Finally, it is there! The brochure of our group, Rural Sociology. The brochure contains all necessary education information offered by our group. You will get inspired by the enthusiastic interviews held with students and former students! Have a look at the digital version here. Or ask for a hard copy by sending a message to els.hegger@wur.nl.
Category Archives: General
Afstudeermogelijkheid bij OIKOS
De Wetenschapswinkel Wageningen heeft een opdracht van COS Gelderland & OIKOS aangenomen om een haalbaarheidsonderzoek te doen voor het project ‘Participand’. Projectleider is Margriet Goris; het onderzoek wordt begeleid door Ina Horlings van Rurale Sociologie.
Met het project ‘Participand’ wil COS/OIKOS diverse doelgroepen -migranten, (inter)nationale studenten en anderen actief op het gebied van duurzame internationale ontwikkeling- bijeenbrengen om ondersteuning te bieden, samenwerking te stimuleren en om de kwaliteit van de activiteiten door kruisbestuiving te verbeteren.
Het onderzoek bestaat uit twee delen; inzichtelijk maken van wat er op dit gebied gebeurt in Wageningen en omgeving en hoe dit functioneert. Om vervolgens aanbevelingen te genereren voor een faciliteit die de verschillende initiatiefnemers in staat stelt hun werk te verbeteren door interactie met zusterorganisaties van verschillende oorsprong en culturele afkomst.
Het project omvat literatuuronderzoek, inventarisatie van initiatieven, interviews maar ook het organiseren van groepsbijeenkomsten met de verschillende initiatieven in samenwerking met de projectleider.
We zoeken een (Nederlands sprekende) masterstudent die zijn of haar afstudeeronderzoek op dit terrein wil doen. Het onderzoek start bij voorkeur rond half september.
Meer informatie tot 12 augustus bij Ina Horlings: lummina.horlings@wur.nl of 06-51126725; of na 8 augustus bij Margriet Goris: 06-28109539 (cocreation@live.nl).
Wanted: Students for an international experience!
Every year, the Rural Sociology Group participates in a two week intensive programme on rural development in the EU. A diverse group of students from various European countries (a.o. Portugal, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, Slovenia) work together on a case study. Through lectures and field trips scientific and practical knowledge will be aquired and then implemented in the case study analysis. See past experiences of Marlies, Petra and Wiebke.
This year the IP is organised by the university of Padova and takes place in San Vito Di Cadore in the Italian Dolomites. The general topic is: “the role of agriculture in territorial identity and competitiveness of rural areas”. More specificly, the general question is related to how these (territorial identity and competitiveness) contribute to rural development in the Dolomites (Alps region). For more information on the content see below.
Are you a student of Wageningen University and looking for an international learning experience? Then sign up for two intensive weeks from 3 to 16 April 2011! For subsciption or more information contact Els Hegger (els.hegger@wur.nl).
Metabolic rift
Organic recycling was part of the urban ecology during the middle ages. “However, as cities grew larger, their self-regulatory ecosystems began to break down” Carolyn Steel writes in her instructive chapter ‘Waste’ in Hungry City (2008:251). “If the ‘filth and muck’ of fourteenth-century Coventry caused a nuisance, that of London, a city 10 times the size, can be readily imagined.” (ibid). The other side of the coin was the state of agriculture, which was facing a rapidly decreasing soil fertility (see earlier blog 18-8). It was what Marx called ‘metabolic rift’ a rift in the metabolism of the human relation to nature through labor which “disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing” he wrote (cited in Foster 1999:379).
Marx was not alone in his opinion and he himself was greatly influenced by Justus von Liebig. Proposals to compost human waste as part of the design of the urban waste disposal system were propagated and sometimes tried in the UK, France and Germany (see Steel chapter Waste) and in the Netherlands (in Groningen see earlier blog 16-8). The sewage system with no in-built recycling won, most of the world sewage is dumped in the ocean untreated. The metabolic rift in terms of Marx widened and its effect is only delayed by chemical fertilizers and global transport. Yet, “nutrients found in sewage are a finite commodity” (Steel 2008: 259). In a few decades when the mines with phosphates are empty and the oil has leaked away in the sea, human sewage will most probably become a valuable resource again.
City and waste
We are very familiar with recycling paper, glass and recently, plastic. It feels good that this waste is turned into a resource again. Many of us are also recycling food scrapes through municipal services, backyard compost heaps or small-scalle vermiculture. However,when we are flushing the toilet, we do not often see our own waste as a valuable resource.
Our sewage system seems the only and logical answer nowadays but it was highly debated in the 19th century for its disadvantages before it was adopted (like pasteurisation was rejected by medical doctors because it would also kill all the ‘good’ in milk, see Dupuis 2005). Alternatives were cesspools or the barrel system. Cesspools and sewage pipes were believed to leak and thus to contaminate the groundwater. Contaminated groundwater due to the absence of city-wide waste disposal systems was, by then, seen as the primary cause for outbreaks of cholera and typhus in the mid 19th century.
barrel cart Groningen
The Netherlands had a vocal protagonist of the barrel system in the medical doctor Ali Cohen from Groningen (Houwaart 1997). He became nationally known for his zeal for urban waste disposal. The barrel system simply meant that human waste was collected in barrels which were emptied in a cart behind horses. The waste was then turned into compost at a city composting place after which the compost was sold to the farmers outside the city. Cohen strongly believed in the composting of human faeces as a fine example of restored balance between man and nature, city and countryside.
Various Dutch cities tried the barrel system. However, it turned out not to be profitable, except in the city of Groningen. The special conditions in north of the Netherlands, including the existence of good waterways and large farm holdings in the immediate area were lacking in other parts of the country ( Houwaart 1997). While other cities started investing in sewage systems, the barrel system continued in Groningen until the beginning of the 20th century. Not a very clean practice, emptying barrels in the middle of the street. But the city government always refused to improve the system despite new ideas such as not emptying it on the spot but changing the barrel for a cleaned and disinfected one. The result was that at the end of the 19th century the city was, totally unlike Cohen’s ideals, stuck with a very outdated waste disposal system compared the other Dutch cities.
