Category Archives: General

General issues.

Farm Experience Internship 2016

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This summer the 3ECTS international summer course “Farm Experience Internship” (FEI) will take place at the Wageningen University. From 25 Juli – 19 August 2016, students will learn all about producing food, food sovereignty, the soil, the reality of farmers/ gardeners/ peasants, nutrient cycles, seeds, biodiversity, agroecology and much more! Besides workshops, lectures and excursions, students will work in a farm or garden for two weeks, to experience the reality on the land and learn all about agroecology in practice!

The FEI is organised by de Boerengroep (Farmers Foundation) and Otherwise. The Rural Sociology group is involved in the organisation and examination of the capita selecta connected to this course.

More info and signing up (subscription closes at 20th June):  https://farmexperienceinternship.wordpress.com/

See also this short movie.

Panel Discussion: Strengthening Farmer-led Seed Systems

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On June 15, the Boerengroep, together with ILEIA, Louis Bolk Instituut and Biodiversity International organise a panel discussion “Strengthening Farmer-Led Seeds Systems: focus on access and benefit sharing”. For more information,  visit the website of the Boerengroep.

Foreign investment in African Agriculture: the role of China and Brazil – seminar

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The sub-department Sociology & Anthropology of Development of the Social Sciences department of Wageningen University invited two key note speakers for a seminar on Foreign Investment in African Agriculture: Prof. Kojo Amanor (University of Ghana) and Prof. Sergio Schneider  (University Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). The two speakers will specifically highlight the role of China and Brazil.

Prof. Kojo Amanor will present an overview of foreign investments in the agricultural sector in Africa. A specific focus will be on investments from BRIC countries, notably from China and Brazil. Prof. Amanor will debate the new roles of China and Brazil in the context of their own political economies, and wider global trends of geopolitical restructuring. Prof. Amanor has published widely on African Agriculture and co-edited a Special Issue of World Development (Vol. 18, 2016) on foreign invest-ment in African agriculture.

Prof. Sergio Schneider will present an analysis of whether and how Brazilian ideas about family farming and rural development have been adopted in African countries, mostly in Mozambique. Prof. Schneider has published widely on issues related to rural development, family farming and land reform in Brazil.

Venue: Wednesday June 1, 2016; 14.00-17.00 in room C67, in the Leeuwenborch building.

MSc Thesis opportunity: gardening for cancer survivors

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In the Netherlands, 1 out of 3 people get cancer; about 100,000 individuals per year. More than 60% of those diagnosed with cancer survive. However, survivors often experience long-term side effects of cancer and its treatment, which greatly influences their quality of life, ability to function, success in re-integration in social processes, and long-term survival.

Evidence shows that a healthy diet and regular physical activity are beneficial in cancer prognosis. Most current intervention programs are focused on dietary advice and exercise programs in gyms. However, such programs are hardly appealing to the majority of cancer survivors. We introduce a novel approach which may better fit the needs, possibilities and interests of cancer survivors: gardening. Scientific research underlines the virtues of gardening: it prolongs life, improves mental and physical well-being, increases quality of life and acuity, and  supports social cohesion. Moreover it can help to increase consumption of (home-grown) plant foods.

The idea of offering cancer patients the possibility to work in gardens is based on a similar project in the USA. The aim of this thesis is to study this program, specifically by investigating it from the point of view of the patients – how did they perceive the program – and to compare this to the situation in the Netherlands. What is available for (former) patients in both countries, what do survivors need or want, and how would (or in the case of the USA: how did) gardening fit in people’s rehabilitation programs? We invite you to study this from the perspective of Social Practice Theory, which focuses on habits and routines in daily life.

We are looking for a motivated MSc student that is interested in writing a thesis with the Rural Sociology Group on the topic of gardening for cancer survivors. The thesis will consist of a literature-based study, but the student is also invited to travel to the USA to interview (ex) patients and study a similar project there. The report will preferably be written in English.

More information? Contact Esther Veen (Esther.Veen@wur.nl)

A politics of appearance

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Hanne Wiegel successfully defended her minor thesis “A politics of appearance: a theoretical exploration of private accommodation initiatives for refugees”. Hereby a summary of the thesis, which received qualifications such as “well-structured””, “good logical reasoning”  and “theoretically sophisticated” .

“Publicly organized asylum seeker accommodation in Germany often involves a strict spatial and social segregation of asylum seekers from the wider society, which contributes to turning individuals who seek asylum into an abstract, impersonal category. For the individual asylum seeker, this creates a situation of harmful visibility vis-à-vis the state and harmful invisibility vis-à-vis the receiving society. Against this background, this paper will theoretically discuss the socio-political implications of recently developed civil society initiatives that organize the accommodation of asylum seekers in private housing arrangements in which asylum seekers live side-by-side non-refugees. Drawing on the approach of autonomous migration, Rancière’s disruptive politics and Butler’s performative theory of appearance, I argue that these civil society initiatives can be understood as providing spaces of appearance for asylum seekers to become visible as individuals amongst non-refugees. This can be considered as a performative act of disruption, changing the spatial and social ordering of asylum (accommodation) policies. Far from glorifying the effects of private accommodation for asylum seekers, however, I argue that these do not affect the legal status of the asylum seeker, but that nevertheless living side-by-side non-refugees can change asylum seekers’ invisibility vis-à-vis the civil society, and allows for personal encounters and individuation which might enhance their social emplacement.”

Key-words Germany, asylum seeker accommodation, ordering, civil society, dissensus, appearance