Category Archives: Regional Development

VALUES IN PLACE – MSc Thesis opportunity on the role of values in sustainable places

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At the rural Sociology Group we would like to do research on values, place and sustainability. Therefore we are looking for students who are interested in doing a MSc Thesis.

Place based approaches to sustainable development are increasingly favoured, assuming that place specificities really matter in the form of social, cultural and institutional characteristics. People shape places which is expressed in practices, relations, rules, symbols and place-identities. A central question is how human values play a role in place-shaping – aimed at sustainable development – and how to analyze and map values.

Values are not self-standing concepts which can be analysed as atomized issues, but intertwined, context determined, culturally varied and linked to how we see our self and how we perceive our environment. A value-driven perspective on sustainable place-shaping benefits dialogues based on people’s values and beliefs, and aims to provide a more in-depth insight in what people consider as worthwhile, feel responsible for and are willing to commit to in the context of their own place. This is relevant as we can see a trend towards forms of self-organisation, the ‘do-democracy’ and the participative society where people (are expected to) take responsibility for their own environment.

Our goal is to analyse how values are expressed in places, distinguishing between the following dimensions:
• The economic dimension: adding value to places;
• The intentional dimension: why people contribute to sustainable change in places
• The symbolic dimension: how people appreciate place and attach meanings to place
• The integral dimension: how cultural worldviews and levels of human behaviour play a role in place-shaping.
Does this make you curious and/or do you have an interest in this research theme, please contact Ina Horlings at: Lummina.Horlings@wur.nl

Key research articles on Sociology Research

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Sociology Research alerts the social science community to the latest journal articles considered to represent the best in sociology research. See: www.sociologyresearch.org. Sociology Research is viewed over 14,000 times per month and has an audience of academics and researchers from a growing number of the top 20 major academic institutions.
An article that had been published recently is: “Exploring the ‘New Rural Paradigm’ in Europe: Eco-economic strategies as a counterforce to the global competitiveness agenda”. This article describes strategies in rural regional development. For many regions an obvious choice is to compete with other regions for global mobile capital and labour. On the other hand, and as a counterforce to these global logics, new strategies, which are more place-based, are being developed, such as the construction of identities or images around new agricultural goods and services. The full article has been published in the journal European Urban and Regional Studies.

Kulturhusen en Dorpshuizen in Gezonde kernen in Twente: Opdracht voor een master thesis student (of meerdere theses)

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Vraag: De Overijsselse Vereniging van Kleine Kernen (OVKK) in samenwerking met de gemeente Wierden wil de bijdrage van ‘Kulturhusen’ en Dorpshuizen aan de leefbaarheid en vitaliteit van dorpskernen in kaart brengen en versterken. Ook wil men verschillen in beeld brengen tussen Kulturhusen en Dorpshuizen en ideeën verzamelen die plaats kunnen vinden in die buurthuizen, waardoor hun exploitatie beter wordt.

Het behouden en versterken van sociale vitaliteit van het platteland is een van de belangrijke speerpunten die wordt genoemd in de Twentse Kracht! Groene Metropool Twente, een visie op gebiedsontwikkeling 2014-2020. De visie geeft aan dat naast innovatie op technisch gebied, ook behoefte aan sociale innovatie ter versterking van de sociale vitaliteit.

Betrokken stakeholders zijn: de buurt- en dorpshuizen, bewoners, Landschap Overijssel, Overijsselse Vereniging voor Continue reading →

Food and the City: free online short course

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Registrations are now open for the Universities West Midland online short
course: Food and the City.

The course will run for 6 weeks from 2nd June 2014 and is completely free.
The course consists of 12 lessons, with 2 released each week.

It is designed to take around 20 hours to complete and will comprise of a
mixture of written materials & videos along with other media and links to optional background reading.

There will be a light level of assessment throughout and opportunities to interact with the course tutors and other participants. The course has designed the materials to be suitable for participants from a range of backgrounds who are interested in urban food issues.The course has been developed by academic experts from West Midland universities though the Food-Smart City project.

For more information and to sign up please visit http://www.foodcitycourse.com

From production-oriented farming towards multifunctional entrepreneurship – PhD-thesis Pieter Seuneke

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Multifunctional agriculture

 

On the 9th of May, I (Pieter Seuneke) will defend my PhD-thesis entitled:

From production-oriented farming towards multifunctional entrepreneurship: exploring the underlying learning process

Context

My thesis focusses on the many European and Dutch farming families which, urged by the environmental, social and economic crisis in agriculture, have diversified their conventional production-oriented farming activities by developing new non-farming businesses on their existing farms. Currently, there are many farmers who are involved in agro-tourism, nature and landscape management, processing and selling of farm products and, more recently in The Netherlands, professional (child)care and on-farm education. The development of such new business activities by these farmers represents a shift away from conventional production-oriented farming towards a more ‘multifunctional’ farming model in which the role of agriculture goes beyond mass food production.

Focus

Based on four different studies, all drawing on the empirical work done in the context of the Dutch research project ‘Dynamics and Robustness of Multifunctional Agriculture’ (carried out by the Rural Sociology Group from 2009 to 2011), I unravel the learning process which is considered as underlying the switch towards multifunctionality and multifunctional entrepreneurship. In other words: the process by which farmers (men, women and their families) re-invent themselves as ‘multifunctional entrepreneurs’, gain the necessary knowledge, skills and networks ‘to do multifunctionality’ as well as finding their way on the multifunctional pathway. Apart from its contribution to theory – by bringing this complex learning process to light – my work ultimately supports practitioners (teachers, trainers, advisers) in fostering this, for today’s and tomorrow’s agriculture and rural areas, valuable form of agricultural entrepreneurship.

Supervision

During my PhD, I have been supervised by Prof. Han Wiskerke (professor of Rural Sociology at Wageningen University) and Dr Thomas Lans (ass. prof. Education and Competence Studies, Wageningen University).

The defence

My defence will take place on Friday the 9th of May, at 13.30, in the Aula of Wageningen University. The event is open to those who are interested and can also be followed/seen back on WURtv.

Contact

For more information: pieter.seuneke@wur.nl