard, B.K., Oosting, S.J., Bock, B.B., 2008. Defining sustainability as a socio-cultural concept: Citizen panels visiting dairy farms in the Netherlands. Livestock Science. 117(1), 24-33. (link to abstract)

Boogaard, B.K., Oosting, S.J., Bock, B.B., 2006. Elements of societal perception of farm animal welfare: A quantitative study in The Netherlands. Livestock Science. 104, 13-22. (link to abstract)

Finally, there is a popular version of my PhD thesis (written in Dutch) including beautiful pictures of farms, citizens, animals and of course a very compact version of the research results, entiteld ‘Met burgers de boer op. Input voor een maatschapplijk debat over een gewaardeerde duurzame veehouderij’.

Thank you for reading my blogs! I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

Best wishes,

Birgit.