Christhe Vreugdenhil, a student in the Master’s programme International Development Studies (MID) at Wageningen University, conducted her thesis research in Kenya. In the text below, she discusses her research, experiences, and findings. A link to her thesis is provided below.
Colonial British administration in Kenya, though fought off in the 1960s, has had a lasting impact on Kenyan education and society. During colonialism, policies enforced the banishment or suppression of indigenous languages and the imposition of English as language of instruction (LOI). Despite formal independence, this is still a reality in many Kenyan classrooms today.
While language is a mode of communication and individual expression, it is also a carrier of culture, values and social connections (Osimen et al., 2025). Many young people in Kenya are thus in danger of losing more than just their mother tongue: identity, existential frameworks (Wa Thiongo’o, 1986), intellectual traditions and indigenous knowledge that is passed on generationally (Prah, 2017), family ties and traditional values (Obiero, 2008) are also in danger. Interestingly, by recent policy changes, indigenous languages should be a subject taught in school (KICD, 2017), but it is not clear whether and how this is being implemented.
That is why the research question of my thesis was: How does English as the language of instruction impact cultural identity formation and the integration of indigenous languages in Kenyan urban and rural classrooms? In my subquestions, I focussed on pedagogical strategies concerning the use of English vs. indigenous languages, the perceived relationship between English and cultural identity, and the different challenges that rural and urban schools face.
By Eric Weyerstrass, Bastien Vassort & Luka Nie Course instructors: Jessica Duncan & Joost Jongerden
View of the course The course “Major Works: Hatred of Democracy” was centered around the eponymous book by Jacques Rancière, published in 2006. Students met every week to discuss a specific chapter, which all previously read in their own time. For each chapter a subgroup of students prepared more thoroughly and presented their understanding in a podcast episode. These same students were then tasked with chairing the meeting of that week orienting the discussion towards the points they viewed as most interesting/important.
Main argument Rancière begins his book with the observation that there seems to be a new kind of hatred of democracy: one that advances that “there is only one good democracy, the one that represses the catastrophe of democratic civilization” . Throughout the book his analysis builds on a number of societal observations, which focus on the inner machinations of liberal democratic rule. It is this governance, which Rancière criticizes, due to its fundamental lack of true democratic action. Thus, he stands in opposition to the ‘haters of democracy’, who represent a heterogenous group of voices, that uphold the status quo of limited democratic governance.
Chapter one presents the argument that democracy is perceived as empty by the critics, or ‘haters’ of democracy. Democracy is empty, being an encapsulation of nothing but the people’s ‘limitless desires’. For example, Rancière notes how the haters of democracy think that human rights are the disguised rights of egotistical individuals. One of the Haters’ arguments throughout the 20th century is that without a leader determined either by birth, strength or religion, people’s limitless desires are a threat to the common good. The limitlessness of democratic civilization is blamed for the failure of democracies to create stable states: people follow their wants on a whim, which makes stable governance impossible.
Rancière suggests that this hatred of democracy is not new. In chapter two, he invokes Plato, whose argument against democracy builds the basis for true democracy, according to Rancière. Plato’s idea of good governance relies on the existence of rules that govern the natural world. Of these, six concern people’s “entitlements”: strength, appearance, knowledge, and others. However, the final and the most critical is chance. Plato recognizes that chance is the core component of any government – none can rule without being a little fortunate, which means that each government must continually justify its own existence to the people. This, for Rancière, is key: chance means that any form of governance is fundamentally devoid of any legitimate and final justification, which makes governance inherently political (insofar as people must legitimize its rule). True democracy, then, is “simply the power peculiar to those who have no more entitlements to govern than to submit”. The haters of democracy, in contrary, are those who cannot accept the fundamental baselessness of government and require legitimacy through entitlements.
In chapter 3, Rancière highlights that democracy is not a form of government, nor of society. Instead, democracy is a process that is the exercise of the 7th entitlement: it is the wrestling against other entitlements, “the monopoly of public life from oligarchic governments, and the omnipotence over lives of power of wealth”. He identifies today’s liberal democracies as oligarchies.
In the book’s conclusion, Rancière identifies that fighting against today’s oligarchic governments is necessary. Not only that, it is democracy in action, since democracy is a process.
