Category Archives: Research

Research

PhD Defence: Knowledge Production, Agriculture and Commons: The Case of Generation Challenge Programme

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On Monday the 18th Soutrik Basu of the Rural Sociology Group will defend his PhD dissertation entitled “Knowledge Production, Agriculture and Commons: the Case of Generation Challenge Programme” in the Aula of Wageningen University. The defence will start at 13.30hrs on monday the 18th of April.

Knowledge Production, Agriculture and Commons: The Case of Generation Challenge Programme

The discourse on knowledge production is in constant transformation: on the one hand, there is the emergence of instrumental knowledge production based on scientific utility and socio-economic relevance and marked by property regimes, while on the other hand, there is another form of knowledge production based on cooperation, communication and the sharing of knowledge often entitled the open-source production or commons-based peer production (CBPP) mode. Both these trends are reflected partially or in full measure within the agrarian knowledge production programme called Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) of the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). GCP is an international knowledge production platform that aims to use plant genetic diversity to develop technologies to support plant breeders in developing countries. This research aims at understanding the dynamics of the knowledge production in the GCP drought-tolerant rice research network in Indian context to reflect on the ways in which its knowledge production evolves and the implications of this for agrarian knowledge production and agrarian knowledge producing institutions. Continue reading →

Sacks of hope: Sack Gardening in Kibera slum (Kenya) as sustainable place-shaping

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Sack_gardeningBy Merel Scheltema – Msc. Urban Environmental Management, specialisation in Spatial planning, WUR.

I propose that an investment in quality public space, through urban agriculture and multi-functional land use, can improve the access of people to basic needs. According to the UN habitat executive Director of Joan Clos i Matheu public spaces are therefore a vital asset. The quality of public spaces affects the quality of private spaces and the city as a whole. A ‘good’ public space is part of the solution to create ‘healthy’ cities, by revitalizing the environment, economic development and fostering social capital. The concept of ‘sustainable place-shaping’, answers this call for healthy public spaces. It is a holistic approach to strengthen collective agency, participation and leadership of people who engage in places.

In my essay for the RSO course ‘A global sense of Place’, I applied the SUSPLACE framework, developed by the Rural Sociology Group to investigate: how urban agriculture as an investment in public space contributes positively to sustainable place-shaping. I studied this by examining urban sack farming in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, the largest Slum in Africa.  I reason that  urban gardening offers basic needs as well as improves social capital, environmental quality and economic opportunities. Continue reading →

Call for Papers: Gendered food practices from seed to waste

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Call for papers for the Yearbook of Women’s History (2016)

Traditional food festival

Pastoralist women at traditional food fair in Gujarat, India  (photo credit: MARAG)

 

Gendered food practices from seed to waste
Guest editors: Bettina Bock and Jessica Duncan

About the Yearbook

The Yearbook of Women’s History is a peer-reviewed academic annual covering all aspects of gender connected with historical research throughout the world. It has a respectable history in itself, reporting on issues concerning women and gender for 35 years. The Yearbook has addressed topics such as women and crime, women and war, and gender, ethnicity and (post)colonialism. Overtime the Yearbook has shifted focus from purely historical analysis to a broader historical and gender analysis, focused on women’s and men’s roles in society. By focusing on specific themes, the Yearbook aspires that each issue crosses cultures and historical time periods, while offering readers the opportunity to compare perspectives within each volume. There has been one previous issue related to food: Gender and Nurture (1999). The present volume is a follow-up and aims to testify to differences in scholarly approaches in this field since the 1990s.

About the Annual Issue

In nearly all societies gender has been and continues to be central in defining roles and responsibilities around food production, manufacturing, provisioning, eating, and disposal. Food–related work and practices along with context and cultures serve to construct and reinforce identities and social structures. At the same time, the gendered practices around food are complex and often contradictory. Much of the literature on gender and food explores these complexities and contradictions but continues to make use of dichotomies (i.e., rural/urban; local/global; producer/consumer; large-scale/small-scale; man/woman; past/future) that are increasingly less suited to critical analyses of the fluidity of experiences and science and thus limit our ability to better understand relationships between food and gender.

Continue reading →

Feeding Dar es Salaam: where does all the meat come from?

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By Marc Wegerif. PhD-candidate at the Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University and carrying out research on food provisioning in Dar es Salaam. Contact: marc.wegerif@wur.nl

It was a Sunday afternoon, I sat at a table drinking beer and eating a grilled goat’s leg with Larry and Samuel. We were at the Pugu cattle market on the edge of Dar es Salaam and my companions were and are meat traders, butchers I suppose, there to buy some cattle. Dar es Salaam is Tanzania’s largest city with a fast growing population of around 4.5 million making it a major market for animals from across the country. From our table in the shade we could see groups of cattle and observe negotiations going on and the odd fight between bulls and arguments between traders. Continue reading →

Urban Agriculture in Romania

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11879645_1022934331074106_583476184_o-2This MSc thesis by Anamaria Alupoaie (MSc Organic Agriculture) investigated the reasons for failure of urban gardens, and the impacts of gardens on resident’s ‘sense of place’, in Dorohoi city in Romania.

Urban Agriculture plays a different role in the food system then agriculture in rural areas. In some cases, it represents a source of income or builds  sociological relations between citizens, through participation in the garden. In other cases, urban agriculture may originate from rural agricultural habits and traditions. With these inherited habits, urban farmers improve the existing environment through their practices, and with these practices they inspire others to take action in maintaining their own ‘green corners’ in the public space.

11882459_1022933601074179_396130938_oThe study was undertaken in Dorohoi region, a city situated on the north side of Romania, a small city with  31,093 inhabitants. In the last 20 years, the city experienced a period of decline due to the closure of big factories that offered jobs for more than half of the inhabitants. Since then the unemployment rate grew, and reached 80-85 %, in 2009. And it is estimated that now over 50% of the population lives below the country’s poverty line, as a result of the loss of the big industry. The availability of resources and income has triggered city dwellers to rely to a greater extent on local food production. Among the existing gardens, new ones started to flourish around the apartment buildings, in urban public spaces, and residents grew their edible greens. As such, in the area proposed for investigation, Dorohoi, urban agriculture continued through the communities of rural people that had moved into the urban center. They developed gardens in the green spaces of the city as a traditional habit inherited from their rural life. But this period of prosperity didn’t last, and about a decade ago, the city gardens were destroyed, with no significant grounds left. Continue reading →