Category Archives: RSO-student

Romashki or a Life Less Ordinary, part 2

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By Thomas Mcintyre

Once upon a time…Do you, my dear reader, believe it is possible to live in a fairytale? This may seem like a strange question on a rural sociology blog, and indeed it is. It is not a question I thought seriously about before, though I confess I have been predisposed to curling up on a chair in front of the fire and entering the world of fairytales through a book or through my imagination… but to live in one! This seems rather preposterous, and you would be forgiven for wondering what this has to do with serious anthropological research. But like any good research, setting out into the unknown has raised some strange questions I have had to stew on. If you answer a tentative yes to the opening question, as I am now inclined to do, then would you entertain the thought of writing a fairytale thesis? After all, if the reality you are studying is a fairytale, then would it not only be appropriate that the written representation of this reality should also be a fairytale? Now, I suppose you would like me to explain what I mean by living a fairytale and writing a fairytale thesis, especially its academic justification and application. But first things first: my arrival to Romashki.
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Internship in the ‘Friesische Schafskäserei’ (Friesian sheep dairy), part 1

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By Corinne Feldmann – MSc student

After finishing my master thesis with the RSO department and FiBL in Switzerland, I decided to do some more ‘practical work’ during the internship for my MSc Organic Agriculture.

So, here I am…on an organic sheep dairy farm in Northern Germany. The tourists are not yet here, since it is icy and cold – not very attractive for holidays right now. But in a few weeks they are supposed to come in order to visit the farm, look at the sheep, and try the cheese.

Right now the lambs are getting born. They are cute but freezing outside in the stable – just like me. There are quite a lot of lambs already, so that we will start to milk the sheep soon and than we can also start to produce cheese…for all the expected tourists.

Romashki or a Life Less Ordinary, part 1

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Thomas Macintyre is a MSc student enrolled in the Master International Development Studies. For his MSc thesis research he spent 3 months in an ecovillage in the Ukraine, to study everyday village life. Thomas’ post is the first of a series in which he shares his experiences of the “life less ordinary” he has lived for 3 months.

Imagine if you can a little village surrounded by forests beside a little lake. Squirrels play in trees amongst the woodpeckers, frogs play hide and seek with the cranes in the lake, and when the sun has set, the wild pigs come out to sniff and dig around the fields and gardens in the village, curious as ever as to see what is new.  Continue reading →

Looking at organic+ activities and their perception by consumers in the rural web

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Before I start writing about organic+ activities and consumers I would like to introduce myself.

My name is Corinna Feldmann and I study Organic Agriculture in my second year. I just finished my master thesis: ‘What does the consumer take up? – A case study on communication in the rural web around the dairy in Andeer’.

Everything started in late spring of 2009, when I decided that I would like to do my research on consumers and their opinion on producer’s activities which go beyond the minimum standards of organic regulations. So, I found my way to the Rural Sociology Group and met Bettina Bock. Doing some investigations on the internet I came across the first report of the EU Core Organic Project on Consumer Farmer Partnerships which deals with the identification of communication arguments used by small-scale farmers and producers who engage in organic+ activities. Thereupon I got into contact with the research institute for biological farming (FiBL) in Switzerland who is one of the partners in this EU project. In May I wrote my research proposal with the help of Heidrun Moschitz and Flurina Schneider from FiBL and Bettina Bock. The core of my research was to find out what aspects of the communication arguments consumers perceive as important. Continue reading →