His final message is one of hope: “Democracy is as bare in its relation to the power of wealth as it is to the power of kinship that today comes to assist and to rival it. It is not based on any nature of things nor guaranteed by any institutional form. It is not borne along by any historical necessity and does not bear any. It is only entrusted to the constancy of its specific acts. This can provoke fear, and so hatred, among those who are used to exercising the magisterium of thought. But among those who know how to share with anybody and everybody the equal power of intelligence, it can conversely inspire courage, and hence joy.”
Personal reflections What stuck with us from this book is how Rancière’s argument moves beyond political ideology. Democracy, in his opinion, is much broader than this. As Rancière notes in the introduction, the new hatred of democracy borrows arguments from capitalist- and communist ideology alike but does not fall under either of these models. To him, democracy is nothing other than the struggle against oligarchic rule and the power of wealth.
How do climate change and societal transformation actually unfold in everyday life? Think about what we eat, how we travel, how we heat our homes, where we go on holiday, and how people move across borders.
This September–October, we invite BSc and MSc students from all backgrounds to explore these questions in Climate Sociologies of the Everyday (ENP33506) in Wageningen.
In this course, we look at climate change not only as a global environmental challenge, but as something deeply embedded in everyday practices across four key domains:
>> Food – from diets and consumption to plant-based transitions and food systems >> Energy – from households to communities in the energy transition >> Tourism – from high-carbon travel to climate-vulnerable destinations >> Migration – from mobility and immobility to climate-driven displacement and adaptation
The course connects sociological theory (including social practice and mobilities perspectives) with real-world climate transformations, offering critical and applied insights into sustainability transitions.
📅 Period 1 (Sept–Oct) 📍 Wageningen University & Research 🎓 Open to BSc & MSc students 📘 Part of the national minor Climate Sociology
More information: contact course coordinator Machiel Lamers (machiel.lamers@wur.nl) or check the WUR Study Handbook.
Join us in rethinking climate change through the lens of everyday life.
Are you a WUR student looking for a thesis topic that engages with urgent social, political, and environmental questions in food systems, rural transformations, and global change?
The Rural Sociology Group offers a wide range of research opportunities across three key themes: Agrarian Change, Food Provisioning, and Rural Development. Each theme brings together a diverse group of supervisors working on critical issues shaping contemporary rural and food system transformations.
Across these themes, students are invited to engage with research that does not only describe change, but also critically examines power relations, inequalities, and possibilities for more just and sustainable futures.
In Agrarian Change, researchers explore the interconnected social and environmental crises shaping agrarian life, agricultural practices, and rural livelihoods. This includes questions around land, labour, ecological transformation, and alternative pathways for agrarian communities. Students interested in political ecology, rural inequality, and agricultural transitions will find a strong intellectual home here.
The Food Provisioning theme focuses on how food is produced, distributed, and governed in both rural and urban contexts. It brings attention to alternative food economies, food justice, and the politics of food systems transformation. This is a space for students interested in food governance, sustainability transitions, and the everyday practices that shape how food systems function.
The Rural Development theme examines ongoing transformations in rural areas and emerging rural–urban relations. It pays particular attention to power dynamics, governance processes, and the lived realities of rural change. Students working on questions of inequality, policy, and rural futures will find rich opportunities for engagement here.
Within these themes, students can connect with supervisors whose work spans critical social science perspectives on food and rural systems. Supervisors bring expertise in areas such as agrarian political economy, food governance, rural transformation, and environmental change, and are open to supporting students in developing tailored thesis projects.
We encourage students to explore individual supervisor profiles and ongoing research projects to identify topics that align with their interests.
If you are considering a thesis within RSO, we welcome you to reach out and discuss possibilities. Engaging with our research community is an opportunity to shape your own academic path while contributing to urgent debates on food systems, rural change, and social justice.
For more information, students can consult the supervisor profiles below or via Brightspace (WUR-only access) or contact the education coordinator at thesis.rso@wur.nl
Agroecology is often presented as a holistic alternative to industrial agriculture, yet the organization, valuation, and lived meaning of labor within agroecological farms remain underexplored. This blog post draws on a qualitative study by master’s student Thomas Jongelings that addresses this gap by examining how labor organization shapes the expression of social agroecological principles and everyday experiences of work.
The central question guiding the research is: How is labor organized, valued, and made meaningful, and how do these labor experiences relate to the social principles of agroecology?
Rural Sociology Wageningen University 